What Makes a Child a Creative Adult?

David Greene wrote this piece in 2016 about Adam Grant’s argument that practice alone does not make children creative, and that passion-driven projects do more. The section below the original looks at what has been learned since about passion projects for students, and at how schools can offer them.

Too many parents, teachers, and school administrators falsely think that by putting children in high achieving science programs, music lessons, or preparing them for AP or SAT exams from the time they are 12 years old to get them into the most prestigious colleges, will create masters of creativity.

Adam Grant, in his article, How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off, points out the errors of that strategy while explaining a WISE way to allow creativity to rise up within a child. For example, he points out that if you,

“Consider the nation’s most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2000 precocious teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes.”

Originality does not come from practice, practice, and practice or following a long list of rules.

“What holds them back is that they don’t learn to be original…. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.” “They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights.”

What does lead to a more creative child and adult?

Grant tells us that two important factors are “developing one’s own ethical code” and “finding joy in work”.  Children who grew up to be more creative adults were able to figure out their own values and discover their true interests.

Studies showed that children whose parents and teachers allowed them to respond to follow their intrinsic motivations, interests, and “enthusiasm in a skill” were most likely to develop into creators, not followers.

“What motivates people to practice a skill for thousands of hours? The most reliable answer is passion — discovered through natural curiosity or nurtured through early enjoyable experiences with an activity or many activities.” 

Bottom line? Grant tells parents, “If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.”

I would argue that school leaders must do the same. 

Do enough high schools allow their students to create “individualized real-world experiences (WISE projects), exploring their passions outside the traditional classroom”?  Do enough enable their seniors of all ability levels to design an individualized, passion-driven project such as internships, independent research, self-improvement, community service or cultural, artistic and performance-based activities so that students can discover in themselves and in one another skills, strengths and talents they had not realized were present?

That, by far is the WISE choice.

Passion projects for students in 2026: what the research says and how schools use them

Passion projects for students are long, self-chosen pieces of work in which a learner picks a question or a skill, works on it over weeks or months, and shows the result to an audience beyond the teacher. David Greene’s article above describes the idea through the school-leader lens: seniors designing individual projects such as internships, independent research or community service. Since 2016, researchers have tested a close relative of this idea, project-based learning, in large trials, and the results give school leaders something firmer to work from than opinion.

What the trials found

A January 2022 article in Phi Delta Kappan, written by Kristin De Vivo, executive director of Lucas Education Research, describes four randomized studies of project-based learning. In a trial of project-based Advanced Placement courses across five districts, the share of students earning a passing score rose by about 8 percentage points in the first year and about 10 points after teachers had a second year of experience. Third graders in a Michigan science study scored 8 percentage points higher on a key science assessment than peers in traditional classes. A California middle school science study reported an 11-point gain on a science assessment, and a Michigan second-grade study reported five to six more months of learning in social studies and two to three more months in informational reading than a comparison group.

Several limits matter to a leader reading these numbers. The studies tested specific, carefully built project curricula that came with teacher training, so they do not show that every project-based program works. The author leads Lucas Education Research, which funded the studies, so the summary comes from the funder. In the Advanced Placement study, the gain grew from about 8 to about 10 points once teachers had a second year of experience, which suggests that a first year of a new project program may look weaker than later years.

How this connects to the original article

Grant’s argument, as Greene reports it, is that children who become original adults tend to be those who follow their own interests and values instead of only practicing skills chosen by adults. That is a claim about motivation, and the trials above measure test results and learning gains, not creativity in adulthood. The two bodies of evidence do not say the same thing, and it is fair to say so. What they share is a design feature: students work on extended, meaningful tasks with real choices and with a teacher who guides the work.

Setting up a passion project that works

Schools that run these projects tend to settle a small number of practical questions before launch. Leaders can use the following as a planning list.

1. Protected time. A project that lives only in evenings favors students with quiet homes and free hours. Scheduling a fixed block during the school week keeps access fair.
2. A guide for every student. A teacher, counselor or community mentor who checks in at set points helps students narrow a topic and keep going when the work stalls.
3. A public product. A presentation, exhibition, performance or published piece gives the work a purpose and gives the student a reason to finish.
4. Reflection. Asking students what they learned about themselves, not only about the topic, ties the project to the values and interests Grant describes.
5. A clear rubric for skills. Even a self-chosen project can be assessed on research, communication, planning and persistence, so students and families know what counts.

Greene asks whether enough high schools offer individualized real-world experiences to seniors of all ability levels. The phrase “of all ability levels” is the part that needs the most planning. Students who already have connections to employers, labs or community groups can arrange placements on their own, while others may need the school to broker them. A school that offers passion projects to everyone, with support sized to need, is acting on the point Greene makes about discovering strengths students did not know they had.

What to decide

A principal weighing whether to adopt passion projects can start small: one grade level, one term, a handful of teachers who volunteer, and a plan to collect simple evidence such as completion rates, student reflections and teacher notes. The trial evidence suggests building in teacher training and giving the program more than one year before judging it. Parents can ask what choice their child has in the topic, who guides the work and how it will be shown, which are the same questions a school would need to answer for itself.

Subscribe to edCircuit to stay up to date on all of our shows, podcasts, news, and thought leadership articles.

More on Creativity