Does school support your creative growth?

Will Wright There are so many stories about mainstream public high schools [and even colleges] failing to provide enough challenge to excel, to encourage and support personal growth and talent development.

It’s nothing new, probably. For various reasons, many creative people were school droputs, including Johnny Depp, Christina Aguilera, Toni Collette, singer Joan Armatrading, jazz great Louis Armstrong and photographer Ansel Adams.

Will Wright is the acclaimed designer of computer games such as SimCity, The Sims and Spore.

This publicity photo of Wright and his quotes are from his Wikipedia profile.

Wright comments about his school: “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery… It showed you can become interested in pretty complex theories, like Pythagorean theory, say, by playing with blocks. It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori—if you give people this model for building cities, they will abstract from it principles of urban design.”

Wright later described himself as “obsessive” in his pursuits. “I would usually get very obsessed with some subject or area of interest for six months or a year, and just totally learn everything I (could) about it.”

In 1994, he declared that he’d “always been somewhat disillusioned with the educational system. Some people have said it was originally based on the idea that we’re training factory workers, so it was very important to teach them to do some repetitive task for eight hours a day.

“What’s going to be really exciting is when this Nintendo generation gets a little bit older and starts becoming teachers in schools. I think that’s going to make a bigger difference than any kind of educational reform ever will. In the future a lot more learning will happen in the home.”

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
article: In Praise of Positive Obsessions, by Eric Maisel, PhD
digital imaging
nurturing talent resources
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Technorati tags: gifted and talented . creative growth . Will Wright . game developers . Montessori

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