Big Wisdom in a Small Package

I am really a big fan of ted.com and their compelling short videos by renowned thinkers and speakers. If you haven't experienced TED, I encourage you to check it out. Today in my email I found a link to a speech from the February 2010 TED conference presented by Adora Svitak- a 12 year old prodigy. I found it delightful to watch and such a good reminder that children have a lot to teach adults. Her presentation is short and fast-paced and she crams a lot of ideas into her allotted time, but if you listen closely you can hear some real gems.

For me, I really connected with her message when she talked about the innate creativity in children, that we sometimes lose as adults. Not to say that adults aren’t creative, but we can have a sense of “that can’t work because…” When I used to teach theatre classes I was constantly amazed at the problem solving ability of the kids in my classes. In fact, if there was something I couldn’t figure out (like, how are we going to get a quick costume change to work, or make a set change, etc) I would take it to the kids who would easily come up with something that I never would have thought of.

In our work at KIT we spend a lot of time doing consultation and helping child care and recreation programs through challenging situations. We give ideas and strategies and we do sometimes hear “that won’t work” “we tried that” or “we can’t do that.” I think that I probably have been known to judge a thought or idea before even taking the time to fully ingest it. Adora asks us to dream a little, and to bring the freshness and wonder of childhood to our adult lives.

In her speech she shares an example of an art program for kids. She says that when adults are asked to design glass, they take their inspiration from what they know to be true. When kids design, they don’t have any real experience with glass as art so they are free to express their ideas without boundaries. If we could dial back our thinking to the time when our experiences didn’t cloud our thoughts so much, we may be better able to connect to new, creative and ingenious ideas. Of course, experience is a great teacher, but I think that a healthy dose of childlike curiosity would do wonders! Listen to Adora and see what comes up for you.

Inclusion is…creativity.