I recently asked a bunch of my employees to describe themselves in two words. And, I also asked them to do it quickly…the first two words that come to mind tend to be the ones that frame who you are. (try it…write it down). Curious and passionate where my two words and while I believe there are many others that add to my profile, these two do a good job describing who I am and clearly support my interests in education, art, leadership, broad learning and building things.

For the last twelve years I have been involved in building creative education businesses and at the root of these businesses is the notion that creative education is functional education.There is a great article in today’s NY Times by Kristin Wong that talks deeply about the need for “broad learning”. The article is broken into two parts and one of these parts debates the choice of “specialized learning” as an undergraduate track. With the cost of higher education, more of the decision making process than ever before is focused on the return on investment to offset the egregious cost of higher education and the massive student debt that often comes with it.

The other part focuses intently on the need to build broad skills and nuanced thinking to become well rounded beyond your basic core competencies. According to the article, this often suffers because young adults are so immersed in a specialized track that they don’t get to expand their horizons and develop new competencies to help them grow. Whether we are young or old, we must challenge ourselves to try new things…. take new classes…do creative projects…expand your horizons…these things will help you evolve.

Lifelong Creative Learning is at the essence of what I think we need as humans and I am doing all I can to live, share it and celebrate it.

Matt Ross
Founder
#MondayThoughts #OneRiverSchool #BroadLearning
matt@oneriverschool.com