Jay Palter wants his children to grow up knowing how to unleash their creativity.
Originally appeared at Homemade Dad
A few months ago, I tweeted:
I wasn’t so much suggesting that kids should become coders as much as I was saying that my kids could benefit from a wide range of other skills development when they are young. This is from a guy who grew up playing hockey—and loving it. And who now lives in Canada’s hockey heartland of central Alberta.
Don’t get me wrong. I like a good hockey game. To watch, anyway. But for kids who play, hockey becomes a dominant aspect of their lives, at the expense of other valuable skills development.
My kids currently enjoy competitive team sports—they play soccer. But they also like the arts—they play piano and dance. And both of my kids are learning Kung Fu which builds discipline and self-confidence.
In the end, I don’t really want my kids to be computer programmers (unless that’s what they really want to do). I just want them to learn how to unleash their creativity because I believe that creativity is key to success and happiness in the future.
I am hearing this message echoed in the writings and observations of many contemporary commentators.Richard Florida’s research is based on the importance of the creative class and how to create the appropriate conditions for the creative class to flourish. Seth Godin‘s Linchpin talks about rethinking education so that it doesn’t systematically pound the creativity out of kids.
The innovators and disrupters of today’s economy—the ones creating and fuelling the technological rethinking of many business models—are creative souls, many of which are rejects from the education system. Remember, Steve Jobs was a college drop out.
Now, I’m not advocating dropping out of school, but I am advocating that we need to be open-minded about exposing our kids to character-building experiences when they are young. And hockey—or competitive team sports, in general – does not have a monopoly on character building. But it will have a monopoly over your kids’ preciously short time as a kid.
Note: Thanks to Francois for his Kids and Coding post which inspired me to make a post out of my tweet.
Photo courtesy of Samuel Mann
About Jay Palter
I’ve seen this sort of argument before, and I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about what “creativity” is in the first place.
Sure, Steve Jobs dropped out of college, but Brin and Page couldn’t have founded Google if they hadn’t spent years studying mathematical methods at the university level.
Yet when people hear “mathematics” they don’t usually associate that with “creativity.” They reality is that creativity comes from being curious, the underlying subject matter doesn’t matter as much. Creativity can come from playing the piano, but it can also come from developing a new protein-folding model. You need to study music to do the former, but high level chemistry and biology to handle the latter.
It’s understandable that everyone wants their children to succeed, but it’s never going to be about subject matter. It’s about curiosity, and it always has been. Teach your children to be curious and it won’t matter if they play hockey or program apps, they’ll be successful.
I don’t care how curious you are about being good at Hockey…if you don’t have the brawn, dexterity, coordination to back it up (and were not born in the first 3 months of the year ) you are never going to see the NHL.
It used to be that schools produced lots of disciplined little drones for the factories and offices, but anymore, it’s not hte disciplined little drones that are getting ahead, it’s the creative ones, who somehow managed to survive school and first jobs with their creativity and wonder attached. We need more of that….
Knowing your discipline deeply is important, but only takes you so far. What matters today as much or more is understanding the limitations, overlaps and commonalities of various disciplines. Thinking at the edges and outside of the box is a precious skill (and I mean “precious” in the highly valuable sense, not he affected sense) in any field.