Molding vs. Unfolding

When my oldest son was born, a wise friend told me:

“Children aren’t meant to be molded, but unfolded.”

Society is good (not consistently great) at taking our gifts and nurturing talent. At molding. But we’re generally bad at cultivating creativity and genius, which require unfolding.

A teacher told a young Thomas Edison he “was too stupid to learn anything.” Educators described him as “addled.”

Einstein told his biographer that his parents “worried because I started to talk comparatively late and they consulted a doctor about it.” He often avoided other children and had extraordinary temper tantrums.

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Sir Ken Robinson was a British author and educationist who spent a career exploring this.

And he advocated for more unfolding.

In 2006, Robinson delivered a TED Talk called “Do schools kill creativity?,” and today it’s the #1 most viewed TED Talk of all time. Over 60 million views.

Robinson said:

All kids have talents, and we squander them pretty ruthlessly.

They get educated out of creativity.

If you were to visit as an alien, you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education was to prepare everyone to become a university professor.

The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they are not, because the thing they were good at in school wasn't valued or was stigmatized.

Some of us are good at hitting targets others can’t hit. Well known targets. Targets most agree are worth focused aim.

That’s talent.

But a few of us can find and reach targets others can’t see. New targets that nudge the world in a new direction.

That’s creative genius.

Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, said originality was the essential character of genius. That genius is producing ideas that are “non-imitative.”

Humanity needs both talent and creative genius to thrive.

Talent can be molded.

But genius and creativity often don’t respond to molding.

They require unfolding.