Creating Innovators - A Call to Reinvent Education

Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World by Tony Wagner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Call to Reinvent Education

It took me a while to finish this book. However, it was worth reading. It talks about Passion, Play, and Purpose quite a lot. And what struck me was this statement by Robert A. Compton, in the Afterword, "Although expensive for our society, school was hardly a stirring experience." This was across the board of interviewees. Most of the young innovators thrived in spite of and not because of the school system. I saw this as a call to reinvent education. This will not be easy. But Wagner lays out some pointers, like when he described the learning principles at the Olin Graduate School of Business: "a strong emphasis on collaboration (versus individual achievement); multidisciplinary learning (versus specialization); and an emphasis on creating things and student empowerment (versus passively consuming knowledge); encouragement of intellectual risk-taking and trial and error (versus risk avoidance); and finally, a strong emphasis on intrinsic (versus extrinsic) motivation, with the absence of grades and the faculty's focus on encouraging students to pursue their passions." Another thing that struck me was how the most effective mentors for innovators were tinkerers. Usually, these teachers are not tenured. Which is ironic, because it seems that they are the ones who are most effective in inspiring innovation. For a parent, this was funny: "You can't separate innovation from disobedience. But you can't be an innovator and rob banks." LOL. Annmarie Neal, one of the interviewees, talks about two rules for her kids: safety and character, "so long as he is careful (comparatively) and caring --meaning he is a good person. Everything else is up for grabs-- sometimes literally." So, schools, teachers, and parents have their work cut out for them. The question is: how long do we have to wait to pivot?

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ModPo 2013 #21 What Poetry Depends Upon: On Williams' "The Red Wheel Barrow"

Image from
girlsjustwannareadbooks.blogspot.com.

The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams 

so much depends 

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens.
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Once again, I'm glad to have watched the video discussion. So much depends upon the phrase "So much depends/ upon!" I would have totally missed it!

I loved how the image itself became dependent on the awareness of making something new, the meta-poetic. It could easily have stood as a crisp imagist poem but the first two lines draw attention to themselves. Are they superfluous? Why does so much depend upon a red wheel barrow? So much of art depends upon something, the lenses that detect the picture, the artist from whose perspective we see the red wheel barrow. 

This brings me to the beauty of language. There is never really just one way to look at things. As Wallace Stevens points out: there are at least thirteen ways to see a blackbird. A red wheel barrow is not just a red wheel barrow, not just the one glazed with rain water contrasted beside the white chickens. So much depends on the speaker, so much depends on the reader. The red wheel barrow is the pastoral life. The red wheel barrow is what is left of the pastoral life. The red wheel barrow shines with rain water because the rain water makes all things new. The red wheel barrow is the speaker and the reader. Or the reader and the speaker are the white chickens. And without the red wheel barrow the speaker and reader do not come into view. 

It's amazing how much can come out of a few photographic lines. Poetry depends upon traditions and innovations.  It makes me want to review all my poems and see how innovative I have been or how inarticulate or unaware I really am about the sources of my poetry.