Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
"What Do We Teach Our Kids?"

Johnny B. Truant asks the Big Question about what we’re teaching our kids: just what is it for?

My son Austin is five. The kid is brilliant. I know that all parents think their kids are smart, but this is no joke. […]

This year he’ll go off to kindergarten, and he’s going to be bored as a motherfucker. He got bored with preschool over a year ago, and the fact that he’s the oldest kid in his class isn’t helping. They have to move at the speed of the slowest kids, so as not to leave anyone behind. You get a spectrum of kids with different abilities, but it’s one class with one teacher… and so one size must fit all.

I find myself wondering about this, and other things I’ve never thought about when it comes to school, and education, and development.

All the things I’ve always taken for granted as immutable truths — school starts at five and continues for thirteen years, college follows high school, job follows college — are suddenly coming into question.

All at once, I’m no longer sure that what I learned in school is what I’d most like for my kids to learn.

He follows with some great lessons from entrepreneurship, why it may just be one of the most crucial mindsets to instill in our children for the future, and how Unschooling is just the thing to make that happen.

Couldn’t have said it all better myself.

Mar 30, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

"Shorts" and Creativity

A spot-on review of Robert Rodriguez’s brilliantly fun and fantastic film “Shorts”:

Over Christmas, I sat down with my six year old son and had him tell me a story.  He began with a simple premise of two aliens who needed to fix their spaceship to go home.  We’ve all heard that one before.  But then one of them finds a treasure map in the ship’s glove box and they travel to dinosaur land to get the pirate treasure from the king dinosaur who had a castle with disappearing doors and little dinosaur soldiers and they had to go through the jungle and elude traps, Indiana Jones-style and, and, and . . .  unfiltered creative brainstorming.  Now imagine a movie studio executive heard his idea and gave him a few million dollars to film it and you would end up with the movie “Shorts.” […]

“Shorts” may be the ultimate kid’s movie as it feels like it is a direct feed into a seven year old’s brain, without any adult editing. […]

A synopsis of this film doesn’t do it justice.  It’s the story of a magic rock that grants its owner unlimited wishes and the consequences for each person that holds it.  The movie throws every idea a kid could ever imagine up onto the screen.  Want crocodiles that walk on two feet?  Check.  Giant robots?  Check.  Booger monsters?  Check.  And my favorite, a Super Genius Telepathic Baby.  The movie is unbridled creativity, which makes it messy, yet beautiful. 

That is exactly what makes this movie rock, and why I’ve always secretly loved Rodriguez’s kids films. You have to be (or remember what it was like to be) a 10-year-old to really appreciate it, though.

Mar 28, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

"America’s Real Dream Team"

In a New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman reflects on a recent dinner he attended in honor of 40 top-excelling high school students – the majority of whom were from immigrant families.

Some truly great economic lessons here, coming from one of the world’s top economists. Listen to this:

This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas.

If I just have the spark of an idea now, I can get a designer in Taiwan to design it. I can get a factory in China to produce a prototype. I can get a factory in Vietnam to mass manufacture it. I can use Amazon.com to handle fulfillment. I can use freelancer.com to find someone to do my logo and manage by backroom. And I can do all this at incredibly low prices. The one thing that is not a commodity and never will be is that spark of an idea.

While Friedman’s main focus with the piece is on the value of pro-immigration policies for America, I think there’s more importantly a profound lesson here for our education systems: now more than ever before, we need to recognize and appreciate the value of creativity, of that ‘spark of an idea’. This is what education truly should be about – because if nothing else, it’s soon to become entirely what our economy is about.

Mar 21, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Dangerous Things (Parents Should Let Their Kids Do)

This is why I absolutely love Gever Tulley – he says things like this:

“Driving a car is an empowering act for a young child. It gives them a handle on the world in a way that they don’t often have access to.”

And how true that is. Everything we thought was bad or ‘dangerous’ for kids can be looked at in a positive light, like driving a car or climbing a tree. It’s all a matter of asking “Why shouldn’t a kid try this?” It’s about approaching childhood experiences positively instead of fearfully – recognising that whatever kids do, there’s often an underlying need there to do it, or some sort of unmet sense of fulfilment that comes from it. For instance, why shouldn’t kids throw rocks? As Tulley says, “Children need to practice throwing things because it activates the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, which help with visual acuity, 3-D understanding, reasoning and structural problem-solving.” It makes sense to kids, but adults have talked them out of it. We need to let them kids experience these ‘dangerous’ things again – we need to see that there’s something behind them, something meaningful that’s worth exploring.

And that, my friends, is what I love about Gever.

If you haven’t seen Gever’s TED Talks before, you certainly owe it to yourself. He succinctly captures so much about the needs of childhood and the origins of creativity. This interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, where he chats about his new book, is pretty great too.

Jan 14, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Ken Robinson: "How Schools Stifle Creativity"

So you remember that TED Talk from 2006, the one where Sir Ken Robinson discussed how schools kill children’s creativity? The brilliant one, the one that everybody loves? The one that’s been downloaded 3.5 million times, in more than 200 countries, and viewed probably 20 times more than that?

Sure you do. If you don’t, feel ashamed, then click over and watch it.

Anyway, Ken Robinson recently spoke with CNN – as part of their new TED Talk Tuesdays series – about the origin of the talk, why it’s been so successful, and how it “changes the conversation” people have about education, as he puts it.

As always, Robinson’s insights about education offer so much – and he portrays a clear, vibrant way forward:

Reforming these systems is not enough. The truth is that we are caught up in a cultural and economic revolution. This revolution is that is global in scale and unpredictable in nature. To meet it, we need a revolution in the culture of education.
This new culture has to emerge from a richer sense of human ability. To shape it, I believe we have to leave behind the manufacturing principles of industrialism and embrace the organic principles of ecology.

Education is about developing human beings, and human development is not mechanical or linear. It is organic and dynamic.

Like all living forms, we flourish in certain conditions and shrivel in others. Great teachers, great parents and great leaders understand those conditions intuitively; poor ones don’t. The answer is not to standardize education, but to personalize and customize it to the needs of each child and community. There is no alternative. There never was.

It won’t be easy to change our thinking and culture about education, but like Robinson, I believe it’s something we must do. I hope we’ll all embrace the challenge.

Nov 03, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Paul Graham: "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule"

John Gruber recently mentioned how he fell in love with this piece from Paul Graham; after reading it, I feel exactly the same way.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

I know my day is just shot when I have to run errands or make it to meetings in the middle of the day. Similarly, going to school classes does the same thing; by the time I get out around noon, I’ve lost all creative motivation and essentially waste the rest of the afternoon.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

How Distance Can Make Us More Creative

The Scientific American considers how normal, seemingly “non-creative” individuals can increase their creativity:

Over the past several years, however, social psychologists have discovered that creativity is not only a characteristic of the individual, but may also change depending on the situation and context. The question, of course, is what those situations are: what makes us more creative at times and less creative at others?

One answer is psychological distance.

According to the research, there are several surprisingly simple, concrete ways to thinking more creatively: “Traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality.”

It’s interesting to consider this in terms of situational attention and daydreaming; when we zone out and focus on things outside of our immediate realm, are we apt to be more creative? Science indeed appears to be saying so.

Jul 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned From Mythbusters

There’s a reason geeks make great parents: they’re not afraid to be passionate about things. Well, that, and they’re used to constant ridicule, which helps when Little Susie comes home beaten to a pulp, not understanding why the Big Girls on the playground didn’t want to play Dungeons and Dragons with her during recess.

But there is something to it – to this wonderful fusion between geek and parent. Parents inspired by geeky things can also apply that great nerd disposition they have to inspiring and nurturing a sense of wonder and exploration in their kids, ultimately helping them have happier childhoods.

Kevin Makice, writing for GeekDad, shares five wonderful parenting mantras that he swiped from the ultimate geek television show – Mythbusters. And you know what? It’s absolutely brilliant advice.

“Failure is always an option” (that’s #1) – if more kids were told this (and saw this manifested in their parents), maybe we wouldn’t have a whole subset generation so wigged out about doing things perfectly and, thus, ultimately not doing anything at all. Making mistakes is the very essence of creativity and innovation.

Your reality is not my reality – that’s a good one (it’s #2), and the foundational bedrock of Social Psychology (which is awfully fun to conduct on unsuspecting kids, by the way). People build their realities through interaction with others and from their lived experiences – and it’s probably important to remember that kids are awfully short, have to ask for a hallpass to use the restroom most of the day, and almost never have the same experiences we have. So yeah, your kid lives on a different planet; we all do. The decent thing is to just accept that and, when you can, try to understand where both of you are coming from. Maybe you can meet in between, at a pit stop on Neptune.

There’s a few other important parent lessons learned from geekdom, but undoubtedly the most important is this: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” (And with explosions, if you can manage it.)

Sometimes when the crew is finished busting, there is still time to play. “Overdoing” an experiment may be an excuse to put Jamie’s C4 principle to use, but it also typifies an important insight about learning.

… “Children have to use too much,” (educator Bev Bos says.) To understand one’s limits, experimentation with excess is mandatory. Bos recommends putting out more material than seems necessary and inviting kids to use as much as they want, even if that means using several rolls of toilet paper to make a paper rock. It is never wasteful to spark a child’s creative spirit. Remember the Mythbusters motto: With enough lubrication, we can do anything.

Ain’t that the truth. I think I used up plenty more words here than I needed, which perfectly illustrates that point.

So I guess the lesson for today is this: Don’t be afraid to be a geek, and use all that nerd bravado to your advantage when you’re parenting yourk ids.

(And yes, full disclosure: I rank about a 9.3/10 on the Geek Scale – and I’m totally not ashamed of it.)

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Life Lessons Through Tinkering

Speaking of the benefits of boredom, Merlin Silk recently reminded me of an old TED Talk that Gever Tulley gave a few years back. Tulley titled his talk “5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kid Do,” and it was about exactly that: Tulley shared experiences like building and tearing things apart, playing with fire and using pocket knives, and experimenting and tinkering – experiences that are crucial to children developing aptitude and their own self-competency.

Certainly not welcome things in our risk- and mistake-averse society – but Tulley’s message is made all the more compelling by the fact that he works with actual kids to build, make, deconstruct, and tinker during a week-long, not-your-usual summer camp he founded, called “The Tinkering School”. It’s a place, as he says, where “kids can pick up sticks and hammers and other dangerous objects, and be trusted. Trusted not to hurt themselves, and trusted not to hurt others.”

That there is no more convincing evidence in support of his message than the sight of actual kids in action – building, creating, experimenting – is I think the way it should be, and it’s something Tulley is able to share beautifully.

Now Tulley is back with another talk, discussing life lessons learned through tinkering. It’s another fine – and truly captivating – look at the creative processes of children, and the unimaginable possibilities that emerge when they’re given the time and permission to tinker.

I hope you enjoy it.

Jul 08, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , , :: #

Darn Kids and Their Monster Movies

What sounds like a magnificent homage to three decades of creative, ingenuous filmmaking from 12-year-olds: a DVD of 30 kid-made monster movies created between the 1950s-1980s.

From Cory Doctorow’s review:

I sent away for a review copy of the disc and it’s been my captivating evening viewing for two nights now. Monster Kid Home Movies is an utterly exuberant celebration of monster-obsessed amateur creativity, and the films are filled with raw enthusiasm for the genre. These are Forry Ackerman’s spiritual progeny at their most ingenious, contriving incredible costumes, ill-advised stunts, clever camera work, and often hilarious hamming to recreate the famous monsters of filmland.

Sometimes I feel like I totally would’ve fit in growing up in the 1950s.

May 27, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #