Can injecting repeated doses of creativity training into public schools give our kids a better shot at a prosperous and productive future?

Our kids and our economy might depend on it.

Whenever pollsters ask Washingtonians to identify this state’s most pressing problems, education routinely ranks in the top three.

For some reason, despite the best efforts of politicians and educators, the news gets worse and worse.

No Child Left Behind. Back to Basics. ECAP. WASL. New Math. Thrive By Five. Success By Six. Washington Learns.

Still, more kids drop out of school than ever before.

But Scott Noppe-Brandon and Eric Liu told me this week I should give creativity a chance.

On Tuesday the two authors and education reformers headlined an invitation-only, statewide summit in Tacoma called “Creativity Matters.” Business executives, educators, political leaders and nonprofit executives met to hear how teaching creativity to kids will help more of them stay in school and succeed in this fast-changing world.

I can understand simple multiplication and the ABCs. In a pinch, I can explain photosynthesis. But creativity? It sounds fuzzy to me.

On Monday, I asked Noppe-Brandon and Liu to convince me.

How do you define creativity?

“First and foremost, it’s imagination enacted,” said Noppe-Brandon, executive director of the Lincoln Center Institute in New York. “Imagination and creativity go hand in hand. Creativity is the enactment of an idea, a thought, a belief.”

(Their summit literature defined creativity as “the capacity to make or express things that didn’t exist before or to solve problems in new ways. … Creativity is about the doing of what is conceived.”)

Do you have an example?

“In the art world, there are a lot of good artists that are highly skilled at technique,” Noppe-Brandon said. “But the technique itself doesn’t tell a compelling story. It doesn’t express something that’s necessarily meaningful, that someone would pay money to see. It’s the difference between a scientist doing boilerplate studies and a scientist who’s thinking of and performing experiments … in a way that pushes boundaries and asks new questions.”

“The clichéd way of thinking about creativity is: ‘Thinking out of the box,’” he said.

Can you really teach creativity? Aren’t you just born with it – or not?

“No, no,” said Liu, founder of the Seattle-based Guiding Lights Network. “People too often think of creativity as a fixed thing – you either have it or you don’t. It’s not like brown eyes or black hair. It can be taught. It can be developed with certain habits and the right teaching culture.”

Why this big creativity push now?

“From a business perspective, we need to make this state as competitive as it can be,” Liu said. “We want to develop the most creative, imaginative work force we possible can.”

Cultivating creativity “isn’t an airy fairy exercise you do at the start of a corporate retreat” anymore, Liu said.

“Now, in design, research, development, marketing, corporate executives see creativity as a core discipline to making sure your company’s going to stay ahead in the global economy.”

Aerospace, biotech, technology. Our state’s pantheons of prosperity will continue to prosper only with new applications of creativity, Liu said.

True, I have heard Bill Gates, the Microsoft guy, on more than one occasion describe his company’s most dire problem as finding enough creative talent to fill all its job openings. But your own summit case statement says no state in this country has yet infused its education system with creativity training? How can you expect it to happen here and now?

“The complexity of it is somewhere between delicious and daunting,” Noppe-Brandon confessed. “I like to say, ‘It’s not rocket science. It’s harder.’ Especially in urban centers.

“We’re in a moment in time, a unique moment in time … where a variety of factors are coming together: the largest single retirement of teachers in U.S. history, 2.2 million; multiple economic sectors of our economy looking at outsourcing; the world economic playing field getting more competitive … They’re all conspiring in their own unique way” to force changes in the way we teach kids.

“You’re right,” Liu said. “This is not just ‘tweaking’ the system. What’s going on in our state right now … is a change in culture. To make a change in culture, leadership matters and catalytic leadership matters most … to frame this as an urgent priority.”

“I don’t believe in magical incantations, and I don’t believe in creativity training as a panacea,” Noppe-Brandon said. “It’s all hard work. But I do believe there’s a reason it’s coming up now. There’s a readiness that will take us from zero to 60 (miles per hour) or zero to 80 so that five years from now, we’ll be saying, ‘My god. Look at all the changes.’”

Imagine that.

Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785

dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com