Does innovation require you to run with scissors?

We had such fun in "cautious and thought filled" Southland, despite freezing temperatures, sleeting rain and grey skies. 

Our “cheapest rental we can find” adventure saw the Magnet and I cruising the streets of Invercargill in a breathlessly low turbo charged Subaru Impreza, complete with oversized exhaust, hand painted black rims, spoilers, neon lights and discoloured patches, scratches and dents showing where the "go faster stripes" and speaker boxes had been.  I loved the “drop the clutch acceleration”, the blow off valve thingee, the whole boy racer grunt, throb, throaty noised drive from Invercargill  to Bluff. 

We were intent on visiting Fred and Myrtle’s controversy stuffed  Paua Shell House  before the new owner changes anything and everything including its location. But the Subaru was so close to the ground that exiting the vehicle in Bluff was an intrepid adventure in itself.  By the time I had unfolded myself and was standing upright on the pavement the “CLOSED” sign was swinging outside Paua House and we had to explore elsewhere. 

I liked the squatness of the Gore St J G Ward Store Building used in Bluff’s past to store wheat, grain, and wool for export.  The solidly purposeful exterior, had a determined demeanour paint job, and a blunt risk adverse road side profile.  It was a “soft boiled egg with toast fingers” kind of building, a building you could depend upon, a building suggesting security and refuge.  First owner, Joseph Ward left school in Bluff at 13 and became Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1906 and again in 1928, the time when he owned the store was somewhere in between.  His post office messenger boy to Prime Minister life story reminded me of earlier times when “maximising your potential”, “rich and authentic” and “lifelong learning” did not require you to stay overlong in school. 

Southland covers an area the size of Switzerland but has a population 80 times smaller.  On their web site Southlanders describe themselves as

“generally very resourceful but conservative, preferring to learn from past experiences and be cautious and thoughtful in their approach rather than be impulsive and take risks.”

This is why it was probably not smart to find myself presenting to Southland audiences in my “I run with scissors” T-shirt.  Predictably the teachers suggested at morning tea that I needed to tweak the text – suggesting that if I wanted the staff to stop eyeing me warily and engage with developing a thinking curriculum, I should be wearing “I move very slowly with scissors” or perhaps “I walk with scissors keeping the pointy ends facing down.”  However, this was a better T-shirt outcome than earlier in the week in Wellington when wearing a jacket over the T-shirt saw my

“Nothing right in my left brain,
Nothing left in my right brain”

text creating the audience impression that I’d adopted a disconcertingly radical and confrontational approach to breast cancer awareness. 

I was surprised that this Southland culture of “the cautious and thoughtful” has led to developments of such startling enterprise and innovation in education, business, industry, farming, health, tourism and with “The World’s Fastest Indian”, even film. 

Venture Southland’s educational initiatives – the zero fees scheme at Southern Institute of Technology, Southland’s Innovation through Interaction Project, linking schools with the business-community sector , and the IWB Project Activate are envied by the rest of us who have pursued a culture of reckless trembling on precipices and missed opportunities to be innovative.

It made me realise that continuing calls for an educational culture of “risk taking” in education might misrepresent what is really needed for prosperity and confidence. 

“For New Zealand, the development of a prosperous and confident knowledge society means the development of new skills and knowledge.  It will require a culture of continuous enquiry, innovation and improvement, risk taking, and entrepreneurship.  This can only come from the education system.” in Enabling the 21st Century Learner Hon Steve Maharey Minister of Education 2006

I am planning cautious and thought filled T shirt text for our return visit.

Comments

[Cherrie]

Don't understand why running with scissors is the same as risk taking.

[Artichoke]

A metaphor for - rather than the same as ... You need to indulge in a little Sid Davis movie watching. Check out the link to his Live and learn movie on WFMU's Beware of the Blog post Sid transit gloria: an appreciation of Sid Davis (video)

Live and learn -Probably Sid Davis' best/worst film, it's basically a string of misfortunes calculated to keep kids on the straight and narrow. That's Sid Davis' daughter Jill who learns too late that you should never run with scissors.

[nix]

The idea of you two cavorting around Southland, in a boy racer's Impreza, and wielding scissors has kept me pleasantly amused all day.

Please say that you will replicate this behaviour at Learning@School?

[David]

Got to say Sid Davis is a legend. Reminds me of watching videos on a friday afternoon in the hall, at my primary school. The running with scissors video seems very similar to the customary laying out of the Science lab rules at the start of the year.

[botts]

just goes to show that evidently its been a long time since a good formal education was one of the selection criteria for prime minister. across the ditch here we seem to governed by some idiot who still can't tie his own shoelaces.....

and his moron mate turnbull is not much brighter. turnbull reckons that because we are too small a country to make a difference to the overall issues of climate change then we should just follow the us of a's approach and keep polluting like its gold plated - and plan to adapt to the new version of earth's climate.

bugger running with scissors, this bloke's got the whole knife drawer out with the pointy ends facing us...

botts

[Artichoke]

Love this Botts, is worthy of printing a whole new T-shirt.

pol·i·ti·cian (pl-tshn)
n.
One who runs with the contents of the whole knife drawer (pointy ends facing others).