Obama and the Importance of Creativity in Schools
November 26th, 2008After reading the Obama Administration Plan for Innovation, Science & Technology, Bruce Nussbaum feels that Barack Obama has a grasp on technology, but fails to “get” innovation. So what does he think Obama should do?
…he actually needs to appoint a Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) because change is as much about sociology as technology, as much about creativity as science. And that translates into more money for art and design education in K-12 and college as well as more funding for science and math.
Personally, I think Obama gets innovation. The way he ran his campaign is evidence. But that doesn’t diminish the truth of what Nussbaum writes about the importance of creativity. Here is another snippet:
It’s important to give students “high order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis, interpretation, forming questions and commnication,” as the Plan says. It’s also important to give students the skills of empathy, imagining, intuiting, collaborating, iterating, learning from failing, visualizing, disrupting, engaging, even playing. These are the skills of creativity and we need creativity to build a new sustainable social model of economic growth.
Good stuff. Go read the full post, Does Obama Really “Get” Innovation? Not Really., on the BusinessWeek NussbaumOnDesign blog.
