Teaching Creativity

“Humans are born curious, creative, and intuitive.” – Sir Ken Robinson

E really likes listening to the CBC show “The Debaters”, where comedians “mix fact and funny” in mock debates that are judged at the end by audience applause. They have opening and closing arguments, just like real debates, with a “bare knuckle round” for tearing each other down in real time and a “firing line” of trivia questions thrown in to add to the fun. It requires a lot of creative juices—figuring out what sort of arguments will win your audience over while entertaining them; thinking on your feet to bring down your opponent; coming up with multiple points on ridiculous topics.

So I think it’s pretty cool when E and G decide occasionally to stage their own Debaters-style debate. This time it was on pizza vs sandwiches. It ended in a draw, since L and myself voted for different people and the four year old, F, abstained from voting altogether.

The thing about leaving your kids to explore the world at their own leisure is that the world affords seemingly limitless opportunities to them. Kids love to emulate what they see around themselves—and what is there is so full of everything they could need to grow into “curious, creative, and intuitive” adults. And I can not describe how gloriously fun it is to watch them choose to engage meaningfully in the world, of their own accord. 

I’ll leave you with one more Ken Robinson quote: “We are educating people out of their creative capacities…I believe this passionately, that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”