Let’s cultivate a legion of Leonardos.
June 13th, 2007
(No, not this one — though my son would be happy to volunteer for that legion.)
Take this as a counterpoint to the preceding post about living in fear and how that limits us. To live in a state of constant discovery allows us to find new answers to old problems, and to uncover new questions that will lead us into a brighter future. This article
is about how our schooling methods tend to crush the creativity — the genius — out of our youth. It could be applied much more broadly to the corporate world as well, not to mention higher education, government, etc. It comes as no surprise to me that some of the top methods of alternative schooling in the U.S., e.g. Montessori and Waldorf education, work hard to develop some of the very things that this writer links to Leonardo’s genius.
Within our predominant institutions, children and grown-ups alike tend to operate in certain well-defined ruts, and to face penalties for departing from those ruts, even when the departures are in the service of Leonardo-like exploration and creation. It’s a bum system, and it’s one of the many reasons that we tend not to pursue bright green futures.
What can you do today to cultivate your inner Leonardo, or someone else’s?