Imagination in American Schools: Building the Foundation of Creativity and Innovation

An Interview with Scott Noppe-Brandon

It is often said that American economic competitiveness depends on our capacity to innovate. But how exactly can innovation be fostered in schools?

To answer this question, Scott Noppe-Brandon, executive director of Lincoln Center Institute and co-author of Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility, is leading a campaign prompting each of the 50 states to conduct Imagination Conversations. The Conversations are series of public panel discussions in which leaders representing a multitude of professional backgrounds discuss the role of imagination in their work and how to foster imagination in schools and communities.

Last week, after two years of Imagination Conversations across the United States, America’s Imagination Summit took place at Lincoln Center in New York. It served as both a celebration and a recapitulation of all that had been learned during two years of ideological exchanges. Featured speakers included Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary for Communications and Outreach at the U.S. Department of Education, Sir Ken Robinson, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Derose, Senior Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios.

Following the summit, Noppe-Brandon sat down with Changemakers to discuss imagination, innovation, and STEM learning.

Changemakers: What does Lincoln Center Institute mean by “imagination”?

Noppe-Brandon: For us, the term means the ability to think of anything as if it could be otherwise -- to ask the “What if?” question. Within education, we are interested in the point of connection between imagination, creativity, and innovation.

Changemakers: How are the three linked?

Noppe-Brandon: Creativity is imagination enacted or applied. It’s combining the formal elements of a discipline with that “what if” imaginative experimentation in order to develop something new. Innovation, then, is the product of the creative effort. It either proposes something entirely new or advances an existing system, be it a source of energy, a tool, a method of scientific research, or a new way of approaching the dialogue between different cultures.

Changemakers: What is the challenge related to imagination and American education?

Noppe-Brandon: We are culturally a commerce-oriented society that is premised on innovation. As pointed out in Imagination First, we tend to pray at the altar of innovation. We tend to think that innovation is all-important because it’s what we’re known for as a country and crucial for our businesses. And yet, there’s a growing argument that our schools don’t emphasize innovation, imagination, and creativity as part of who kids are and what they do.

I’m not sure you can teach innovation in schools, but you can start by teaching imagination. You do that by teaching kids to develop certain habits, and by encouraging their minds to think imaginatively and act creatively. If that can be done across all school learning, then I think we’ve connected the dots between the needs of the business world and the education system.

Changemakers: What’s causing the disconnect between the value the business world places on innovation and it’s lack of emphasis in our schools?

Noppe-Brandon: The business world needs innovation in an immediate dose, because they are interested in product development for market distribution. So they’re not necessarily prioritizing spending the next 12 -14 years to develop a workforce to get there. But that’s public education by design—it reflects the maturation and developmental process of people.

In schools, I would say there’s certainly truth to the statement that over-testing and over-emphasizing accountability measures have increased our frustration toward not getting to where we want to be. But I would argue that the goal has to be finding the logical balance between standards and accountability.

This discussion has often led to blaming others for mistakes. Instead, we need to figure out what we’re going to do next. We just don’t have a lot of time to get stuck in the muck and mire of accusations. So the quicker we can get people to come together under an umbrella of ideas, the quicker we’ll get to where we need to be.

Changemakers: One of our current competitions, Partnering for Excellence: Innovations in Science + Technology + Engineering + Math Education, seeks innovators who are partnering with public schools to improve STEM education. Do you see imagination fitting into STEM learning?

Noppe-Brandon: I think that the STEM subjects clearly need to be engaged in new ways to get kids to think imaginatively and to act creatively. It certainly seems that in science education, kids aren’t feeling engaged in learning in the way we not only want them to be, but need them to be.

We are in the beginning stages of conversations with NASA, the Department of Defense, and engineers and scientists from several other industries to explore this issue. There is the sense that the inquiry process—thinking inside and outside the box, the kinds of questioning and thinking—typical to the STEM fields isn’t necessarily getting the desired results.

But one interesting thing we’ve found is that at NASA, there are many astronauts who also see themselves as artists. We want to find out more – why this is so, what does that mean in terms of their work, and how they perceive and understand their work. So we’re hoping to discover more about the relationship between imaginative learning and STEM subjects.

The arts are the natural generator of imagination and creativity. The interplay between the sciences, arts, and imagination and creativity is a central part of what needs to be addressed to move this discussion ahead on the education plane.

For more information on the Imagination Conversations and to watch videos from America’s Imagination Summit visit the Lincoln Center Institute’s site.

Image courtesy of Frederic della Faille (cc)