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Dr. Terry Roberts, the Director of the National Paideia Center, explores how creativity is the new measure of true intelligence and how we should educate our children for success in a increasingly complex world. In their world, neither static definitions of intelligence nor traditional ideas of training stand us in good stead. Rather, we need to reframe the question given what lies before us and come to terms with a different answer posited in different language.
This, then, are those who will thrive in the 21st Century:
- They will blend multiple intelligences in a way that might be described as synthetic or even symphonic
- They will be ambitious and focused without being self-obsessed
- They will value asynchrony and even seek it out
- They will use their own marginality to generate novel perspective and new work
- They will exhibit a steadfast resilience in all phases of life
- They will be measured by what they produce over the course of a lifetime, not by any static notion of capacity or quotient
In the fractured environment of the 21st century, true success will be unique and unexpected—the result of a creative response to complex, shifting challenges. So, how do we prepare? How do we educate ourselves and our children for life in 2050?
Terry Roberts
Terry Roberts is the author of seven celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (Finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); My Mistress' Eyes are Raven Black (Finalist for the 2022 Best Paperback Original Novel by the International Thriller Writers Organization); The Sky Club (Finalist for the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award), The Devil Hath a Pleasing Shape (Nominee of the 2025 Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award), and In the Fullness of Time (Shortlisted for Book of the Year by the Southern Literary Review).
Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina--born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain storytelling.
More by Terry Roberts
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