Stressed out childhood and squelched out imaginations

Students are so overscheduled they can't think straight in Race to Nowhere, a recent documentary I screened with a community group of questioning parents and frustrated educators this weekend. Between the pressure for kids, earlier-than-ever, to compete to get into the "right" college and on educators to teach to the tests that may or may not measure "achievement," we now have an education culture that more often than not squelches the imagination of its best students--the ones whose creativity we need more than ever.

The film examines mostly high-achieving communities, and uncovers what Stanford professor Denise Pope captured almost a decade ago in a study turned book called Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. The way we are doing school and the cost to our students, she revealed, is out of wack from our real goals of education. Race to Nowhere (click for trailer here if you don't see it below) reveals what too many parents know--the demands on our kids to succeed have led to grueling routines, sacrificed sleep, cheating and stress, depression and anxiety. The result is that students "do school," chase grades and college application impressiveness, going from one activity, homework assignment and memorized-before-forgotten information gulp to another. The question is, what are our students actually "learning" about how to live their lives? "Things that actually get our students to think are pushed aside," says one dedicated teacher from the film, who left her job as a teacher because she could no longer abide by her own district's test-taking demands.



This last week has seen related conversations percolate about how parents and kids deal with competition, discipline and being the best, thanks to Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which makes the case that our "weak-willed" and "indulgent" culture, compared perhaps to China or at least the demands of some Chinese-American moms like Chua, has our kids growing up ill equipped to compete in a fierce global marketplace. While Chua's arguments for "tenacious practice" and no excuses are worth being reminded of, Race to Nowhere shows how out of balance we've become. And keep in mind, as this week's TIME cover story about Tiger Moms points out, that many educated Chinese are seeking out the more "relaxed" American style of education--wanting to move away from rote memorization to more right-brained learning "because they know they must produce more creative and innovative graduates to power the high-end economy they want to develop."

Just like our too-busy adult culture today, a too-busy, overscheduled, and digitally addicted childhood ends up squelching creativity, indviduality and passion. We need an education system that inspires and engages and allows families to spend time together. Kids need downtime and free time to process and to imagine and to play, for social and emotional health, as well as the creative future of our culture.

Right now it's a race that is running us. It reminds me of the time I was in Japan and met up with a top English teacher there. She laboriously tutored kids into the night, almost every night, after their full day of classes. Turns out she could not communicate with me in English at all! Japanese kids were memorizing and studying a faux-English language that didn't really exist just so they could pass a test! More and more American kids are doing six hours of homework a night and forgetting everything they learn by the next week.

Every teacher and administrator I know is overwhelmed with standards and testing. Every parent fears their kid isn't doing enough to make it to the next school or threshold. Watch Race to Nowhere to remind you of other truths: that elementary kids don't need to do homework to thrive, that there is honor and smarts in kids who don't excel academically, and you can be successful if you don't go to the best college. The filmmakers describe the film as a call "to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens." I call it a sanity check.

A couple of thoughts for MLK Day

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority
has made the world better."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Human Salvation lies in the hands
of the creatively maladjusted."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Click here for video if you don't see it below

New Year, New Call: for United States of Innovation

As we start a new year (and, some would say, a new decade) as an already reeling country now reeling even more from the shooting of a Congresswoman, I'm grappling with the state of the United States. There is no question that we are poorer than we were when I grew up, and there is much evidence that we are more divided and pessimistic than we've ever been. We need something (as opposed to "someone," which hasn't seemed to work) to rally behind. And I'm going to vote, once again, for "Innovation." Hear me out.

If there is anything that we've learned as Americans in this past decade it's that there are many versions of "America," and plenty of other Americans who don't see it the way you do. Red state-Blue state-Tea Party-Who's-the-smarty?-Obama-Drama, Hey! Our politics and media--which feed our sense of country and confidence--are so far out of wack that we don't know what is true or what to believe. We do know that from healthcare to housing, we've lost a lot of our wealth lately, and that as a culture and as individuals, we have more challenges than ever before. Some say that we are seeing the irrevocable fall of the American empire. Some say technology can save us, empowering us to write blogs like this that lead to less alienation than in previous years. Not all of us believe that though. What can really unite us?


It's "Innovation." I put it in quotes because we still need to collectively define what that means and to better understand creativity, the engine of innovation. But right now the political left and right, the CEOs and the artists, miraculously agree that innovation is needed, and that our future is dependent on leveraging our innovation capacity. I've called this the Innovation Imperative--that we need creativity and innovation more than ever, for economic, cultural and personal reasons.

Economic: America, with its diversity of ideas, free enterprise, university research and available capital, still has the raw materials for economic innovation. The Obama administration had been more quiet about "innovation" in 2010 than it had been the year before and, as I've discussed before, certain measures of innovation seem to be on the decline. But both political sides, as well as leaders everywhere, know that "innovation" is the key to us getting out of our economic hole. The "United States of Innovation" is the best rallying cry for getting us aligned and talking (!) under one unified banner.

Cultural: For economic success, we need an innovative culture in our cities, communities, schools and organizations. We have really difficult challenges now--from our healthcare to the environment to under-educated kids, that require a new mindset of innovation that can lead to real breakthroughs and better solutions. This blog has been dedicated to offering tools for an innovative mindset and culture, which include openness to new ideas, diverse perspectives coming together in new combinations, and the fostering of the "4Cs" of creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

Personal: We live in a world without long-term job security, and that means we have to be more creative individually, able to learn constantly as adults and re-invent ourselves as needed. The world is asking us to truly leverage our unique talents in ways that provide value to others, and to do that we have to be aware of and build our competencies of creativity, which I've described throughout this blog. Perhaps the most important is flexibility--which is our ability to see things differently, seek out new perspectives, challenge our assumptions and embrace change.

Despite our current malaise, the United States is still a young country and a small shift of mindset, perhaps an inner rather than outer revolution, could lead to needed change much quicker than we think. What do you think? Can we get people to rally behind innovation? What else can unify us? Here's to a 2011 where more Americans embrace their own creativity and where we're more of a united state of innovation and collaboration.