4.1.3 The Paradox of Creativity and Rigor

At the World Conference for Gifted Children in Odense, Denmark, speaker, Dr. Henry Tirri, described the characteristics needed for today’s gifted children in order for them to make creative contributions to society. His crucial message was that young people must develop to assume that there is nothing that’s unaccomplishable if they have the creativity and grit to work in collaboration and in competition with others.

As educators and parents, our dilemma is often to help gifted children to courageously think out of the box, but also create products with rigor and achieve well in school.

The essence of creative ideation involves playing around with ideas, crossing boundaries and thinking “out of the box.” In contrast, that total creative product also requires organization and rigor and “in the box” meticulous, sometimes boring and hard work. In the real world, the total package is often accomplished by collaborative teams that combine their strengths. In schools, highly creative students are often crippled by their avoidance of rigor and organization. They may be underachievers. In contrast, perfectionistic, well-organized students with high grades and achievement often fear moving out of the box into creativity.

This presentation will focus on practical strategies for teaching students how to manage the paradox and skills of both creativity and rigor so they can be productively creative and prepare for challenges introduced to us at the past World Conference by Dr. Henry Tirri.

Participants will learn:

1. To help gifted children develop the grit to cope with their frequently fierce competitive feelings. 2. To help students work collaboratively with students who share both similar and different intellectual and social strengths. 3. To help children produce ideas playfully. 4. To guide gifted children toward understanding the value of boredom and diligence in completing creative projects. 5. To help perfectionistic gifted students to risk thinking and working creatively.

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