Patrick F. Bassett, President

www.nais.org

The Case for Creativity in 21st C. Schools:

How and What Do We Teach? Whom Do We Hire?

Dan Pink: The Case for Creativity

Ken Robinson’s Out of our Minds: Learning To Be Creative. Fundamental misconception: the confusion of academic ability with intelligence….an obsessive preoccupation with academic ability…. Much more to intelligence than academic ability and much more to education than developing it.

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink

Left-brain dominated schools and economy: 20th C. belonged to the left brain

analytical thinking, measured by SATs and schooled by knowledge acquisition.

Produced an economy and society built on analysis and based on logical, linear, technological capabilities of the Information Age.

Rewards went to techies writing code; attorneys crafting contracts; MBAs crunching numbers.

These skills will still be necessary but not sufficient.

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink

Right brain transformation of the economy and society: 21st. C will belong to the right brain, measured by

creativity and empathy.Produced by an economy that outsources production of

goods and intellectual professional services and a society built on the inventive, empathetic, big-picture understanding of the Conceptual Age

Rewards will go to creators; empathizers (EQ); pattern recognizers; meaning makers: i.e., artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, big picture thinkers …and master teachers. The “Creative Class.”

Right brain rising into prominence.

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink

Daniel Goleman’s (Emotional Intelligence) meta-analysis of % of career success related to IQ: What %?

a) 50-60%b) 35-45%c) 23-29%d) 15-20%

Answer: 4-10% (“Confining your answers to the givens is slavish adherence to left-brain linear thinking.”)

IQ influences choice of career, not success in it. “The ‘A’ students become…”

Message from the Marketplace: Tough Choices or Tough Times Report of the New Commission on The Skills of the American Workforce, 2007: Nation@Risk2

“The crucial new factor, the one that alone can justify higher wages in this country than in other countries with similar levels of cognitive skills, is creativity and innovation.” p. 29

“[O]ur schools emphasize memory and analytical abilities and therefore may not benefit creative students. This is not true of the best of our independent schools and suburban schools But it is emphatically true of most of our schools.” p.30

“People those who are comfortable in working in artistic, investigative, highly social or entrepreneurial environments are more likely to succeed…. Schools will have to learn to simulate those environments….” p. 31

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink Agricultural Age (18th C. farmers: brawn) Industrial Age (19th C. factory workers: stamina/repetitive

skills)

Information Age (20th C. knowledge worker: left brain)

Conceptual Age (21st C. creators and empathizers: right brain)

Transitional Stories: – Coming of the Industrial Age: John Henry vs. the Pile-

driver– Coming of the Conceptual Age: Gary Kasparov vs. Big

Blue

Business on the Right-brain Bandwagon

“What we’ve got at GM now is a general comprehension that you can’t run the business by the left, intellectual, analytical side of the brain, and you have to have a lot of right side of the brain. You have to have a lot of right side creative input. We are in the arts and entertainment business, and we’re putting a huge emphasis on world-class design.” ~Richard Lutz, Vice-chairman of General Motors Corporation.Source: New York Times (06/09/05)

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink

The Implications for Schools“MFA the new MBA”: UCLA Art more selective than

Harvard Business School: Corporate recruiters downplaying MBAs and looking for the creatives at RISD, Art Institute of Chicago, Cranbrook Institute of Art.

Medical School: Columbia Medical School: Beyond computer diagnostics

to “patient narratives” Yale Medical School students studying at Yale Center for

British Art to hone powers of observations of subtlety. UCLA medical school makes students role-play

symptoms to be hospitalized overnight to empathize with how it feels to be a patient.

Independent schools: Imagination and EQ and right-brained values (ethics) the new RoI: “Values are the value-added….”

Demonstrations of Learning for 21st. C. Schools

1. Conduct a fluent conversation in a foreign language about of piece of writing in that language.

2. Write a cogent and persuasive opinion piece on a matter of public importance.

3. Declaim with passion and from memory a passage that is meaningful, of one’s own or from the culture’s literature or history.

4. Construct and program a robot capable of performing a difficult physical task.

5. Take leadership.6.Using statistics, assess if a statement by a public figure

is demonstrably true.7.Assess media coverage of a global event from various

cultural/national perspectives.

Demonstrations of Learning for 21st. C. Schools

8.Describe a breakthrough for a team on which you participated in which you contributed to overcoming a human-created obstacle.

9.Demonstrate a commitment to creating a more sustainable future with means that are scalable.

10. Produce or perform a work of art.By these demonstrations, schools…8.Reunite content and action. 9.Backward-design curriculum from desired outcomes.10.Demonstrate student outcomes recorded in electronic portfolios.11.Facilitate student-led teacher/parent conferences. 12.Conduct action research and lesson study to grow

professionally..

A Whole New Mind ~ Daniel Pink

Robert Sternberg (Yale & Tufts) and the “anti-SAT” Rainbow Project: Instead of the SAT, candidates for college given…A title and asked to write a narrative (“The Octopus’

Sneakers”) (Tufts Admissions Essay: “Confessions of a Middle-School Bully”)

A social problem and asked how to solve it (“Tufts: “You’ve been a straight A student and you get your first D Your roommate stays up all night. ”).

A Lego robotics team assignmentA blank New Yorker cartoon and asked to supply the

caption.

Results?Twice as successful in predicting success in college than the

SAT.

The Wisdom of the Crowd on Teaching Creativity

Creating the 21st. C. Curriculum

The Generative Question: What curriculum will prepare students for the 21st Century? What skills & values will be required?

• creativity and innovation• facility with the use of ideas and abstractions• self-discipline and organization to manage one’s own work and drive it through to successful conclusion• leadership• ability to function well as a member of a team

Creating the 21st. C. Curriculum

The Generative Question: What curriculum will prepare students for the 21st Century? What skills & values will be required?

• disciplined mind (expertise in a field)• synthesizing mind (scanning, filtering, and weaving into coherence)• creating mind (discovery and innovation)• respectful mind (open mindedness and inclusiveness)• ethical mind (moral courage)Multiple

Intelligences

Creating the 21st. C. Curriculum

The Generative Question: What curriculum will prepare students for the 21st Century? What skills & values will be required?

• Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving• Collaboration across Networks and Leading by

Influence• Agility and Adaptability• Initiative and Entrepreneurialism• Effective Oral and Written Communication;• Access and Analyzing Information• Curiosity and Imagination.

“There is no strong evidence that any of the Seven Survival Skills are being taught at any grade level in American public schools. Instead, class time is narrowly focused on teaching only the skills and content that will be tested.” (pp 76-77)

Creating the 21st. C. Curriculum

The Generative Question: What curriculum will prepare students for the 21st Century? What skills & values will be required?

ETS’ new Personal Potential Index 1-5 scale for recommendation letters to accompany candidate’s GRE scores to graduate school:• knowledge and creativity• communication skills• team work• resilience, planning and organization• ethics and integrity

KnowledgeWorks newsletter, Oct. 2007

The public perception of the gap between “what’s important” and “how effective schools are in teaching it.”

Creating the 21st. C. Curriculum

The Generative Question: What curriculum will prepare students for the 21st Century? What skills & values will be required? Bassett’s Conflated List:(1) character (self-discipline, growth mindset, empathy, integrity, resilience, and courage); (2) creativity and entrepreneurial spirit; (3) real-world problem-solving on a local, national, global stage (analysis, filtering, & synthesis: project-based, not text-based learning, & technology-enhanced); (4) communications, especially public speaking; (5) teaming; (6) leadership.

Teaching Creative Thinking as a Skill: The de Bono Approach

Teaching Creative Thinking

Wikipedia definition of dilemma questions the traditional definition with its focus on two equally bad choices: i.e, we should be teaching students to seek multiple possible choices. Educate beyond “problem-solving” to “sense-making” of dilemmas that are unsolvable, threatening, recurrent, complex, and enigmatic (cf. NAIS’s Challenge 2020).

Skill-set: beyond tactical rules-based problem-solving (the empirical method of science, the formulaic method of geometry, the rhetorical method of logic and debate) to strategic, principles-based “sense-making.” Teaching creative thinking to resolve more imponderable choices: e.g., ethical “right vs. right” dilemmas: Does the state have the right and obligation to supersede parental religious beliefs to force a medical treatment on a critically ill child?

Teaching Creative Thinking

Teaching Creative Thinking Skills

– Six Hats Thinking

– Lateral Thinking: Random word-association

Independent School Creativity Lessons: Cartoons, Forensics; 20/20; Entrepreneurship; Podcasts

NAIS’s Challenge 20/20: High Noon

Sharing our planet: Issues involving the “global common”• Global warming• Biodiversity and ecosystem losses• Fisheries depletion• Deforestation• Water deficits• Maritime safety and pollutionSharing our humanity: Issues requiring a global commitment & covenant• Massive step-up in the fight against poverty• Peacekeeping, conflict prevention, combating terrorism• Education for all• Global Infectious Diseases• Digital divide• Natural disaster prevention and mitigationSharing our rulebook: Issues needing a global regulatory approach• Reinventing taxation for the 21st century• Biotechnology rules• Global financial architecture• Illegal drugs• Trade, investment, and competition rules• Intellectual property rights• E-commerce rules• International labor and migration rules.

NAIS’s Challenge 20/20: High Noon

Sharing our planet: Issues involving the “global common”• Global warming• Biodiversity and ecosystem losses• Fisheries depletion• Deforestation• Water deficits• Maritime safety and pollutionSharing our humanity: Issues requiring a global commitment & covenant• Massive step-up in the fight against poverty• Peacekeeping, conflict prevention, combating terrorism• Education for all• Global Infectious Diseases• Digital divide• Natural disaster prevention and mitigationSharing our rulebook: Issues needing a global regulatory approach• Reinventing taxation for the 21st century• Biotechnology rules• Global financial architecture• Illegal drugs• Trade, investment, and competition rules• Intellectual property rights• E-commerce rules• International labor and migration rules.

Challenge 20/20: Montessori School of Denver

Wilbraham & Monson: The Global SchoolCore Program Element: Entrepreneurism

http://www.advocatemag.com/preston-hollow/blog/The_Lamplighter_Schools_chicken_coops_.html

Run Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgCPHy3agO4

Run

Rio Grande School (NM)” 6th Grade Forensics

Facebook, Murder, and the Passé Composé: video-conferencing with French school to solve a murder mystery, whose clues require forensic analysis and the proper use of perfect tenses.• Fake DNA analysis from gum left at the crime scene;• Bite analysis of an apple left at the scene and comparison withsuspects’ bites;• Hair analysis of evidence left at the crime scene and comparison tohairs from suspects for length, straightness, color, and appearanceunder a microscope;• Density measurements of metal dust found in suspects’ clothes and at the crime scene where window bars were filed away;• Paper chromatography on a ransom note left at the crime scene and a comparison to pens taken from suspects.

,,,all in French.

Collegiate School (VA): French Class Forensics

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

Podcasts @ Smithsonian (Holton Arms & Landon Schools)

The End!