Books, imagination, creativity…yes!
We want all three in our children’s lives!
Madeleine L’Engle, the 1963 Newbery Award winning author of A Wrinkle in Time addresses the importance of all three in her 1963 Newbery acceptance speech.
She urges those who write for or work with children to honor Mr. Melcher’s (founder of Newbery award) vision: “We have the vocation of keeping alive Mr. Melcher’s excitement in leading young people into an expanding imagination.”
L’Engle comments on the heavy school load of analytical subjects that does not foster creativity. Lamenting the school process of standardization, she calls it muffin making, with each muffin like every other in the tin.
Her call to action: “This is the limited universe, the drying, dissipating universe that we can help our children avoid by providing them with ‘explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly’.”
Her timeless story of imagining and stretching beyond what seems possible is inspirational.
Increasing the Roll of Creativity
So, YES! Let’s find ways to decrease the rote and standardized and increase time for imagining!
Google calls this “Genius Time” and builds it into the work day. (The invention of Gmail came from Genius Time.)
Sir Ken Robinson discusses this crucial component of creativity in his famous Ted Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity?
At LEADPrep we deem this imagination a critical part of our design thinking and project-based activities.
L’Engle uses her tesseract (device to “wrinkle time”) to shine her wisdom forward to our generation of kids.
Here’s to more fully tapping into their creativity and imagination!