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   I wrote the article below for a home schooling newspaper. If we are going to create new kinds of community and social interaction, perhaps this is a good place to start. It is going to take a lot of these five tools described below:

   In the PBS series “The Creative Spirit” and the companion book by the same name, the authors state about creativity: “To have faith is to know that you have a power within you that is always available to you. That is what your creativity can become for you, and faith in it strengthens its presence in your everyday life. . . When people have faith in their creativity, they demonstrate a clarity of purpose that can startle those around them.”

    There are five powerful tools you can use to develop your own creativity:

    1. Faith in your creativity

    2. Absence of prejudgment

    3. Precise observation

    4. Penetrating questions

    5. Fearlessness

    Silence any self-critical inner voice you may have that judges your ideas before you can make them manifest. For those who have such an inner voice that cannot be silenced, there are cognitive therapy techniques that are extremely simple and effective.

    Relearn to see the world with the wonder of a child and the precision of a scientist. It means engaging everything around you with a refreshed awareness. If you have forgotten what this means, take a young child to the zoo or to Disneyland and experience things as the child does. The two seemingly antagonistic frames of reference -- wonder and precision -- are synthesized and balanced in the mind of a child. Imagine what you can do as an adult with that childlike state of mind!

    Be willing to ask penetrating questions; some of the most penetrating are “dumb questions.” Why IS the sky blue? Why are boxes made with right angles? Why do chairs have backs on them?

    Finally, be fearless. When I was learning to sing, my voice coach would make me belt it out, even when I least felt like it: as I was learning something new. He said, “Make your mistakes at the top of your voice.” That was excellent advice. It taught me to rely on my vocal ability (faith), to silence the internal voice of trepidation (absence of prejudgment), to listen to the sound that I produced as if it had nothing to do with me (precise observation), to wonder what it would sound like if I added, for example, a little more vibrato (penetrating question), and to continue the process until I got it just right (fearlessness).

    Children naturally create and learn and practice skills this way -- as they develop at the top of their voices.