Nurture Childhood Creativity

The Bay Area's Creativity Gap

by Richard Winefield, Executive Director, Bay Area Discovery Museum

The Bay Area faces a challenge as important as our current financial and environmental challenges, but one that hasn't shown up on the radar. The way we are raising and educating our children is creating a creativity-gap, one that threats the Bay Area's standing as a world leader in technology and innovation. We are creating a generation woefully under-prepared to be creative thinkers and problem solvers, at a time when creativity is more important than ever.

As we move into the 21st century, our children face an unknowable future. Creativity, so-called right-brain skills, will be crucial. It's been estimated that in the next 100 years we'll achieve 1,000 years of scientific advances. The convergence of biotech, nanotech, robotics and artificial intelligence will create entirely new industries, and eliminate others. Radically changing demographics and globalization will add to the churn. Children (and adults) with good analytic skills but undeveloped creative abilities will be left behind, unable to foresee and plan for a fast-changing future. Success will hinge on the ability to anticipate trends, to recognize patterns in seemingly random events, and to come up with original ways to contribute to organizations and to society. Think this is alarmist? Tell it to the folks who used to work in the auto, textile, newspaper, photo finishing and retail book industries, to name just a few.

In today's classrooms creative abilities are usually under-valued, grouped into "the arts" and ignored until Friday afternoon free-time. But the need for creativity is not limited to artists and writers; it will be required of leaders in the professions, in academia, in government, and in business. A good example of the creativity-gap can be found in the American auto industry, where left-brained industry-leaders focused on short-term numbers and "past practice," leading their industry to near-oblivion. These business leaders lacked the vision and creativity of their counterparts in other countries, and thousands of Americans are paying the price.

Next-generation leaders, i.e. today's toddlers and pre-schoolers, are “wired” to develop their creativity naturally and simply, through child-directed play. This is play in which the child, not parents or coaches, is at the center. When play is child-centered, kids are experimenting, trying new things, often failing but trying again and again to figure things out, all the while employing their curiosity and imagination. This is how the spark of creativity, inherent in all of us, is nurtured and developed. Adult-centered play can be useful and fun, but little league and dance class do not provide the opportunities for imagination and experimentation necessary for creativity.

By mid-century creative people will thrive, taking advantage of new and emerging technologies and finding opportunities for financial and personal growth. Those without creativity will assume lower-echelon jobs and positions, thankful for what they can find in a world where industries have either gone offshore to reduce costs, or have been made obsolete by technological advances. And it’s not just our children who are at risk; the Bay Area's future as a world leader in innovation and technology is at stake. The Bay Area has always valued and nurtured creativity, and it has paid us vast dividends. But today’s children in San Francisco and San Jose will someday be competing with today’s children in Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Seoul. If we do not quickly close our creativity-gap, other places will replace us on the cutting edge of innovation, job creation, and economic leadership.

At the museum where I work, and at children's museums nationally, we address this challenge everyday with our visitors, children 6 months to 8 years of age. We nurture future generations of creative thinkers and innovators by providing them with opportunities for creative, child-centered play. But our efforts are small compared with the need. We urge educators and parents to wake up to the critical need to nurture the creative potential within all children, by providing them with the opportunity to simply play, not in competition with other kids, not to develop technique, not with computers or pre-packaged games, but with their own ideas and imaginations. Our children need a heightened curiosity, the ability to take risks and try new things, and the joy of discovery and creativity. It is a certainty that, as author Daniel Pink has suggested, “Right-brainers will rule the future.” Let's make sure our children, and the Bay Area, are a big part of that future.