A R O U N D
T H E
i school
Helping Students Innovate CARL J. SCHRAMM, UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR
I Carl J. Schramm
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t was a crisp fall evening when on their absence of I began class in the SU Art curiosity. An immediate Gallery in Shaffer Hall. The piece of evidence is that museum staff was kind enough year after year, most to allow my Introduction to (sometimes all) of my Innovation class to meet after students, juniors and the galleries had closed. As I seniors, have never set foot do every year, I held class there in the University’s art to engage one of eight mental gallery. How can this be? exercises I’ve devised to disturb One reason is that many of our normal pathways of thought, my students, mostly coming to “leave the dock” to which our from well-regarded high brains are usually tethered — schools, never have had an to think in different ways. This art appreciation course. particular exercise focuses on Most have never heard a two pieces of art, requiring the live symphony. Fewer still students to analyze the record have had a poetry course. of how someone else has seen This helps explain the the world. second shortcoming that The first is Hyachinthe bears directly on limits to Rigaud’s Portrait of Louis XIV any individual’s ability to (1701). Students are asked to innovate, namely, the trade places with Louis, looking paucity of words at their at themselves through his eyes. command. It’s taken me What does the modern world some time to realize, but, look like? How can eighteen students no longer enter people be looking at him from college with the vocabulary a room with no windows that that was once expected. Louis XIV In Coronation Robes (painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud)* is filled with light? The second is Any doubt I had was Larry Rivers’ Poetry of K. Koch put to rest when I discov(1961). Students contemplate ered that in 2016 the SAT how impressionist art was an impossitwenty years. In 2016 entrepreneurs was made easier. The test, necessary for bility before Einstein and Freud changed started 30% fewer businesses than in college entrance, no longer includes our view of time and space and of 1996. What’s not in my book is sentence completion questions that human consciousness. We also reflect evidence that the rate of innovation required students to chose appropriate on how the genius of George Eastman across the economy is also falling. final words. Worse, hundreds of tested made representational painting Robert Gordon, a respected economist, vocabulary words were eliminated as unnecessary. makes this point in his book, The Rise “highly obscure or only relevant to one Teaching this course, while very and Fall of American Growth. The two domain.” Thus, professors can no longer rewarding, continuously presents me statistics are related. They both suggest expect freshman to know the meaning with three unsettling observations. we are not as innovative as a society of abrogate, deliberate, hypothesis, Unfortunately, they confirm macroecoand, necessarily, as individuals, as we obsequious, transform or unscrupulous. nomic research I have done, some of have been in the past. Why is this relevant to my worry which is the foundation for my recent about “Generation Z” not being as WHY? book, Burn the Business Plan. In the innovative as previous cohorts? Simply, One theory relates to how poorly book I note that the number of Ameriinnovation is a synthetic process. With students are educated by our high cans starting businesses every year, declining rigor in our high schools, where schools. Many colleagues comment entrepreneurs, has been in free fall for the acquisition of indispensable factual THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
