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What Is Your Kid Going to Invent?
By Ben Davidson, Winsted
One day while doing a patent search, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find repeated incidents of patents issued to Winsted residents. This of course got me thinking about the creative process and incidentally about how my eldest daughter once told me that she had always felt that she could accomplish anything that she was willing to work at.
I had beamed with pride until analysis told me that what created that neat attitude was not my superior parenting, but the fact that our life had been a constant struggle to "make things work." Since much of the time we couldn't buy what we wanted, we'd often have to make whatever we needed ourselves. You work, you try things and ultimately you move yourself forward. Well, now my daughter is a lousy mechanic, but she is doing some novel, groundbreaking cancer research. She was well aided by a superior education at Gilbert, which today might have many people up in arms, as the teachers there pushed her and made her stretch her capabilities to imagine and to create. Some of the papers that she wrote would definitely not be considered politically correct today and would not now get an "A"—she would instead receive a reprimand for such work.
Of course, the same papers today (once the off-the-wall thinking had been removed) would have perfect spelling and punctuation no matter what she did, as she would have been taught how to use a word processor. What a tragedy.
What makes people create something new? Much of the time it is "need." Sometimes it is simply that a challenge is tossed out and the desire to meet it becomes obsessive—or, just simply, the job. What educational tools are useful to help the creative/ constructive process? (1) Learning to solve problems in your head. (2) An education that inspires you to think and communicate (intelligently). (3) Recognition for actual performance. (4) Struggle, with the possibility of success if you work hard enough and do it right. (5) Inspiration to "think outside the job." I can't count the times that "that's impossible" was shown to be false by people who had different perspectives.
And now, back to the question posed at the head of this: "What is your kid going to invent or create?" Will your kids be software operators or will they be able to calculate on the fly, extrapolate without the latest hardware and software, and picture and create some new thing that hasn't been invented yet? Will they be able to fly where the stakes are real and mistakes can have life and death consequences, or will they only be able to and desire to fly a simulator with no penalty for screw-ups—and also no real accomplishment?
P.S. — The patent search that started this was to find out if there were patents on an invention/ idea that we had for a simple way to get people who can't move well into and out of bathtubs. (We ultimately decided we would not pursue the project because product liability would be really nasty.)
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