Those of us who were typically developing children pretended, played, danced, and colored and cut and pasted and taped with abandon. I see it every day with my own children ages 3 and 5. For most of us, supportive adults let all of that creativity happen, and even encouraged it. Creativity was part of our early development. It was a process. It wasn’t about the output. I don’t know anyone who would look at the drawings or collages or sculptures of a 3 or 5 year old and evaluate whether or not they are creative: “No, honey, the way you taped that pipe cleaner next to that scribble mark is not very creative.” It seems odd to even conceive of making such a value judgment because most of us appreciate a child’s process, their exploration of materials, and early efforts at self-expression. That’s what kids are supposed to do. Somewhere along the way, however, we do start judging. We start telling kids that this creativity of theirs is either good or bad - or, more specifically, they are good or bad at it – rather than reinforcing it as a valuable part of who they are and who they are becoming. We do this because we start judging their creativity as a product and lose the beauty and necessity of the process. In doing so, we actually push our kids away from the creative process as they get older. To make matters worse, we also start to evaluate good or bad creativity relative to very specific and finite mediums. So, the kid who can draw or play an instrument is told he is creative. The kid who loves math or history or even science, on the other hand, is at least by contrast, if not explicitly, told he is not. Creativity perversely then becomes the exclusive realm of the arts. As a result, we again push most of our kids away from the creative process. Creativity is for some and not others. Most of us have no idea how we have used creativity in a way that hurts the very idea we value. We see how “creative” people question, deconstruct, or synthesize things in ways that are unique. We appreciate ways that they interpret and express the world. But, we have lumped this all into a generic term. We should be more explicit about what we value in creativity. We should tell people we appreciate how they thought about something, that their question was great. We should ask them how they came to think of or express an idea in a way we hadn’t thought of. We should celebrate and ask about their process for learning or organizing new information. We should try to understand how and where they arrived at some kind of divergent thinking. Basically, we should be more creative about how we think about, acknowledge, and invest in creativity. I understand why so many adults say that they aren’t creative. I just don’t buy it. We’ve been brainwashed by an evaluative and arbitrarily narrow use of the word. We need to reclaim creativity in each of our lives and work. We need to stop seeing creativity as the developmental realm of the child or the specific domain of the arts. Creativity is within all of us, and all of us will be better off when more of us accept it, and put it into action.
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Reposting a blog about my book Creating Matters: Reflections on Art, Business, and Life (so far) originally posted here by Seton Catholic Schools' Chief Academic Officer William H. Hughes Ph.D. Anderson William’s book Creating Matters is gaining traction. We are using Creating Matters as a guide in the development of the Seton Catholic Schools Academic Team.
Creating Matters is helping us to think differently about our work as educators: our priorities, relationships, and what we are creating – in this case high performing schools and effective leaders. The world has always belonged to learners. Creating, building creative relationships, and purposefully reflecting can generate continuous learning and help us think differently about transforming a school, a business or one’s life. We have to think differently or we won’t grow and understand the changing world around us. Lifelong learning opens our minds exposes us to new vantage points, more things to see, to touch, to explore. Lifelong learning is hard work. It is not for everyone, but for those who commit, the joy and engagement makes one’s life better. To sustain lifelong learning, we must depend on our creativity. Creativity defines the nature of our relationships. It puts our learning into action. It is a philosophy of how we see the world and our role in it. Creativity will determine whether our efforts will ultimately create impact, whether we transform schools and build new leaders, and pass that work to a new generation. Creating anything new starts with asking questions: questioning the perceptions of the others, the sources of accepted fact; the thinking that verified it; and how we rethink the work of transforming schools from scratch. Too many schools and districts are great examples of organizations that have failed over time to recreate themselves while convincing themselves they are better than the facts show. In the case of Seton Catholic Schools, Creating Matters guides us in creating with a focus on what kids should be learning and becoming: creative, lifelong learners who are ready to change and engage in their community. Isn’t that what schools are charged with doing? Schools in transformation must ask this question: If we are starting from scratch and wanted the kids to become lifelong learners, is what we are doing now what we would design from scratch? Answering this question and wrestling with its implications require us to be more creative, to have stronger relationships that survive the necessary arguments and conflicts, and to build our work on a model of creating rather than constantly fixing. At Seton, we are seeing some bright spots in teaching and learning along with better student engagement with faculty who are starting from scratch. We are collectively creating and questioning our own assumptions, learning new skills and creating lifelong learning across our school community. When we bring this shared purpose and focus to our classrooms and students, the transformation is palpable. We are building a community of students, faculty and staff who are committing to lifelong learning and to creating the kinds of schools where that commitment is put into practice. Read Creating Matters and then put it into practice. This isn’t about “seven easy steps to a better you” or some other seemingly simple approach to creativity or leadership. It’s about renewing your awareness of who you are and what you can do when you commit to creating what matters in school, business, or most importantly, life. by Teri Dary, Anderson Williams, and Terry Pickeral, Special Olympics Project UNIFY Consultants
In our last blog, we focused on what creative tension means in the context of relationships between young people and adults in our schools. We outlined core principles and assumptions that are critical for this work, and discussed how the roles for young people and adults shift in the creative tension model. This blog presents a series of real-world examples that demonstrate the use of a creative tension in carrying out intergenerational work within the school context. There are a few key ideas to keep an eye on. First, each example shows youth and adults working toward shared goals, with young people being viewed as meaningful contributors and partners in the process. Second, supporting their shared goals, you will see how personal goals and aspirations align with and support their collective work. Finally, each values the other’s experiences, perceptions, skills, beliefs, and ideas and understands that they are critical to achieving personal and shared goals. Ultimately, these examples are intended to demonstrate the varying ways schools and systems can support and nurture collaboration and shared outcomes between youth and adults. Curriculum and Instructional Design A high school chemistry teacher created a more connected learning process by organizing unit information on his white board by the content standards, and then highlighting for the students where each of these standards were addressed in labs, quizzes, class activities, homework, and tests. Rather than simply posting the standards, this is an active, dynamic process to help students understand how each discreet learning element ties to the bigger picture and connects to other learning. These connections then play out in quizzes, homework, and summative labs, which guide students in determining their level of understanding and focuses on demonstrating mastery rather than just obtaining a grade and moving on. Students are making decisions about how and when to study based on this knowledge and are better prepared to guide their own learning. Alternately, the teacher continuously engages students in the process of learning from design to assessment, helping them better understand how everything fits together and their role in both teaching and learning. A core component of the structure for this chemistry class is having students work in groups that stay the same throughout each unit. Groups are encouraged to apply critical thinking in labs and class assignments by altering variables and designing their own labs to produce desired results. In ensuring all students are contributing team members, everyone in the group is responsible for teaching as well as learning from others in the process. The result? Creative tension between the students and teacher in working toward shared goals has substantially increased learning, engagement, and ownership of the teaching and learning process by both the teacher and students. Basic Lesson Planning We were reading “A More Beautiful Question” by Warren Berger recently and he shared an example of a teacher who recognized the challenge of engaging students when teachers ask all the questions (and hold all the answers). He wanted students to ask the questions in class, so they would own the process of finding the answer. So, for one lesson, instead of asking “how long will it take to fill that bucket with water” and having the students complete a worksheet with prompts and places for calculations and so forth, the teacher took a video, a long video, of water dripping into a bucket and showed it to his students. It was mundane and redundant and monotonous and felt weird, like nothing was happening. Finally, almost exasperated, the students asked for themselves: “how long is it going to take to fill that bucket!?” Now that the students had asked, they also actually were intrigued and interested in finding out. As a result, the students built their solution not only from their own question, but from the shared experience of watching that water drip into the bucket. They wanted an answer, so they worked to find it. Parent Engagement One high school we worked with, like many around the country, was experiencing significant demographic shifts with a huge influx of students and families from Latin America. They knew many of their parents did not speak English, but also knew that they were sending home important information about the school, about their students, and so forth that the parents could not read. For starters, they knew they needed to translate their materials into Spanish. They contacted a nearby university and through their Multicultural Center found college students eager to assist. However, the university students requested that high school students in Spanish classes also be engaged in translating the various communications to parents. As a result, the school, Spanish teachers, high school students, and college students all worked together, sharing and enhancing each others’ skills and awareness of the issue. To do so required some changes in process for each and required creative tension among all to make it successful. Ultimately, the university students working with a countywide nonprofit established English classes for Latino families. School Governance A high school leadership class was designed to provide students an opportunity to learn and practice valuable leadership skills by addressing issues in their school and community. One group of students in the class decided they were concerned about students’ ability to transition from the overly structured high school environment to the unstructured college environment. They had never experienced or practiced the decision-making that comes with such freedom. To address this issue, they decided seniors should be able to have open campus lunch, to practice some additional independence. The group worked with their teacher to review board policy and school rules, surveyed local businesses, and developed an open campus proposal. (This process in and of itself was also an exercise in independence.) The principal gave permission to work on the project and provided a set of criteria that would need to be met. Additional provisions were made to address concerns raised by teachers, community members, and local businesses. Based on this work, the students developed a district policy and succeeded in getting the policy passed by the school board, allowing seniors to leave campus during lunch. Working across systems is inherent to working intergenerationally and requires the ability to generate creative tension rather than destructive. Complaints or protests or otherwise by the students could have just as easily shut down the opportunity and the solution they sought. Working together allowed it to come to fruition. Additionally, this process and the additional trust and responsibility provided to seniors generated improvements in school climate more broadly. School Leadership A group of high school students working with a community based organization began to research and ask questions about why only a handful of students at their school went to college each year, when they knew the numbers were vastly greater at other public schools across town. When they first raised the subject with their principal, she was immediately defensive and tried to shut down any avenues for continued research and organizing. In response, the youth requested a series of meetings with her to discuss the issue, their research, and their concerns; just with her, no pressure and no real need to be defensive in front of teachers, colleagues, etc. Ultimately, the principal became the schools’ biggest advocate for college access and, working with her students and her counseling staff, doubled the number of students who made it to college in one year. Their work together was highlighted in a documentary called “College on the Brain.” With their initial questions, the students had accidentally created a destructive tension scenario, because the principal did not feel safe to have the discussion without going on the defensive. Reaching out and clarifying their desire to work together and articulating how improving college access could be a shared goal for students, counselors and the principal, the students moved toward creative tension and enabled a powerful example of intergenerational work. School Climate Students, parents and schools around the country have created and implemented R-Word campaigns to eradicate the derogatory use of the word “retard” in their schools. With the goal of making schools safer and more equitable for all students, an R-Word campaign sends a powerful message, but one that is only made powerful by the commitment of students, teachers, school leaders, and parents. In other words, it is a community effort. Typically, these campaigns begin as a conversation between students and teachers who then get commitment from school administrators. In developing a plan and a kickoff on Spread the Word to End the Word Day, the school community works together to create banners and posters, to get food, to get commitment signatures and so forth. As a result, schools that have gone through this process of working together and worked toward a more inclusive school environment have seen dramatic improvements in school climate and reduction in bullying. There are clearly many ways each school can begin to incorporate creative tension to enhance intergenerational work. And, they all begin with a shared goal among young people and adults around a creating an engaging teaching and learning environment where all students and adults have opportunities to contribute meaningfully. The key is to begin. Start from where you are, start small, and seek continuous improvement. In our February 18 blog, we clarified the distinction between creative tension and destructive tension as they relate to our relationships and our work in schools. And, our example was focused on the relationships among adults in a school.
In this blog, we focus on what creative tension means specifically for the relationship between young people and adults in our schools. For starters, we cannot develop real creative tension unless we change the way we see young people and their role in education. What would happen if we decided our students were our partners in education, rather than mere recipients of it? What if we believed they had something to teach us? To teach each other? What if our goals were shared goals and our accountability collective? What if education were intergenerational work? How would this change the relationships between students and adults in a school? Imagine a student and a teacher holding opposite ends of a rubber band. As each pulls away or comes closer, the tension in the band changes. It moves. It makes sound. It has energy. But, if one pulls too hard, the energy generates fear and uncertainty in the other (What happens if she lets go? I’m gonna get popped!). Movement becomes limited. The energy becomes bound. The band is taut. It is not productive. This is destructive tension. Now, what happens if one relaxes the tension on his end? The band goes limp. It has no energy, no sound, no movement. It sags. What does this mean for the one left holding it? What about the one who let go? This lack of shared tension (energy) results in destructive tension. In creative tension, the energy each person contributes is dynamic and dependent upon each individual's personal goals, their collective goals, their relationship and their trust in each other. It is constantly changing. So, to remain productive, we have to constantly communicate the tension we need and listen to others as they do the same. Our relationships then must become more dynamic and multifaceted such that the right tension becomes both intentional and intuitive. So, what does intergenerational work mean? Intergenerational work is neither about young people nor adults. Intergenerational work is about the work. It is a change strategy that believes that different generations bring critical experiences, perspectives, skills, and relationships to the work that the others do not. And, to effectively achieve our goals, to do our work, we need all of us working together. Perhaps the most established model of intergenerational organizing comes from Southern Echo in Mississippi. While their community organizing model does not directly translate to schools, its descriptions of what intergenerational means are informative. According to Southern Echo, intergenerational means: 1. Bringing younger and older people together in the work on the same basis. This principle is simply about building a collaborative approach to the way our schools function. It is as true for intergenerational relationships as it is for relationships between adults. Maybe that's why we struggle with “motivating” students. Rather than imposing our goals and ways of functioning on students, we should engage students with us, not simply try to convince them to do what we want them to do in the ways we want them to do it (on our basis). There is no creative tension in that approach. Our schools could follow a wise mantra often repeated by the youth leaders of Project UNIFY: “Nothing about us without us.” In this, there is creative tension. 2. Enabling younger and older people to develop the skills and tools of organizing work and leadership development, side by side, so that in the process they can learn to work together, learn to respect each other, and overcome the fear and suspicion of each that is deeply rooted in the culture. This principle means that each young person and adult has the opportunity and obligation to bring his skills and develop his weaknesses for the betterment of the collective. The right tension depends then on the positive and negative expectations one has for self and others. For example, a student may have higher expectations for himself (+) and but has a teacher with lower (-), leading to a (+-) relationship. This dynamic happens just as readily in the opposite direction as well. As a result, energy and strategies for skill development and creation of goals are misaligned and destructive tension rules. Maintaining creative tension in intergenerational work means nurturing collaborative partnerships that build upon inequitable skills, with youth and adults both learning from and teaching each other. The roots of this dynamic between youth and adults, however, are deeply rooted in our culture, so addressing them effectively is indeed counter-culture and demands fidelity and consistency, and a touch of a counter-cultural spirit. 3. It is often necessary to create a learning process and a work strategy that ensure younger people develop the capacity to do the work without being intimidated, overrun or outright controlled by the older people in the group. “Control” and “exercise of authority” are great temptations for older people, even for those who have long been in the struggle and strongly believe in the intergenerational model. Culturally, young people are taught to defer power to adults and adults are typically rewarded personally and professionally for acquiring power. It is deeply rooted in our education systems and our economy. So, breaking out of that dynamic does not happen quickly or easily. Having a shared intergenerational model and shared understanding of and commitment to the resulting creative tension is critical for the work to take root. It cannot be ad hoc. Young people and adults both need to own it, respect it, celebrate it, and call on it when they feel that it is not being executed with fidelity. There are some important assumptions that are inherent to this work:
In our next blog we will focus on a couple of case studies where creative tension and effective intergenerational work have improved school climate and outcomes. Written by: Anderson Williams, Teri Dary, and Terry Pickeral originally published by the Learning First Alliance The problem with public education is that there isn’t enough tension. The other problem with public education is that there’s too much tension. And, perhaps the biggest problem is that both of these are correct; and we don’t distinguish between creative tension and destructive tension. Without distinguishing between the two, we cannot intentionally build structures and relationships that create the systems our students need: systems of shared leadership, strategic risk-taking, and mutual responsibility. Systems of creative tension. Instead, we more commonly build top-down structures that generate destructive tension and bottom-up structures to avoid, relieve, or push back against them. At all levels and relationships, public education is replete with destructive tension. Whether it’s the policymaker focusing on test scores he has no control over, the School Board trying to improve classroom practice it has no experience with, or the district administrator trying to empower principals who have systematically been disempowered, we lack the structures and processes to support creative tension. So, our tension becomes destructive, structural stress, which becomes a self-fulfilling and redundant system of production. So, what are the key differences between a structure that produces destructive tension and one that generates creative tension? The following shows two possibilities for some relatively simply planning among school faculty to improve student outcomes. While this just illustrates the start of planning, the same models and considerations can be extended through all stages of action, reflection, assessment, and improvement.
Making a Plan: The Destructive Tension Approach A principal is approached by a group of teachers who are concerned about increased expectations to provide interventions and supports for students with intellectual disabilities, but without any additional planning time for new strategies. The principal listened to their concerns and then explained the rationale he used when making this decision. He assured them it was the right decision for their school. The principal recommended that the teachers use their current individual prep time to collaborate with other staff and develop individualized plans to meet students' needs. He asked to see their plans at the next staff meeting. Making a Plan: The Creative Tension Approach A principal is approached by a group of teachers who are concerned about increased expectations to provide interventions and supports for students with intellectual disabilities without additional time to develop and plan for the new strategies. The principal adds this topic to the agenda of a staff meeting scheduled for the next week. In that meeting, he asks staff to consider what each is doing in their classroom to ensure all learners have equitable access to instruction in meeting their individual needs. (Reflection) Through the discussion, the staff begins to recognize that too many learners are not finding success and that staff as a whole uses a fairly narrow range of interventions. (Ownership) Together with the principal, they agree on a shared goal to adopt a wider variety of interventions and supports to increase student success and identify the ones they want to focus on first. (Purpose) As part of this, they make a plan to have fellow teachers who are experts in the priority areas provide brief peer-to-peer professional development opportunities during each staff meeting. Over time, they aspire to have each teacher share their successes and challenges with the group. (Commitment, Teaching/Learning) The principal and staff develop a plan to allocate time for teachers to plan for implementation and engage a teacher coach to provide modeling and time to practice and refine their skills. (Collective Action) The principal and staff schedule regular, frequent opportunities to reflect and refine practice individually, with the coach, and in professional learning communities. (Reflection) To reduce the destructive tension that often undercuts efforts to improve how our schools function, intentional practices that nurture creative tension need to be imbedded throughout the relationships within the school and across a school system. Note: These relationships include not only adults, but also the young people as the largest stakeholder in public education. In their absence as a constituent in the variables of the creative tension model, we will never build structurally creative systems. Keep an eye out for our next blog to focus on creative tension among young people and adults. Written by: Anderson Williams, Teri Dary, and Terry Pickeral originally published by the Learning First Alliance If I offered and left this question-of-questions lingering amongst a group with no other context, most of us would sit in confused, uncomfortable silence until one brave soul finally asked “about what”? Do you have any questions? These five simple words were the last thing I heard every night as a child as my Mother tucked me in to bed. I never once asked “about what”? Even as a child, I knew my Mom was asking me a sincere and open-ended question. Some nights I might just reply “no” and drift off to sleep. Other nights, I might have a question about school, about the homeless friend passed out on our doorstep, about why my grandmother died. I remember once even asking what the “f-word” meant (I heard it from my Dad) – objectively and rationally Mom informed me (the life sciences version); no taboo, no shame. Mom had asked me a question and was willing to answer, or help me find the answer, whatever may come. She was also willing to say when she didn’t have the answer, or perhaps there was no answer. The important thing, though, is that there was no “about what.” Mom’s question was not loaded with the parameters of her comfort or her knowledge base. She wasn’t fishing for particular information. She wasn’t framing my response by the nature of her question. Being asked a genuine, open-ended question every night as I fell asleep meant that genuine questioning was natural to me, curiosity cultivated. In fact, it meant that questioning was a driver of my personal development and even more questioning a result. Questioning was instilled as an ethic rather than merely a practice. When I am at my best, it illuminates my personal and professional relationships and guides the way I approach the world around me. Alternatively, when I start dealing in answers, something is terribly wrong. I know I am not myself. After all, asking questions is about engaging life. It’s about showing respect for others’ experiences, knowledge, and opinions. Humility. It’s about exploring and learning. Growth. It’s about staying intellectually and spiritually invested. Hungry. It’s about being an artist, a friend, a partner. Creative. A question then is not merely the absence of an answer. We need more questions, fewer answers. So, I am offering a few practical tips on how to bring questioning back into our lives and our personal/professional development: 1. Create safe places and explicit opportunities for asking questions and exploring opinions. To support different learning styles, personalities, and experiences, opportunities should include individual, small group, and larger group forums. Safety means different things to different people and an honest question will never come from someone who doesn’t feel safe. 2. Model leadership as inquisitiveness and humility. Leadership in schools, organizations, or the community must offer open-ended questions and demonstrate its own desire and process of learning. This is not about asking people for information, but about being willing to explore something together. It requires publicly sharing that you don’t know something (and that you believe they might). 3. Value and celebrate the process of questioning as an outcome. Too often, we confuse answers with outcomes. We need to acknowledge it when we hear a great question asked or when someone has a “light bulb” go off that triggers even more questions. This can happen in the lunchroom or the boardroom, but we need to celebrate the courage of exploration wherever it lives. Do you have any questions? Around the same time that I posted my last blog, “Picasso, Genius, and Intellectual Disability,” Newsweek launched the cover story “The Creativity Crisis” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in the July 19, 2010 issue. The article’s central concern is recent research demonstrating that American creativity is on the decline and has been since 1990. The article also specifies that “It is the scores of younger children in America – from kindergarten through sixth grade – for whom the decline is ‘most serious.’” I read the article both disturbed by its premise and hopeful for its possibility (we know creativity can be more effectively cultivated and taught if we choose to make such a commitment). The following week, I went on family vacation where I got to relax on the beach with about 30 family members and family friends, about a half-dozen of whom would fall into that “most serious” category for creative decline, sixth grade or below. Even as I sit at the beach with them every year and seemingly do nothing more than read for hours at a time, I always receive incredible energy from the spirit and play of my younger nieces and cousins. One day this year, however, my 5-year-old niece also gave me a little refresher course on creativity, as well as a powerful reminder that we need to understand creativity not as something exclusive to art or art-making (what the Newsweek article refers to as the “art bias”) but as an approach to navigating our world and our relationships. After a couple of days of self-driven play in the water and in the sand, with her cousins, her sister, her parents, and her grandparents, my niece was still exploring the world around her, still seeking to understand her relationship to it. She did this not by seeking or taking advice on how to build a “good” sandcastle; not by asking her older cousins to introduce her to a new game; not by proclaiming boredom and asking what she could do now; she did it by putting a bucket on her head. She didn’t ask if it was OK to put a bucket on her head; she just did it (of course begging the question of whether it should still be considered a bucket at this point). She didn’t put the bucket on her head and parade around to show everyone else how funny she was; she did it for herself. She didn’t even put the bucket on her head to pretend it was a hat; she just put a bucket on her head. And, without seeking any attention, she began exploring her new “bucket-head” relationship with the sand and the experience of digging in the sand. Having re-explored digging, she moved to the water’s edge and tried walking in the waves and filling another bucket with water while maintaining the first bucket’s position covering her head and face completely. With this new world of water more deeply understood, she tried interacting with her cousins to understand what it would be like to be a “bucket-head” cousin. With a bucket on her head, she re-experienced it all! And, she was the ONLY person on the beach who knew that unique and “divergent” experience. The rest of us just sat there; and the sand was the sand and the water was the water and cousins were cousins. According to the Newsweek article, “Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas.” Putting a bucket on her head was my niece’s first move to “shift” the world around her and to solicit new and divergent perspectives from the world she already knew. To the credit of the rest of the family, no one imposed convergent thought on her by telling her a bucket “didn’t belong” on her head. She was allowed to create and process her own new experiences. It was beautiful. It was profound. It was innate. Creativity is part of what it means to be a child. Imagining and creating relationships, conjuring games, living unaware of others’ critical eyes, children are the natural spring well of human creativity. So, how have we as a country managed to decline in creativity for the last 20 years? And, how is it even conceivable that it is even more in decline with our children? (The authors lay the story out far better than anything I can offer and I highly suggest reading the article for their analysis and thoughtful perspective.) Now, we all know the detrimental implications on our economy and our “global competitiveness” when we see such a decline in creativity. This economic impact, framed by a creativity decline or myriad other issues, is almost always forefront in our political media. What isn’t talked about much is the detrimental impact on our democracy. Even as we complain about the state of Washington and of politics in general, somehow we aren’t connecting the dots to the fact that we are “reaping what we sow”. We need to remember that the United States and our democracy are a huge social experiment. And, like any experiment, it should be continuously gleaned for learning (divergent and convergent thinking), driven by creativity (the application of new thinking and learning), and understood as part of a larger historical (r)evolution. Our democracy must regenerate the kind of thinkers who created it in the first place and those who have improved it along the way. We cannot afford to forget that democracy, like creativity, describes a process, not a fact. We can no longer afford economically, socially, or politically to smother or otherwise let atrophy this process that was once core to our childhood being. We must instead commit ourselves to the process of creativity and the practice of democracy. If I learned anything this year while I was sitting on the beach, it’s that the future of our country, our economy, and our democracy may just require us to put a bucket on our heads. |
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