Piloting Faith: Do schools kill creativity?

A Word for the Day...

A friend of mine sent me a video of her 3-year-old son. He was standing in their kitchen with music playing the background dancing to the beat like an awkward puppy still discovering his body. He would bop up and down, then pause and regroup. Then he would sway his hips, looking around to the others in the room for affirmation. His was an enchanting dance of fearless creativity. I loved seeing it.

In his famous TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" Sir Ken Robinson said this about children:

"Kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

We run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. The result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. So why is this?"

I wonder if when Jesus said "Let the little children come to me," if he was giving us a clue about living a rich and full life. What if life is designed, by our Creator, to be a child-like fearless dance of creativity where "mistakes" lead us to wholeness?

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

- A Franciscan Benediction