From today’s NYT:
“The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own.”
I think the emphasis on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation is a good one in this article.
I wish it had mentioned the value of boredom. I think having no tv and less media exposure, less homework, and fewer scheduled activities, enhance kids’ creativity. Free play, then free time. Unfortunately, technology makes this hard, as do all the academic pressures.
Send your kids to a mediocre school with less homework, and provide lessons and classes outside of school only when they show an interest. If they are bored, say “good, you are about to do something wonderful.”
Be a good role model and spend time on the couch (not with tv on)!!!
Another version of “Excellent Sheep”. It’s hard when you’re winning to risk losing…
I think Adam Grant’s column mixes very sound advice with a misunderstanding of the evidence on success or non-success by finalists in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and some misunderstandings of the scientific community.
8 Nobel Laureates among the finalists in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, over a 53 year period? Given the geographical concentration of the finalists over the years, that’s actually pretty astonishing. It would still be pretty astonishing if the Nobel Prize were restricted to Americans.
Not making it into the National Academy of Sciences? Join Jonas Salk among the outsiders.
I think it is misplaced to write that “They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights.” It is okay for high school students to focus their energies on under understanding existing scientific knowledge. One cannot produce new insights without some background in a field, and people are not born with knowledge of science. Newton famously wrote, “If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” He understood the significance of understanding at least some of what was already known.
Later, there is zero possibility of having an academic career without producing new insights. It is virtually impossible to be hired at a university without having already produced some new insights. Some STEM faculty start producing new insights as college undergraduates, many as grad students, and a few not until they are post-docs, really. Hardly anyone comes up with new insights as a high-school student; Einstein, I think, actually did that.
A career is not ending “with a whimper” if one does not win a Nobel Prize, and is not even elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The last I looked, I think only 60 people per year are elected to the National Academy.
I doubt that creative children who have the insight that it is better to keep their ideas to themselves when they are in K-12 school have any danger of becoming “excellent sheep.”
I think that there is evidence that Mozart’s father invested a lot of effort in turning Mozart into a musical genius–perhaps he had a glimmering of his son’s interest first, but the idea that Mozart’s father just followed his son’s interest is inaccurate as far as I know.
I think the statement about Nobel Laureates being much more likely to perform or write poetry, plays or novels overlooks some elements in the sociology of science. If someone has won or is likely to win the Nobel Prize, he/she has more latitude to perform, and is also significantly more likely to find a publisher of literary work.
I do agree that one cannot force creativity, or browbeat someone into becoming outstanding in any area. I find the news that it promotes creativity to have few or no rules encouraging ( 
), but my spouse and I have long thought that. So I think the main point of the piece is sound, but there are some misrepresentations along the way.
I continue to be annoyed by Grant’s column. The youngest Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalists in his sample are just about 40 this year. Hardly anyone is elected to the National Academy of Sciences at age 40. Some time in the 50’s is more typical, and one of the most insightful and creative scientists I know in my field was not elected until he was 60. (I did feel that was a bit late.)
The Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalists probably represent about 1% or so of the young people of a similar talent level in the sciences, maybe less. There are about 40 of them per year, and a lot of elements that are uncontrollable by the student go into selection. I don’t think it indicates anything that about 1% of them have been elected to the National Academy, especially when the last 15 years or so of the winners covered in the study are just reaching or have not yet reached the age at which they are most likely to be elected.
Creative genius is exceptionally rare. I don’t think one can ascribe it to upbringing–in other words, child prodigies are not fated to become adult creative geniuses, were it not for overly restrictive parenting.
It’s really something we recognize in retrospect.
As Steve Jobs’ biological sister is a respected novelist, one’s genetic inheritance likely plays a large role, as well as the tenor of the times. Neither of which can be blamed on parents.
Anyways, anyone strong willed and original will not be likely to thrive in the classroom. Then again, the vast majority of the strong willed and original are also not creative geniuses.
“They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own”
-Very important in contemporary business or any other setting as most organizations operate in teams, practically no organization is constructed to rely on individual work, rather the team work. If one does not conform to accepted standards in practices, the project, the treating of the patients, …etc., even the cleaning process, any very creative or very mundane task has a low chance for being successful at all, it will fall apart very quickly. Creative geniuses may play much smaller roles today. Most discoveries are done in teams…
I think this article mixes up a number of different kinds of people (the sorts of people we’ve been talking about on another lengthy thread). People who are really child prodigies are one thing; people who are quite gifted are something else; and people who work very hard according to somebody else’s script are something else again. With some overlap, of course.
I also note that on the one hand he thinks budding scientists should chart their own course, but on the other seems to think they should participate in regimented competitions.
My takeaway was a warning that some parents quixotically push their kids into achievement that can kill what grad schools and employers want; creativity fused with talent. Info is easy to come by, but what does one do with it? I’ve seen kids playing perfect violin with dead eyes, and I’ve seen kids playing flawed guitar but loving it and pushing it. We should be raising kids with curiosity and love for what they do.
I agree with snarlatron (and the article) here. One need only look at the Chinese educational system, as a real world example, to see how emotion plays a large part in the development of creative skills.
^^^ Not entirely according to the number of patents filed in China.
http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/04/22/a-look-at-the-huge-upswing-in-china-patent-filings/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Intellectual_Property_Indicators
It is amusing when you run into an article whose title you can somewhat agree with but whose content reads like infernal heresy.
“They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights.”
Really? These are high school students. The writer is either a complete ignoramus with no idea of the status of the net sum of both scientific and non-scientific knowledge today or a schizophrenic who thinks any 13 year old can be an Einstein in his/her own head.
Number of patents is not a great metric by which to measure innovation and creativity. Furthermore, the number of officially registered (approved) patents in China since 2013 is much lower than that of the US (515 compared to 1467). Not to mention China’s population is 4x larger…
NFN, didn’t Mozart’s dad shop him and his sister around from the age of 5 or so? Then to be a Mozart, don’t you need your parent to push you and have you perform in public?
http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/biographies/a/mozart-child-prodigy.htm
If you do not conform in our contemporary environment these will not be possible at all:
The doctor who treats patients is less “creative” than the one who works on policy questions regarding how to fix a broken health care system? Huh? So Rand Paul must be a creative genius because he’s a physician who wants to fix our government, particularly our tax system. That’s just plain silly.
I think there is a lot of room for what I see as creativity and certainly “problem solving” in medicine. Lots of patients have gone from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what ails them and how to fix it and sometimes they are lucky enough to find the doctor who finally figures it out. That physician isn’t “creative?”
If folks don’t care for Adam Grant’s theory here, they’ll really hate his ideas on how college admissions should be handled! 
“Throw Out the College Application System”
http://nyti.ms/ZelyMX
He’s Wharton professor and a graduate of Harvard (BA) and Michigan (PhD), FWIW.
I can see how stressing achievement at a young age can be detrimental in more ways than one including creativity. I’m also a fan of Ken Robinson and his take on public education and creativity. I’m a fan of Odyssey of the Mind and my kids have participated in it over other activities due to the creative aspect but even in it when the teams start focusing so much on the competition aspect they end up sacrificing some creativity from time to time.
You are right, LucieTheLakie, I don’t care too much for Adam Grant’s column. In the article that you linked, Grant writes, "This leaves many colleges favoring achievement robots who excel at the memorization of rote knowledge, . . . " I do not like the dehumanization of actual students that underlies the metaphor of “robots.” Based on many CC posts that I have read with the same or similar words, I think that its use tends to objectify a high-achieving student, and distance the person who uses the term from the real, human emotions that the student has. Furthermore, students who are caricatured in that way by an admissions committee are more likely to be rejected than accepted.
I doubt that many colleges these days have been admitting students who excel at the memorization of rote knowledge. The schools in our area do not even offer the “opportunity” to achieve high grades by memorizing rote knowledge. In some cases, it might be an improvement , but I won’t go down that path.
For two years, I have been running a CC campaign for “Celebrating Our Common Humanity Day,” which is intended to eliminate the use of the “robot” metaphor, and also “machine,” or similar terms. I celebrate it on the day that MIT releases its decisions. MIT Chris actually endorsed this! Last year, I was really pleased to see that the term was virtually absent from the MIT discussions, though still present here and there on the Parents’ Forum.
To go to the specifics of Grant’s proposal: Some of the ideas fit the Oxford/Cambridge admissions model very well, and I do like those. For example, in Oxford and Cambridge, interviews of the students are conducted by the faculty who will be teaching the students, and they are interviews of a single student at a time. The faculty are assessing the students’ subject-area knowledge, and their responsiveness to teaching. In a number of subject areas, there are supplemental examinations (more difficult than A levels) that are taken on the day of the interview. In non-STEM areas, they involve essays, but in the STEM areas, they usually involve problem solving. So these are like Grant’s proposal. Absent in England is the element of group work and leadership testing. I think this is primarily because the British are looking for scholars, rather than future Captains of Industry, Societal Movers and Shakers, and World Leaders–of course, they get quite a few of those into the bargain.
US university’s goals are somewhat different. However, I doubt that Grant’s proposal would work well in practice, because he does not deal adequately with scalability (and cost) of the interviews, given that the top schools are receiving 35,000+ applications. Aside from that, universities do not have the same goals as businesses, and the current fad of attempting to import “best business practices” into universities tends not to work well for that reason.
"I doubt that many colleges these days have been admitting students who excel at the memorization of rote knowledge. " - Absolute must for medical profession. Do not get me wrong, the superior analytical skills are also required. But forget about medicine if you have poor memory like me. Then pursue CS, this one does not require any memory whatsoever and that is one of the reasons why have been loving it for over 30 years.