Teddy was giving me the kind of look you see on the news when someone has just found out that their admired preacher actually makes moonshine on the side. It's a look that combines disappointment and disbelief.
Teddy is my grandson. We’d been discussing the possibility of Teddy coming to North Carolina to visit this summer. That's when my son, Teddy's Uncle Dave, piped up.
“You may not want to do that, Teddy,” he said with a sweet smile, “Grandpa doesn’t even have a Playstation.”
For Teddy, the idea that a human being could exist without a Playstation is both amazing and horrifying. The fact that this very deprived human being could be his Grandpa was cause for wonder and pity.
Toys for kids today include lots of gadgets. You see video games and learning toys and CD players DVD players and lots of other things that take batteries or plug into a wall. What you don’t see are many sets of blocks, or erector sets or simple toy cars.
That worries me because I see so many toys where the things you can do are already decided by some toy designer or programmer someplace. The great thing about a set of blocks, for example, is that you have an unlimited number of possibilities. It's your mind that's the toy and it's not limited by someone else.
For years we’ve known that human beings are naturally creative. You can see that in children right up until they start school. Then, suddenly, possibilities aren’t unlimited any more. Instead there's one right answer and you have to find it or guess it. By the time most kids graduate from high school they don’t believe they’re creative any more.
Instead they think there are only a few “creative people” and those people are at least a little weird. That's nonsense. Human beings, all of us, are naturally creative. Our brains, according to researcher Bill Calvin, are “nature's connection-making engine.”
That means that we ought to be encouraging play and learning where there are more choices, not less, and where there is more than one right answer. That's how it is in life, but that's not how it has been in a lot of schools.
We’ve created an educational system where we often “fail the creativity” out of kids. We have to stick to the lesson plan and get ready for those standardized tests that determine funding and credentials and bonuses. Kids are trained to go for the answer that the system says is right, even if that's only one of several right answers and even, sometimes, if it's the wrong answer.
Now we’re starting to build toys that “fail the creativity” out of kids just like school. A couple of years ago I was visiting Teddy and he had a toy that was a computer game that was supposed to build creativity.
The idea was that Teddy was supposed to find a way to rearrange the elements of a picture so that certain conditions were met but so that you still had a meaningful picture. Guess what? Teddy came up with a way the programmers hadn’t thought of. But instead of being rewarded, Teddy got told that his answer was “wrong.”
This is very dangerous. The Digital Age demands human beings who can think. You can help.
Start by turning off your TV. You probably watch too much anyway. Take some of that time you’d spend in front of the aptly named boob tube and read or go to a museum or just take a walk around town.
If you must watch TV, watch something different. If you’ve got cable you’ve got more than a hundred channels to choose from. Surely you haven’t watched them all.
Try reading a magazine you’ve never read, or listening to a radio station that's not on your usual list. You’ll find that feeding your brain different stuff can help crack open that creativity tap you shut off years ago.
Then, do something to help the generation that's coming up now. Find a child and give him or her a set of blocks or some other toy without pre-programmed solutions.
It's not too late. You can even do it in time for Christmas.
22 December 2003
Check out my short e-booklet on 62 Tips for Getting Good Ideas When You Need Them.
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