David,

As a former teacher, I never understood the purpose of telling kids to color inside the lines. I doubt many teachers understand the logic. Now, as a consultant, I seldom understand the rules imposed by corporations that require its workers to color inside the lines. I am not advocating anarchy at any level. But I firmly believe that fewer rules, not more, result in better work, whether we are talking about school kids or corporate employees. My own personal bias is that insisting we color inside the lines is akin to assaulting our minds.

If you want to see why it's important to stay in the lines, simply Google "fine motor skills". It is an important skill that kindergarten kids need to learn.

Virtualelvis,

Fine motor skills can be taught in a variety of ways. Insisting 5-year-olds do it by coloring within the lines is one of the least effective. Using an art tool to teach fine motor skills can be helpful, but I don't believe the message it sends is. And, frankly, fine and gross motor skills are learned over a long period of time, and do not need to be mastered in kindergarten. Hence, my earlier point: I challenge any teacher or any other person to offer valid and proven reasons to insist on coloring within the lines. Kids should make decisions about artistic images, not adults. Society will co-opt our children soon enough, squeezing the creative juices from their souls. No need to do it to a 5-years-old.

David,
Let me first say I can totally relate to what you are saying, and I appreciate your connection with the freedom to color outside the lines and how that relates to uniqueness and technological advances/inventions.

However, I also feel very strongly about the importance of learning to work within the guidelines placed before us in a given situation, and how learning how to work creatively within those guidelines makes you push yourself even harder to make something unique when you're sitting in a box. (Even Edison had to follow the laws of physics.)

As a parent of a kindergartener as well, I also feel very strongly about my son learning how to follow the rules, and understanding the guidelines well enough so he will know when he needs to break them. I truly believe this is not only important for success in school and future work, but also in personal relationships and many other areas of our lives.

From my experience, I feel that the skill to think outside the box is one that is learned. How can you learn to think outside the box if you're not sitting in one to start with? ... When you have your very creative and different brand, you have to protect it with consisent fonts, messaging, etc. etc. etc.

IMHO, any truly successful organization has a nice mix of "rule followers" and "free thinkers" that blend together and balance each other.

I'm sure it's not hard to guess which one I am! :)

"Now, I understand that kids need to learn how to color in the lines. It teaches them basic coordination and concentration."

Virtualelvis,

I believe I acknowledged this point. And I am very familiar with the importance of both fine motor and gross motor development in children.

What I'm suggesting it not to abandon this practice—but supplement it with excercises that stimulate not only fine and gross skills—but also stimulate individual thought process.

please attention to the name of the child: Max! Please kiss Max for me.

Good post and good discussion, DA! I like Jennifer's balance here....and in the balance you suggest in your post: can we stimulate individual thought as well as give some structure?

My son Evan (now 14) was like your Max at that age -- in kindergarten he was more interested in what might be behind the drop ceiling when a janitor came in to fix something. My daugher Caroline (now 9) thrives with structure and would beg me to pretend to be a swimming instructor when I just wanted to play in the pool. For those reasons, Caroline does better in a traditional school setting. Evan does well but has learned to tolerate more of a disconnect.

In other words, kids bring their own gifts into this world -- and I wish the Maxs and Evans didn't find it so difficult to navigate traditional learning, schools, and other "real world" institutions where the Carolines thrive.

I'm with you David. I think the only people that care about staying within the lines are the adults that help their kids with a coloring book.

Eric

I love this conversation, and where we are going, which is the basic philosophical disagreement regarding nature vs. nurture. Here are my biases up front:

1. I don't believe creativity is a skill set or that it can be learned.
2. In my life experiences--which include some minor acting roles, traveling with a rock band, authoring four books and hiring writers from my Editor's position, and being a terrible student until college--I have never met anyone I thought was creative who didn't drive his/her parents and teachers to distraction.

Now my attempt to throw gasoline on the fire:

If you believe you are the parent of a creative child, my advice is to remove them as soon as possible from any school that believes rules are more important than expanding young minds. Because it is usually not a school's primary purpose to grow creativity and innovation: It is to create a structured environment in which children who crave and need structure can learn.

I believe all other children become frustrated, bored and difficult to manage, in the teacher's eyes. Many will still find ways to become successful adults, but they do it despite k-12 educational experiences not because of them.

Finally, don't you find it interesting that the male audience has been fired up and ready to fight for freedom (fly on free bird) and the female audience is urging a balanced approach.

David, you are my new hero for starting this conversation, and thank you to all the women out there who try so hard to civilize us males.

I love it how a post like this gets intepreted as "let's be wild creative types"

If any of you worked with me—you would be surprised at how strategically I approach things in a level headed, sometimes methodical way. There is a fundemental difference between thinking differently and "thinking outside the box". A term that I really don't care for.

What I am advocating for IS balance. To go back to my example, asking a child to come up with a shape of their own creation would be a nice compliment to the coloring within the lines excercise.

BOTH would be ideal. When I design a highly interactive experience. I need to know how to work within technological contraints (lines) while pushing the medium in a strategic, creative fashion (coloring outside of them every once in a while).

Innovation means coloring both in and outside of lines. An innovative product will not succeed if it is not sutainable, and produced efficiently (and of course there needs to be a market for it).

Remember the Apple Newton?

But also note how that was a concept ahead of it's time which was tapped again with the emergence of modern PDA's and smart phones.

So yes. Balance. But to achieve balance, you sometimes need to point out that something may be off balance in the first place.

I am the mother of an extremely talented 5 year old girl. She has been drawing since she was one and she constantly amazes her teachers and me. Because of her natural ability, I have made sure she has all kinds of tools and supplies to work with. I sit down and draw with her. Sometimes she copies me and sometimes she uses my ideas to springboard new ones of her own. I challenge her with assignments, silly ways of thinking of things. Now my point is not to brag about my child but to challenge the parents out there to engage with their children and provide this kind of stimulation as part of your role as a parent. I work fulltime so don't say you don't have time. I'd rather play with my daughter than have a neat orderly home. It's not up to the schools to teach this kind of thinking, it's up to you.
Your kid may not be creative in an artistic way so try science or read and make up stories. Be creative yourself. If your child learns to think outside of the classroom instead of outside the box they will be that much further ahead of the pack. Of course I'm guessing we're all educated independent thinkers already, so this may just be common sense to everyone. It's not nurture vs nature. It's nurturing nature. I don't mean to sound like a preacher, I just get so angry when parents don't take an active role in a child's learning process. I don't know if it doesn't occur to them, or if they feel inadequate. There is no wrong way you know. Just do it. Your kids will love it.

This also touches on the concepts of diversity. If you are designing a product, you typically have personal preferences on how it should work (your lines if you will...).

But when you get it out in the real world, everybody has their own opinion, and you are usually surprised to learn that not everyone agrees with your concepts of how it should work. Everyone has their own set of lines...

So sure, you should try to think outside the box, color outside the lines, rearrange the mr potato head pieces, etc. Try to "see" things from different perspectives. It helps you get a wider view of your environment, which can lead to a better product in the end.

And schools are just terrible, they are based on ancient industrial society where everything was standardized. The future needs both independence and cooperation, structure and freedom, not just a bunch of robots produced in an educational factory. It's almost like you need to "un-school" your children when they get home.

David,

I can only speak for myself, but except for thanking you for starting the conversation, nothing I said has anything to do with what I think you are about. I don't know you. I think in blogs the post begins a conversation but the commentors then take it over. And each thread builds upon all the others and, I think, seldom assume from comments made what a person's traits are in the workplace. For example, I am a wild creative, and, yes, I drove my teachers and parents crazy because I refused to color within the lines (a metaphor) when it didn't make sense to me. However, I also served in corporate management (and before that spent 8 years in the military) and can be very structured, when necessary. None of us are anything but complex.

Education, government, parents (not necessarily in this sequence) teach kids for so and so many years to think inside the lines, and don't move too much. Then, once they start a job (for example), their company is sending them to training courses to start thinking outside the box. Hmmmmmm!!

Great post. Is it possible to use this picture in my training?

I remember reading an article about a study done on children's behavior in a playground. The study observed where children played when the playground didn't have a fence, and then again later when it did have a fence. An interesting occurence was that when there was no fence, the children tended to gather near the center of the playground. When the fence was put into place, the children felt comfortable playing anywhere, including the far edges of the playground. The conclusion was that children (and people in general) like to know where the boundaries are, because then they can make best use of what is truly the playing field. They have more freedom if it is clear where the limitations lie.

As several others have posted, I am all in favor of many different kinds of lessons...staying inside the lines is a good lesson for anyone who needs to go into life following guidelines like you find in any kind of quality standards. But you also need the encouragement to know how to explore beyond, and know what the risks are (of going beyond the fence).

I was teaching some 4th graders the other day, and one exercise we did along with the lesson was for them to name the ficticious animal I had drawn on the board. I was amazed at their excitement and creativity in approaching this assignment. We as adults need to learn how to stay out of their way when children want to create. It comes so naturally to them. We should always be asking ourselves how do we create that same safe environment for adults in the work place?

My husband and I just had this very discussion (to color in the lines or not to color in the lines) yesterday. We're the parents of 3 children. Our middle child will soon be 4 and just started pre-school this year after being home with Mom or Dad since birth. I am a "creative type" but like you, David, I am strategic and organized in my overall approach to any project. Our three-year-old has had art supplies galore but few coloring books... to encourage her to think and create. Now, she's in pre-school and being asked to "color in the lines, please" on shape and counting worksheets. I watched my husband help her with one, "Slow down... stay in the lines... be careful," and I could not help but think that those phrases are the antithesis of all things she is. I want her to learn a respect for the rules (the lines) but I also want her to learn to listen to the musings of her heart and soul... I would like to equip her to make her own "lines" someday. It's important, I think, that we as parents look at even the little things our kids do through the larger lens of what basic concepts we are teaching. It isn't just about teaching fine motor skills, it's about whether or not they trust their own view of the world -- and learning to balance their point of view with the way the way the rules, or lines, say the world is.

Thanks for all your great feedback here! Obviously, this is a topic that people are passionate about. Probably because it involves children, education, parenting, and my favorite—creativity. :)

First off, Andrea—yes you can use the picture.

Secondly, I’ve noticed the term “thinking outside the box” used several times in both support and to challenge the content of this piece. Let me shed a little more light as to what I really mean by “going outside of the lines every once in a while”:

First, from the perspective of a Creative Director. I understand how to lead teams. I’ve launched many Websites including two this month. One was for a b2b site. The other (launching later this month) a video game on demand service. I set parameters for my teams. A creative brief, daily guidance, direction and support. Structure, you can say. They need this. They need to understand what is required from them. But I also make it clear that it’s expected from them to step outside those boundaries now and then. And I always say—I’d rather reign them back in than “push” them forward. Again. It’s about balance. But in my personal experience it’s more difficult to evolve a team who plays by the rules every time, compared to a team who is willing to look at things differently. The key is professionalism. There is a time and place for everything.

Joan,
to your point about the fence. Yes I agree. Again, I’m not advocating for the removal of fences. We just need to add more gates without combination locks. That tells our children that we trust them. As a parent, my household has rules. Boy do we have rules. My little guy Max is as energetic as a boy can be at this age. But he is also one of the most well-behaved and respectful children you will ever meet. Why? Because we have established boundaries early on. But back to the Tree. I could have re-arranged the features to the intended position. In fact, my wife did the first time. Guess what? It’s back to Picasso. And I love it that way.

Forget about “thinking outside the box”. This is about acknowledging that a “box” exists—but every now and then pretending that it’s not even in the same room as you.