I picked up ‘Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World’ by Tony Wagner and thought, hopefully, that it would give me the parenting secret or the pedagogy cipher that I had always wanted. Instead, it gave me a lot to think about. I need to change some things, I need to keep some things the same and I need to talk to more people (and young people) about what they think about those things. It is a great conversation starter for how we want there to be a ‘one thing’ and that the ‘one thing’ is quite elusive, personal and often comes down to the people that influence young people. There is power in being a teacher, but there is more power in connecting to young people and letting them be and discover themselves for themselves with purposeful play and general purpose.
This book is not a quick read. It is a slow burn, dip and dive, hold your chip and think about dipping it in to get the most dip kind of book. It is the kind of book that you want to do ‘good dipping’ into. It is happily structured more like stand-alone vignettes so there are lots of opportunities to dip.
One of the things that struck me the most was that this is a collection of information gained from real-life interviews with real-life parents of real-life people (STEM innovators) who have followed a path to innovation. My open wondering was, what are all these people doing now? And how is innovation success quantified? With a small amount of research, I was quickly able to connect with most of the chapter subjects through twitter and I liked that the research has real names attached to real people that can be followed today if you so wanted to.
What does make an innovator? What can we do to raise one? (or more than one?) I felt relieved that play has been found to be a common ingredient for success. Giving kids time to discover and time to turn something over and over to see it anew also stood out as a top tip. Are we giving our kids enough ‘dull time’ to spark new thinking? This part, in our current plugged -in climate, could feel a bit confronting.
The book did feel like a small tribute to time travel though. It felt like it was trying to be a website and a book at the same time, and I initially felt irritated that the linking in the book didn’t take me directly to the video. It didn’t keep up with my ‘now’ expectations for information. But, once aligned with its publishing date (2012), the book actually felt quite clever. It is a minor inconvenience that it takes more than one click to navigate to the accompanying video (you have to type the url though). Aren’t we spoilt that using a phone and a book seems like a hassle now? For its time, it would have been an idea that stood out. A book with (links to) videos in it? That is a great idea! I wonder if the author would recreate it the same way or republish it as a series of blogs or vlogs instead if given the opportunity to revisit it? But that is the beauty of things in time, as time goes on, we can reimagine things in new ways. Surely the video links in a book was quite an original idea – and it makes me think that we can be so precious about how we receive information these days. The path to innovation is making the best new solution for the time that you are in.
“Empowerment is when they go out and apply what they have learned to problems they have never seen with parts of things they have never used before.”
Creating innovators is not a ‘I can’t put this down’ kind of book but it is the kind of book that you read once then need to go back in to ‘find the bit’ that got you thinking. It is bookmarkable in a way that a website could never be as satisfyingly. I found myself searching for the bit about ‘young punks’ who are searching for new ways to do things. It is like being a fly on the wall of a room that has lots of interesting conversations going on in it. And I really enjoyed reading it with a pen handy to write down pertinent bits for later.
So what might those gems be? Thinking and teaching outside of the box is beneficial. Knowing how to use information is essential. Taking play seriously is serious business. Strategic thinking and resourcefulness are things that we should be actively nurturing. Play, Passion, Purpose – These three things are at the heart of kids who push the envelope.
What else kept me reading? It seems we need to be invested in the process of finding something that you are interested in so that even keeping on reading is an essential skill. Embrace whimsy. Play more. Put the book down. Pick it up. Scribble something down… put videos in it and keep asking how we might do things another way.
This book should be read by teachers, mentors and parents and anyone that cares about young people thriving in the 21st Century. We all want our kids to thrive in an ever-changing world and this book, though initially seeming a bit dated, has ideas that last the distance. These ideas are not going out of fashion any time soon.
Wagner writes in a letter to a young innovator chapter, “You want to do things to change the world.” Maybe the first action we can take (as educators, readers, mentors and parents) is to start the conversation with young people so that they might feel confident enough to start dreaming up big changes.
- Katrina Ward
Katrina Ward is a parent and education geek working with fellow play and pedagogy enthusiasts at Momentum Learning Ltd in Aotearoa.
Connect with us on twitter @ltd_momentum @katrinawardnz
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