Pre-Ramble: In the aftermath of the global finance fest in Davos, Switzerland, business and political leaders from around the world continue to wring their collective hands in search of policy level solutions to curb what is rapidly being identified as the most serious global recession since the 1930s. They’re asking themselves and each other where all this is going and what it will take to kick-start the growth needed to end it.

If American businesses and the new administration have anything to say about it, economic recovery will involve an elephant gun of bail-outs followed by a whole bunch of ”innovation.”  Intel recently ran a front-page ad in the WSJ headlined, “Today’s education. Tomorrow’s innovation,” proposing that education is the key to solving global challenges and tossing $120 million into the ring for science fairs and youth outreach. In the same issue, Shell (oil and gas) stressed the role of innovation in solving our most challenging problems stating, “In the new energy future, if it doesn’t exist, we’ll need to invent it.”  They go on to concede that “it won’t be easy; but innovative solutions rarely are.” …

Ok… sure, leaving the specifics of Shell’s renewable energy policy aside, there seems to be some kind of effort here to speak to the need for a new way of thinking. It’s one thing to invoke the “i-word”, quite another however to actually bring it about. If our political and business leadership is looking to innovation to drive economic recovery, they better take a closer look at the investments they’re making in education.

The Big Disconnect: Meanwhile, back in Minnesota… (Yes, yes, we’re still shuffling those disputed ballots around…) Governor Tim Pawlenty champions the state’s “world-class” public education system and competitive workforce, while delivering repeated body blows to state funding for the arts. Similarly, Massachusetts’ Brandeis University, proclaims art to be “the great legacy of human accomplishment, essential to interdisciplinary learning” as its curators prepare to sell off the entire collection from its esteemed Rose Art Museum — long regarded as an important teaching resource. If kids in the K-12 and higher education pipeline aren’t equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to think about things in new ways (creativity), how on earth are they supposed to merge into the workforce ready to innovate?

The Take-Away: If an innovative workforce is the goal, then step up policies and practices that foster creative thinking in the learning experience of kids. Gee,… there’s an innovative idea! 

One way we could do that is by teaching kids, beginning on the first day of pre-school, to explore ideas in different ways… maybe using shape, color, light, shadow, spacial relationships, connections, perceptions, dynamics, systems, motion, movement, tone, harmonics, intervals, blending, etc. … It could be embedded in the daily curriculum and an integral part of their everyday learning all the way up to grade 12. We could expose students to the work of great thinkers and craftsmen, and help them uncover the connections between societies and their forms of expression and invention. We could inspire children to think in new ways and prepare them to compete in a global economy. We could make this kind of creativity content a priority at the state and national levels …  We could call it art innovation education.

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