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Innovation across all fields is needed to spur society forward - to solve complex problems and enhance our lives, all while fueling our economy by creating jobs. And the fuel for innovation is creativity.
If you were to design a curriculum that fosters creative thinking in students, some of whom may become future innovators, what skills and specific courses would you include?
I recall certain projects during my K-12 public school years which struck me as fostering innovation through creativity and critical thinking, all while pairing them potential real-life applications in entrepreneurship. One was a middle school project that involved students designing their own board games, then testing it out in school-wide in the lunchroom with each game placed on the lunch tables for students to try out. Those judged the best had potential to be commercially launched.
Another project involved a team of three students developing, writing, and performing a screenplay.
This was in a state with a notable history of innovation that birthed many well known F500 companies as well as many more small businesses, across various industries . These include: 3M, Target, Mayo Clinic, General Mills, Buffalo Wild Wings, and many more.
And while living in England, I was impressed with how their curriculum fostered creativity, even at the public school primary school level. One was how each class upon graduating from primary school to enter secondary school, put on a completely student-driven school wide performance of their choosing. Is it a wonder it is a country with a history of innovative thinking and creations?
So, how can our educational curriculum foster more innovative thinking in students?
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Unschooling + practical life engagement + parents / grandparents / neighbors / mentors who are life-long learners, innovators and talented (arts, skills, teaching).
Open up the world to your kids and be engaged.... Or find someone who can fill that role. (My parents owned several businesses, so had no time for kids. Thank goodness for grandparents only 12 hrs away)
I purposely sent our kids on 1 week to 1 month career and skill adventures. Usually with friends or relatives.
Included the kids in budgeting, shopping, cooking, taxes, businesses, travel planning from age 5+. Volunteered as a family weekly with seniors, homeless, and public schools. This opened up a lot of interesting conversations and exposures for them.
By age 16, they had a very good idea what they did NOT want their life to turn into!
They were financially and domestically equipped, and in college by age 16, gone by age 18.
No plan is perfect. Dairy Farm Boarding school worked for me, until I escaped at age 15.
Farmers are very innovative, and 4H projects equipped me well from grade 3. I was paid in calves, so took 2+ yrs to realize a gain (if they didn't die).
Agree that foreign countries are far ahead of USA in equipping their upcoming generations for innovation, responsibilities, and success. I hire foreign trained Stem employees when possible. Second choice is farm kids trained at U of WY / IA / ID / KS or similar.
Innovation and entrepreneur skills cannot come from a curriculum. There must be inquisitive and passionate drive and tremendous stamina to overcome failure and normalcy, the opposite of sticking a herd of similar aged clones in a holding pen for 16-20 yrs.
Last edited by StealthRabbit; 04-30-2021 at 09:18 PM..
I agree it starts in the home. This thread was started several weeks ago, so I don't know if the OP is still around.
In the example of asking children to design their own board games, I don't think that does much to fosters innovation. Innovation is having the IDEA to design a new board game and initiating the project. In this case the students were told to do this.
I think the way to foster innovative thinking is to not attach payoff to everything we do. That's where the parents come in. The most important innovations in human history came from curiosity, not financial payoff. There are some business driven innovations but those tend to be just tweaking something already in existence to appeal to the general public.
If a child does something unique, don't criticize, don't edit, and don't ask what it's good for.
It's difficult for kids to think innovatively in a practical manner because they have NO IDEA of what jobs are like in the real world and how much manpower/regulations/$ is spent on something so simple as putting in a new traffic light or a road extension ... or an air conditioning system for an office building.
Innovative thinking should really come from the working adult professionals, but they're too busy ... trying to get into executive positions where they don't have to do technical work, earn as much salary as they can, retire early with as little work as possible, etc, etc.
Ridiculous amounts of $ are wasted doing things the same way according to the same state and federal regulations.
Granted, a large amount of work time for the vast majority is always going to be rote and routine tasks to re-create things based on tried and true methods, but ... it could be so much more efficient.
In other words ... those who have seen how broken it is, will have a better idea of how to fix it ... but don't get the chance because they're run ragged to drive profits and are too tired to care.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jobaba
It's difficult for kids to think innovatively in a practical manner because ... Ridiculous amounts of $ are wasted doing things the same way according to the same state and federal regulations.
Granted, a large amount of work time for the vast majority is always going to be rote and routine tasks to re-create things based on tried and true methods, but ... it could be so much more efficient.
.....
sounds an awful lot like the USA Public School System
Quote:
In other words ... those who have seen how broken it is, will have a better idea of how to fix it ...
Thus, given the chance... school kids should be as ideal at coming up with the solutions as the kids who grew up trodding behind a mule for 16hrs / day brought on the machine age !
They just had a pandemic year to innovate! (and many did).
One of the biggest things US educators could do to foster innovation and creativity is to seriously deemphasize the importance of standardized testing in the curriculum. Now, I do believe that while you need some testing, especially around foundational concepts, too often high test scores are seen as the be-all and end-all of schooling. So students who actually do have a tremendous amount of creative energy are often misunderstood, underestimated, and shunted off to the side, academically speaking, because you cannot IMO test for creativity and the talent to see the new. Kids like this certainly exist, but too often they cannot find a place in the educational system, whether they end up innovative software developers or chart-topping rappers.
When schools see students with a bent toward innovation, creativity, even entrepreneurship, they should encourage it. Too many times now they do not.
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