Do You Have The Time?

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This year our theme as has been “Spark: Power to Ignite” and we have been looking at the power of ideas, the power of passion, and power of inspiration. I would like to take a few weeks to look at the topic of creativity and see how it relates to this year’s theme.

When we think about creativity, most of us picture art, music, or maybe drama. We tend to relate the fine arts and people who do them well as the “creative” ones in our community. Actually, by definition creativity is simply the generation of ideas. When you generate or come up with ideas, you are being creative. Therefore, what that means is creativity is the scientist who is finding a new way to deal with a medical problem but it is also the young child who is trying to figure out a way to get to the cookie jar that is high up in the cupboard. Both of them are being creative.

The ability to be creative is becoming increasingly more important in our rapidly changing world. In a global CEO study conducted by IBM, involving over 1500 CEO’s from 30+ countries and 60 different industries, creativity was chosen as the number one leadership quality needed for the future. Seventy-eight percent of professionals ranked creativity as a crucial personality trait for career success while 71% of college-educated professionals think creativity should be taught as course, much like math and science. The scary thing is that creativity scores have been decreasing significantly since 1990.

One of the many reasons our children are becoming less creative is that it simply takes time to develop creativity skills. Our children today have so much of their time filled up with activities that no longer challenge them to use those skills. A video can be so much more powerful than words so here is a YouTube video that dramatically shows the importance of time and the ability to be creative. It is very short so I encourage you to click on the link and watch it. Whether you watch it or not (some of you probably do not have the time) I think we can all agree that we are becoming busier and busier and this is the same for our children. Our lives are so full and busy that we do not have time to let our children develop those crucial skills and unfortunately, in the end, that could hurt or hinder them later on in life.

So what is the answer to this concerning situation? In all honesty, I do not know for sure. But I can promise you that Dalat is asking the question and looking at what we need to do to support and encourage the development of more 21st century skills in our kids. For interested parents there are lots of websites and videos out there on the internet that talk more about this topic. The big question is, will you be able to find the time to look?

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Dalat Director

Karl Steinkamp is passionate about Dalat International School and training up young people to make a positive impact on their world, walk with integrity, and follow Christ. Karl was a student at Dalat and returned with a degree in education as a student teacher, high school principal, and now Dalat Director since 2006.

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