oh really, I wonder if demanding all students must behave like good little girls has anything to do with this.

Conservatives have gotten their wish.

Afraid of real learning and academia because intelligence diminishes their ranks, they have seen to it that schools emphasize only math and enough reading to serve corporate America at the most menial level, without endowing the ability to think critically.

Bush and the Republicans saw to it that every kid is left behind, through policies that have forced the de-emphasis of history, civics, art, social studies, foreign languges, and literary criticism.

Broadmindedness is what once fostered creativity in America, as did the ability to pursue one’s niche interests.

Unfortunately, not only have conservatives doomed public education, they have also targeted and doomed American higher education.

Conservatives targeted University professors’ intellectual freedom because they are afraid of anti-establishment ideas the intellectual elite of our country.
They have succeeded in terrorizing university faculty into submission, and have all but eliminated once sacred tenureship which ensured intellectual freedom in higher education for decades.

Conservative’s economic and political doctrines have crippled our country, and now their still dominant education policies will ensure that we have no hope of recovering and competing with far more progressive, intellectually unfettered countries.

Correction:

“Conservatives targeted University professors’ intellectual freedom because they are afraid of anti-establishment ideas and the intellectual elite of our country.”

Totally absolutely true JP. Nothing further to add. Except that wont be touched in this program–the guest is newsweek. propaganda.

What you say may be true JP but some of this started during the Clinton years with high stakes testing which has narrowed what is taught and eventually got so “efficient” that teachers teach to the test.

I agree with you, there is a political backstory to real literacy and the fact that so many people will listen to Sarah Palin and believe Republican talking points about the Bush years points to a lack of both literacy and the ability to deal with ideas with nuanced differences.

However literacy is different from creativity and and I’m not absolutely sure that they’re interdependent. I read Po’s piece and while I agree we have a lack of creativity in kids coming out of school these days, we also have a lack of literacy and worldliness which scares me more.

As a parent-educator, I see this complex problem– is it government regulation? is it media? — as having a simple answer: allow children to day dream. Innovators of past generations were not fed streams of what and how to think. Allow them to stare out a window, whether in a school room or a mini-van, and their imaginations will soar.

I am an artist, art teacher, mother and a creative. This is how it is. We have raised and continue to raise a generation of children who need to be entertained, cannot entertain themselves after about age 3-4. The school takes over. How well you take direction is a big thing. Creatives don’t take direction well, if they’re any good, they make their own directions. It is deeply sad and it’s backlash is only now begnning to be seen. I travel. When I go to the Caribbean EVERYBODY dances, most people carry a tune. Here, you would listed under the nut category if you stood on a street corner moving your hips to music, or sang out loud. It’s soooo unhealthy here for creatives. I get the young students who come to art, with a VIDEO HANDHELD DEVICE in their pockets for 24-7 entertainment value. Don’t want to draw because the computer does it for them effortlessly.I begin my school year with my lecture on the bill of rights, because in it, it says, the right to happiness, and happiness cannot be purchased, it is not a consumer good, it is through creation.When I retire, I am leaving here and going to the countries where they still know how to entertain themselves, I will be in good company

I’ve worked with an organization, Destination ImagiNation, that believes creativity can be taught to kids. Some kids are better at being creative inside-the-box and some love to think outside-the-box. With the proper guidance and some basic problem solving tools that help with brainstorming and refining solutions, it is amazing what they can create both as solutions to short-term challenges and long-term challenges. Destination ImagiNation holds competitions all over world where kids get an opportunity to learn and show “their stuff”. I would encourage interested parents to check the program out as a great way to supplement the education they receive in the classroom. Kids that have participated in the program gain considerable confidence in how to share and build on one another’s ideas. see http://www.idodi.org for the program; http://www.globalfinals.org for recent international competition.

I would argue that JP’s ideas are hogwash. The unions have for decades now failed our school system. They have protected poor teachers and let our kids down again and again and are barely held accountable for their quality of work. Our creativity is not suffering as much as other countries are just finally catching on. It’s just a giant competitive world out there. Capitalism and creativity go hand in hand.

Take away the incentive for someone to go out and create a better mousetrap through government red tape and bureaucratic nightmares and it’s hard for new ideas to surface. We’ve done everything we can to support big business and unions and very little to help start-ups that are the incubators for creativity.

JP’s false claims of college professors being muzzled is really hyperbole. Just because a few rabid professors who preach conspiracy theories are told to shut up and teach doesn’t mean creativity has been has been stifled in higher education. That is just a classic example of knee-jerk, Henny-Penny “Bush screwed up everything” rhetoric.

Could we substitute for “critical thinking” the more familiar word “doubt”? Are there families that model a certain playfulness with postulates that cross the threshold, for whom bouncing perspectives is part of the joy of being human?
Or is all indoctrination, both at home and at school: Toe the line; this is given; “we” don’t question.
How tough can it be for a teacher to introduce the joy of being wrong once in a while, letting a group follow someone’s out-of-bounds idea without finally demolishing it as a predestined endpoint, saying rather that was a fun game of chase the pros and cons.
The alternative to an education that includes the child as a participant like that is an education leaving the child split, in need of a disallowed escape (gangs, drugs, depression, withdrawal), in order to grapple with all doubt, all his own disposition and conviction. Totally inarticulate except for parroting “truth,” the newly hatched human adult thinks Egad, the living kernel of me is a throttled mute.
Oh, but it’s time-consuming and controversial (to parents and school committee) in any community to open the Pandora’s box of the child’s ability to doubt, to think (“outside the lines” in coloring terms), to question.

I wonder if the simple change in our schools of having students clean their facilities and prepare their own meals with locally produced food would re-spark the desire for creativity. We have become a society of people waiting to be served. True happiness comes through service, we need to change our model of education to one of service learning. Have kids serve two years of public service after graduation from high school. They can help the current students learn skills and prepare meals, they can use our existing public school facilities after hours for meals and other activities. We are wasting the resources of our youth by not allowing them to be creative. If I was writing a race to the top education grant for my state I would ask for money to have the students write what they want in a state education plan.
I have not seen any reference to nutrition or physical activity in any plans on fixing our schools systems. Yet I believe both are critical to learning and creativity.

stillin, do you have experience with these children who stop entertaining themselves after about age 3 or 4? I’m thinking that is a modern myth. And I’d like to put in a good word for communication via the net. Unlike a tussel on the playground which is barely decipherable by the school video, or a verbal dustup where everyone talks at once, an exchange via internet gives a child at the least the option of time to think (and parents a chance to track what happened?). There seems to me to be a lot of good potential there.
And by the way, parents who now park their children in front of a TV might in the past have left their children high and dry too. A constricted child, and all its siblings, being told, “here is dirt,” 8 feet by 8 feet, “now dig to China,” will make a good faith effort, year in, year out, perplexed for eternity. My many siblings and I are still discussing this via the internet, clinging to the idea that we were not being misled, lied to, sold a bill of goods, and so on. Really we were just failures at digging. (I’m not blaming the parents; I believe all parents told their children this for centuries; it was what you did.)

Hours and hours of homework piled on kids add to that video games, texting, online surfing and television – when is there time to be creative and think for one’s self? In addition we gear our kids to take tests which only require them to fill in the correct little round circle and not to deviate from the norm. Don’t build a better wheel – just be like everyone else and build the same wheel. And top it off with everyone’s obsession with little Johnny and Susie getting into an Ivy League college – do we really need to ponder why kids are loosing their creativity?

We try to cut everyone from the same mold and expect everyone to fit in the same box and to be obedient. Good luck cultivating creative people in the stifling environment in which we live and work.

Stillin back. Yes Ellen I have a lifetime of experience both in the art room and in my own neighborhood and growing up in a large family that was and still is, creative. No modern myth about it. The reason it stops at 3-4 is because preschool and school, called direction, do this, do this, do this, takes over. Imagination in it’s truest self motivated orgin is discouraged. I wanted to put a good word in on rap. If you look at some of the most creative rappers coming out of some of the worst places on eath, THAT is creativity. K’naan, out of Somalia, unbelieveable talent…rapped the world cup song but he’s got stuff greater than that. If you don’t think rap is creative, try climbing up on a stool and coming up with relative words that rhyme, have rhythm and are cool enough for people to remember and want to sing to or hear again. Very difficult to do. Rap is going to go down in history as one of the most creative endeavors of the century , love it or hate it, doesn’t matter, it comes from the heart of creativity. Lastly, I cannot emphasize enough the drain on creativity that t.v. vidoe’s and computer use becomes when it is the MAIN center of attention. I have seen it for years in the class room and it only increases. Pushing creativity 24-7….

Unstructured time is necessary for creativity. Cut back on homework and over-scheduling activities. More reading. Watch TV selectively.

I don’t think you can teach creativity, but you can create environments that encourage it. I think endless distraction is the enemy of creativity, and kids today are endlessly distracted. Science education is also extremely important, as creativity involves rethinking and manipulating the world in new ways, and if you don’t know how things work, you can’t make them work differently. But there has been a persistent dumbing down of scientific literacy over the last few decades that is casting a dark shadow over our future. In a world where Sarah Palin and Lindsay Lohan get so much airtime I despair for future generations.

I think “creativity” is a bit of a meaningless word. How do you measure it? Perhaps the creativity of today is different than the creativity of the 1950’s. Maybe we just aren’t recognizing it.

I also appreciate JP’s (or is it the other JP?) recognition of the hostility that conservatives have for nearly all aspects of education. Teacher bashing, school funding referendums voted down, anti-intellectual, Sarah palin loving, “I didn’t have to go to college to know that” type of folks. I guess we need just enough education to make us usefull idiots.

It’s not at all surprising. We standardize-test kids to death. Creativity is not something you can measure easily via such numerical analyses. Schools are under pressure to make sure their kids get good scores on these artificial tests and nothing else. Therefore “luxuries” like creativity are seen as indulgences, excesses easily shed in tough economic times.

I will put in a different way what I’ve seen expressed above by some: the system is biassed [sic] against creativity and critical thinking because they are _dangerous_ to arbitrary authority, and our world is still built thereon—if people giving orders always had to justify them on the basis of evidence and reason, we would have far fewer orders, and different to the ones we encounter.

Our employers, teachers, and parents _say_ they want smart employees, students, and children, but when they use their brains there is a decent chance the response will be, ‘Now don’t you get smart with me!’

Brian, I think it’s a big mistake to isolate creativity to art and music class, if that’s what you mean. Why can’t a teacher, trying to drill the multiplication tables into her class, ask the students to come up with better ways of remembering this or that. I used to come up with these, and they were my secret. No one asked. How is it you recall that? Each child would have a different way of coding this or that. It wouldn’t be hard to enlist the children’s creativity in doing the standards every child must learn, math, English, on and on.

JP, were it not for the notion of “tenure,” educators would be subject to moral witch hunts by folks such as yourself. Creativity, by definition, pushes away from the status quo, aims to view things in a different way. Creativity challenges the status quo. If it doesn’t do this, then it’s not creativity. This immediately places the notion of creativity at odds with conservatism. So, please, no lectures regarding creativity from conservatives please.

One’s creativity isn’t based on a single factor, such as school, although schools should be a primary facilitator of our youth’s creativity. The other is obviously the home. If kids aren’t given their own space (free of order, free of screens) to develop their own creativity, that creativity will never develop.

Sorry, my post above was directed at Charlie, not JP. JP, I agree with your assessment.

video games

Tom asks what watershed came about that led about 1990 to lessening of creativity scores.
I’m thinking maybe as class size decreased, creativity also decreased.
What a puzzle.

Can Montessori style education can help?

I think it also has a lot to do with parents pushing their children towards achievement. Look at all the structure and adult-organized activities in kids’ days now compared to in the past.

Soccer practice is a great thing, but compare that to having a field, a ball and lots of free time.

If they are to buck the creativity trends in their children, parents today must vehemently oppose the trends in our culture, many of which have been mentioned already: constant multimedia entertainment, lack of physical activity, no free time, rampant over-protectiveness, and a decrease in skills and interests being passed from parents to children. This will not be easy, other parents will look at us strangely, but it is absolutely crucial.

The good news is that I see a growing number of younger couples parenting this way, and the result is smarter and more creative kids.

As we make the arts the disposable subjects in financially-strapped schools, we take the arena for learning and demonstrating creativity from our children. Some are scathing about the “usefulness” of a liberal arts education. But those of us who were able to have a good liberal arts education — with plenty of inter-departmental work, cultural diversity, curiosity, uncertainty, and imaginative problem-solving — know just how important it has been in all aspects of work and life.

“Multiple-choice” tests are the killer, ironically, of multiple choices in thinking, in problem-solving, and in life.

Two large factors in the lack of creativity are TV and consumerism.

1. We are less active when we sit in front of the TV, and our focus is on entertainment, not on productivity.

2. As consumers, we have been trained to think there is a product we can buy designed for every task. The items made in china in plastic are cheaper than solutions we could make at home, but we lose the chance to practice using basic materials in new ways. I would guess that those who live in remote areas and on farms, where fewer products are available, maintain their creativity.

Someone posted that creativity is almost by definition shaking up the status quo, and in some ways a threat.
I think both families and schools can function to put blinders on children, so that horses not being distracted by other traffic, they learn to drill in and never look at ramifications. You could get lost, you know.
I recall a Weekly Reader in about second grade presented to us as a sort of recess activity. And I knew nothing at all about world events. We had no TV. At home we didn’t discuss. So it was a capsule, a bolus, as the guest says, of info. But the job for a child, the job for everyone, is to get the context. Otherwise news is pretty much meaningless.
So any child with any wits will be overwhelmed without some guidance. Just being able to parrot back the news doesn’t recognize the fact that bombs over Tokyo or whatever is more than a bolus to repeat back.

Haven’t had a chance to read all the comments above, but want to point out how many more kids went to daycare in the eighties as more women entered the workforce.
Play got managed and routinized.
Honestly, moms get tired and bored and leave kids to their own devices more than daycare providers do. As a result, kids solve their own problems.

I would never argue that women should stay out of the workforce when their kids are young. I would argue that we need to look at how daycare teaches kids to be rule followers and how that gets reinforced in elementary as well.

Creativity in the classroom is fundamental to nourishing learning. When teachers are not in a “scripted” curriculum, teaching to testing, then they can bring so much more to the classroom. Kids can learn to be flexible, thoughtful…they can explore and invent rather than just acquire the skills to fill in the one right bubble. At my school (I am the co-director of a small progressive school, the Atrium School in Watertown MA), we have hands on, theme based learning. Kids are seeing connections between ideas, forming their own connections, seeing things from new and different perspectives…and there is time for play! Playful learning creates a love of learning and supports creativity.

Both the arts and recess time have been de-emphasized to the point of almost vanishing. My kids get *at most* 20 minutes/day of recess. Talk about no time for imaginative play! No, all their time is spent sitting in a classroom. I’ve heard plenty of discussion about lengthening the school day, and none about including more recess time.
In budget crunches (which seem to happen every year), the arts budgets are the first cut. So, very little exposure to visual art, music, theater, dance. All things that would encourage children to express themselves creatively.

Tom,
I am an elementary school Media Specialist and have noticed the trend of less creativity. In my mind I see a correlation with the start of NCLB. Since the test is the goal, activities that do not directly prepare for the test are getting cut. Activities that take large blocks of time and teacher prep, activities which foster creativity, are hard to justify in this climate. Activities like independent research on topics of interest to students, hands-on science, creative writing, dramatic play, require too much time away from practicing bubbling answers in test prep workbooks. Test prep is goal one. If it isn’t in a line on a test, there is no time for it. Even recess get cut as we near test week.

I think one part of the problem is the lack of parental participation during a child’s early years. When a child see it’s parents for only a couple of hours a day because he or she is at daycare while mommy AND daddy work too many extra hours – at the office and at home – the opportunity for consistent one-on-one interaction with the cild is gone.

What about the relationship between reading and creativity? Are there any data points showing any correlation between the amount of reading kids do for pleasure (not for school reports) and the fall in creativity?

http://www.lostateminor.com

China is a more challenging competitor for us than the USSR in the 1950s (the caller disagreed, or hypothesized the opposite), for this reason: China can launch its own sputnik in the form of new technologies (including buying up our own IP, intellectual property, that has not found commercialization here because of zoning laws and you name it); China can shoot for the moon without having numerous elections.
It can launch a good idea without being dragged down by lobbyists. Their political system can boost creativity to this extent. Watch out.

Are there physical factors like obesity or increased number of children on Ritalin inhibiting the brains’s creativity?

Stop before you start; limit time with TV, online, and encourage kids to read, draw, and be kids. Kids will entertain themselves and will use their imagination to entertain themselves. Give them the tools and they will create on their own.

Cut the cable and limit the amount of media they take in. Don’t assume kids will be creative with online because it’s new.

Hi Tom,

I feel this problem in myself, and what I think it comes down to are the ideals we’re taught in school and our society – the only way the succeed, or feel successful is to learn how to buy and sell – this seems to be the only way to reliably have an affluent life.

We’re not rewarded with a more wealth for thinking outside the box and finding new ideas (generally), we’re only rewarded with struggle. We all need to have opportunities to join discussions regularly on how to dream and aspire to do something new (perhaps in school.)

Creativity still requires us to work hard, so our society needs to find a way to reward and encourage creative thinking – so we don’t only have our spare minutes between jobs to think outside the box.

This is a wonderful topic. I am a teacher in a Waldorf school. These are schools throughout the world and we try to bring the concept of balance between the head, heart, and limbs which is in essence teaching the academics, practical work using their hands, the artistic, social and moving their bodies. Students leave Waldorf schools with curiosity, motivation to learn, and are socially aware; they are able to think outside the box. We need to bring more balance into the public schools and give children time to develop their imagination rather than filling just their heads with facts.

It’s not education; it’s parental fear. Kids don’t go out and play anymore, they have “playdates”. There days are so overscheduled; they have no time to use their imaginations, to explore the world.. their parents are too afraid to let them go out and play!

What happened in the late 80s that might have caused the scores to change in 1990? Kids stopped going outside. Fear of crime meant parents kept children out of parks and sidewalks. The recession led to the closing of hundreds of sleep-away camps and city day camps. Children’s cognitive world contracted and they no longer learned from the most abundant source of creativity: nature.

Across America, we teach creativity every day in Technology Education classes at both the middle school and high school level. While these classes have often been looked at as an elective class, they provide regular instruction in the design process often utilizing state of the art technology such as Computer Assisted Design, and rapid prototyping.

The creativity slump may not be as bad as people currently think, however, they must begin to support Technology Education classes in their respective schools.

In Technology and Engineering classes, students learn how to design solutions human problems. We engage students in these experiences in the public schools everyday.

Check out information on the International Technology and Engineering Educators web site: http://www.iteaconnect.org/

Teaching computer literacy without computer programming is like teaching reading without writing. We use computers all day, but most people don’t interact with them creatively.

I grew up in India in a school where like the rest of my middle class peers we were subject to long school days, lots of homework and extensive testing.

All of us learned how to “ace” exams, but when it came to creativity? Zippo. Nada. A big ZERO.

And I see now from a vantage point of the US, that the situation in China and Japan are no different than in India.

In the US, Bill Gates and others who rave about the education in India and China, the push for more tests, more homework, longer schooldays are behind the drop in creativity.

An early listener said it best I think–give them time to “day dream”

Creativity is a process and it is learned. Art classes allow that to happen. Administrators, though, are often the more conservative, more math oriented people who have to deal with numbers to justify their approach to education. How many students did well on the AP College exams, how many students had a certain GPA, how many students went to a certain set of colleges. We run schools like a business, and education is NOT a business because there is no definitive product but a work in progress. We must allow students to learn to PROCESS information not regurgitate it.

Linda, as to women in the workforce in the 1980s and onward. Interesting. I thought it was scientifically determined that Headstart really launches children as successful learners (and, I had assumed, more creative learners, because I had thought preschool education tried hard to enlist children’s creativity in learning).
So the idea that daycare might need a boost…
In my state, Massachusetts, I believe it’s been “on the table” at the legislature for quite a while, certainly under the current governor, that all children should have state-provided preschool. And that seems good to me. Actually, year-round school seems good to me as well.

America’s focus (some might say “obsession”) on SPORTS gobbles up an increasingly large amount of curricular – and extracurricular – time in the lives of children. And “time to play” in an unstructured manner is limited at an ever-earlier age, including Kindergarten.

It is, in my view, the Sports Race, the fact that Organized Sports now funds Universities & has caused a trickle-down (or flood-down) emphasis on getting kids funneled into specific, money-making sports, that is hampering kids’ abilities & teachers’ time to nurture and foster creative thinking.

The watershed? I’d be curious to know in what year College Football started becoming ubiquitous on TV; and then High School sports being broadcast on TV; and now, every sports game at every local school being streamed on the Internet.

How many hours of sports “practice” – (including Kindergarten -6th grade soccer leagues, baseball leagues basketball leagues, etc) have negated time and focus for young children to dribble a ball outside while daydreaming; have eaten up classroom time; have caused administrators to shorten English and/or liberal arts class and limit associative, small-group discussion?

All in the name of feeding the school-sport monster…?

“I would guess that those who live in remote areas and on farms, where fewer products are available, maintain their creativity.”-Posted by Mary

Correct. Even Mongolia- yes, remote, newly democratized Mongolia- still puts a strong emphasis on creativity in public education. My son is there, right now, continuing his studies in traditional music. But, to further endorse Mary’s point, he was raised on an island and went to a charter school. No video games, no malls. He had to make his own amusements. That makes him quite the “weirdo” over here, back home in the land of the dumbed-down & numbed-out.

My kids are creative nonconformists, but their creativity almost entirely takes place outside school hours (when they’re home, not overscheduled with activities).

I’ve seen a definite change in the approach to education since the late 90s when my oldest started school to now, when I still have a 2nd grader in the system, and almost the entire school day is spent on reading (from readers) and math (OK, with some manipulatives and games).

Parents can stop overscheduling their kids — I agree they need time to daydream, time to be bored so that they’ll find things to do on their own. If the kids are in afterschool programs while parents are at work, make sure the program allows a LOT of downtime. And once the kids are home, really limit the screen time/ cellphone time.

Teachers have to be allowed to approach the curriculum creatively — they used to do this, but now the federal and state pressure on superintendents/principals to increase test scores seems to be taking away their freedom to approach the curriculum in whatever way they want. None of the teachers I’ve talked to are happy with this pressure, and are losing the enjoyment they used to have about teaching.

As an entrepreneur, designer, and engineer, creativity is a huge part of what I do. I’ve learned that one of the most important factors in creativity is simply the ability to let yourself go, to come up with ideas and solutions and propose and develop them without regard to their apparent quality. Doing so requires proposing solutions that are, by most critical metrics, utterly absurd, but it is these ideas that are the essence of divergent thinking and creative exploration. Our cultural and educational focus on critical thinking sends the message that these answers are, because of the very absurdity that makes them valuable, wrong – that to propose them is to propose the wrong answer. Nobody likes to be wrong, and certainly nobody likes to look like an idiot in front of their peers; perhaps it is this focus on critical thinking and getting the “right” answer that is holding back our children?

I’m so glad James brings up the point that we shouldn’t start panicking because children have gotten worse at taking creativity tests. Creativity can never be measured by a test, almost by definition. The most creative person I know, who constantly comes up with ingenious solutions to problems, scored terribly on a Torrance-like creativity test in school, simply because he had big, blocky handwriting and couldn’t write quickly.

Perhaps all the creative kids became computer programmers.

I also think advertising culture had a huge effect on it. Since the 90’s we’ve been told what “cool” behavior we had to buy in to.

I do also think a lot of it has to do with how much classroom time has been allotted to drilling for standardized tests, rather than self or team oriented creation.

video games

Children are no longer allowed to play *outside*, by themselves, which requires them to figure out things to do and ways to fill their time. Parents are so frightened by the repetition of scary stories on hourly newscasts that every hour of a child’s life must be supervised by adults. I thank God that my children made it into the last generation of kids to run in a “pack” and play on the sidewalk or in the vacant lot. We used to tell our kids, “Go outside and play. Find something to do.”

As a graduate from a high school the emphasizes creativity, I am sympathetic to the concerns about American creativity. I believe that a system that insists on assigning human beings numbers and rankings based on the learning style of some, not all, discourages creativity; and I fear that the political refusal of our leaders to be creative in their approach to the issues of the day sets a poor example for my cohort and our younger siblings. However, I also recognize that every few years for centuries, some new scare about the latest generation comes out….please don’t insult us while you discuss the failings in our education.

Do you think there is a link between ADHD and creativity?

Popsicle sticks are one thing…kids play with legos, too…but they come in sets with step-by-step instructions. We use to create and build whatever we wanted with legos.
Another thing – my kids get jealous when I talk about the wide-open days when I was their ages…leaving the house in the morning, running around with my friends all day, inventing neighborhood games, etc. and returning when our parents called us in for dinner (after which we went right back out!) A lot of kids don’t do that anymore.

OMG, the guest thinks rumination is so crucial? I think rumination only becomes creative if it is connected-up. He speaks of journaling, making sure to articulate the daydreaming time — well, I’d concur: let it be visible to the self, so as to be shared with others.
Otherwise daydreaming and rumination is the high road to depression, isolation, wordlessly steeping in whatever the emotion of the minute is.

The problems with defining and measuring creativity is similar to problems in artificial intelligence. The nature of creative ideas is that they are surprising and new, that they could not be reached by following some concrete procedure or algorithm.

Otherwise it wouldn’t be very creative, would it?

Conformity and micro-management are killers of creativity.

All teachers at all levels tell me about the dropoff of
attention to learning, and attitude.

There is terrible skill levels in math and writing, and an alarming lack of analytic skills.

This may be a reflection of societal attitudes of entitlement and treating the students as consumers rather than students.

My 14-year-old son enjoys technology–cell phone, computer, iPod Touch, video games–but he has spent hours the past several days in the woods behind our house building a large and well-constructed debris hut out of sticks, branches, and ferns. We are fortunate to live in rural Vermont, where he has been able to go outside and play for hours on end throughout his entire childhood.

Fluency is extremely important for creativity, especially for determining if potentially creative ideals are actually useful, like the guest said.

This is why basic skills are important for creativity, although the skills have to be in some context that makes them useful.

I think the issue for the classroom is two fold:

1. Creativity is a process;a process that takes time to develop and percolate. Teachers tend to be product oriented, and not process oriented because it takes too much time. Kids can’t brainstorm and experiment to find different or better solutions because everyone has make sure that they “get through the designated material.”

2.Alot of teachers don’t see themselves as creative. If teachers don’t know how to access their own creativity, they are not going to be able to help kids do it

I think the views of Gen Y are a little simplistic. iPods, BlackBerrys, blogs, etc., can be fantastic tools for creativity, if the user engages in the proper way. How much have we learned from TED Talks, or NPR podcasts? How many national dialogues have begun on Huffington Post or Politico?

We are in an individual era, so it’s up to each person to use the myriad tools around us to take advantage….

The obvious solution is to teach to the creativity test.

I am a senior in high school, and it is clear why students are “losing” their creativity. My generation is the most tested generation in history. The constant emphasis on standardized tests and competition for the highest GPA has contributed to a loss in the value of creativity. Creativity can not be measured by any test! Also, students are pressured into joining sports, clubs, etc. just to fill up their college resumes. Naturally, with their schedules so jam-packed with activities, students rarely have down time to explore and dream.

I agree with Mary. When you don’t have the choice to buy the next gadget, you must learn to fix the old one or even create a replacement. Not many people do that anymore. As Frank Zappa knew, “Necessity is the mother of invention”.

Also, what about flouride in the water dumbing down America and non-nutritious, Monsanto-ed food that doesn’t support brain function.

John. And isn’t humor (shifting perspectives) an awfully important part of learning to learn?
LOL.

There is terrible skill levels in math and writing, and an alarming lack of analytic skills.

Posted by Dr. Arthur G. Swedlow

are/levels

Has anyone looked at the effect so many of our children are on “drugs” such as ritalin, etc. for ADD or ADHD? In the 90’s was there an increase on drugging our children?

Suggestions for change: 1) the Community “School Department” should be changed to “Community Youth Development Department” with all community programs that involve the community’s “children” (which should include the “12 month school”), 2) assessment portfolio of children’s ‘work in school’ should be based on tests and sample of work that shows progress and 3) all ‘middle school’ students should spend 3 days a week living ands working on a farm, where the students produce everything they consume.

I find a great deal of irony in the idea of measuring creativity with a standardized test! With the increasing pressure of high-stakes testing, there is little wonder why young children lack creativity. Instead of writing creative stories, learning about their town, researching and dressing up like historical figures, and keeping daily journals, second graders now are learning algebra!

It is unfair to blame one political party or ideology for this change in American education. Goals 2000 was a Clinton product, Bush gave us No Child Left Behind, and Obama has his Race to the Top. In exchange for making sure all children can read by third grade, we have sacrificed the creativity of all students. But what is more important: literacy, or creativity?

There are no easy answers in education. Today’s best teachers know the benefits of inquiry, problem-solving, and research. Good teachers include this in their daily lessons, and are doing their best to help their students become smart AND independent thinkers.

Our education system will never be perfect. But hard-working teachers like me try their best to get it close.

We have removed the fourth leg of a four legged table in our education system and society: arts, music and languages. The brain uniquely develops from these disciplines and is key to the “out of the box” thinking associated with creativity. As these disciplines have been devalued by generations who have not been exposed and unable to pass it on to their children, we have become stagnant in growth. Current events demonstrate our inability to think through, solve, and value long term planning.

I think the question of “are we in creativity crisis” is less important than the question “What might be all of the ways to improve our nation’s creativity?”

I’m a Life member of the Creative Education Foundation and the CEO of an Innovation Consultancy. As I travel globally and teach in this area, I see a tremendous increase in interest iin the science of creative thinking, creativity & innovation. We will improve our skills, or we will be out-created. Not just the skills of our kids, but also the skills of our leaders and workers.

And it’s very do-able.

@Michelle: good to have another young person here. I agree, but I also think that a more fundamental problem is behind it, which is the kind of thinking that results in so much testing and quantification. The organization, philosophy, and structure of education itself has become uncreative….I see this as the core culprit.

How do you raise an Edison, if not an Einstein? Raise a reader, and don’t over-childproof. Kids need to feel free to make mistakes. And give them as much unscheduled time as you can, as unsupervised as possible. No, it isn’t easy. Yes, it’s worth doing. We have tried to give our kid, now ten, a childhood of “white space,”with long stretches of time to fill himself. We have a whole room devoted to a certain well-known plastic brick building toy. I call them “vitamins for the mind.” We also took him early to a camp where they pass out screwdrivers and let the kids take things apart. This is swimming against the hyperparenting current, but it works for us. We also really love the Make magazine YouTube channel and the GeekDad blog at Wired.

Others have posted similar sentiments, but notice how this decline occured immediately AFTER the era of Reagan.

As backward as this country is becoming (Texas education, “intelligent design” and that ilk), I fear this problem is only going to get worse and the edge to “creatively solve problems” will become our destiny unless those of us in the majority actually get off our collective asses and push-back against the Palin, Beck, and Hannity’s that are stifiling intelligent and honest discourse!

Problem based learning is an excellent way to address what is being the percieved decline in creativity, however we need to encourage young people to develop creative thinking outside of the classroom.

One way that students begin to develop creative thinking skills is through extracurricular programs like Destination Imagination which fosters teamwork, cooperation, and creative problem solving skills through integrating the arts, science, math and language.

“read by third grade”? Good grief, where have I been? Have things gotten that bad?? When I was a kid, it was read by the end of first grade or repeat the grade!!!

The art teacher’s remark about audiences resonated with me. Go to any poetry reading, karaoke lounge, or Twitter feed: everybody wants to have an audience (without earning it), but nobody wants to be part of an audience for someone else.

How can we possibly nurture our own creativity if we have no interest in exploring the fruits of someone else’s?

I also believe that the mentality that there is “one solution, one way to fix the system” is itself part of the problem. Everyone is different, and education needs to be able to meet everyone individually without denying them leaning as a group.

The questions:
Do we solve all of our problems and live up to our potential as well as we could?
No.
Can we improve our ability to do so via creativity skills development, both as individuals and as groups?
Yes.
Should we?
We’d better. The world needs us all to do so. As rapidly as possible.

I have been very impressed with the International Baccalaureate Program which is now more common in high schools in the U.S., but is expanding into more primary grades…it does exactly what parents and teachers want…it is inquiry based and teaches critical thinking which helps kids think creatively (in various ways) to solve problems. For example, you aren’t taught A + B = C, but instead…if you want C, how do you get there? Kids are learning the same basic info, but they are encouraaged to think creativity! The are encouraged to THINK! That’s is what we need today to solve our problems/concerns today.

Consider the explosive growth in organized sports in American Society that began in the 80’s. In typical American fashion anything worth doing is worth over-doing. As such the amount of time spent in organized sports robs our youth of the opportunity for free thinking and free play. Organized sports are so full of rules and specific goals and roles that a focus on that leads to great team players with little independence of thought or action.

Additionally American business has insisted on such a high ROI that freedom to fail is no longer allowed in R&D programs across the board, with a few exceptions. American Business wants immediate, certain gratification, and as such has squelched innovation.

Rote learning is nothing new. I’m 42, and I remember in High school English, independant thinking and analysis was discouraged, if you did not feed back what the teacher taught, you failed. This was completely different from College, where if you were able to support your thoughts or analysis anything was possible.

After I had my first daughter in 1986, I was shocked to discover that children needed “play dates.” Parents were always around to solve any problems that occurred – in general children were not allowed to work through conflicts creatively or to play with more than one child at a time. People often had an immense number of toys for children to play with in specified ways, instead of letting them make their own toys out of found objects, as we did when we were children. Later, we had to search high and low for a preschool that allowed children time to be children and play creatively, as opposed to trying to teach them reading and writing at a young age … all of this must impact creativity in a negative way.

Ellen Dibble, if the Brian you’re referring to is me, then I agree with you whole-heartedly. In fact, when I was a math teacher, I went out of my way to integrate creativity and mental flexibility into the way I taught my classes. Creativity is not needed just in the arts.

While I agree , that today’s kids may be a bit “overwired ” that may not be the prime cause for any percieved lack of creativity. However, A teacher, featured in the movie “Indigo” kids summed up the issue quite succintly,
today’s problem with ed. is that they teach kids “what to think, not how to think”. Aside from the HOpi elder’s prophecy, this was the best line in an otherwise ridiculous airy-fairy “New Age” film

I’ve just watched a lecture by Robert Whittaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, on the long-term effects of psychotropic drugs (Ritalin, Adderol, mood-altering medication) on the development of children. I was shocked and appalled at the horrific details, particularly the widespread, uniquely American diagnosis of bipolar disorders in children. This is the link: http://forum-network.org/lecture/psychotropic-drugs-and-children

I would like to raise the question: has the declining ambition of programs like NASA and other “blue sky” research also contributed to this slump?

Erin, you don’t find the shrinking violets and wallflowers at poetry slams and karaoke lounges; that’s for sure.
I do think our politics leads to a culture of there is one right answer, and one guy wins, the other loses, versus everybody putting their minds together results in something other than the World’s Cup for us and the booby prize for them. Something like that.
The word “wrong” doesn’t apply when drawing the picture of the house, the sun, and the tree. But it is pretty prescriptive anyway. Or is it just that my second grade of 50, everyone copied everyone else? Nobody drew, say, a truck.

We should look at this as an improvement in our elementary and middle schools. It used to take until high school for creativity to be beaten out of you.

Tom, combine this subject with “why can’t kids stay focused on a topic for more than 10 minutes?” and “why can’t they sustain interest and especially effort in what they’re doing?”

Many students today are extremely uncomfortable when it’s time to output; i.e., after a hands-on lesson where curiosity, discovery, excitement, literal and higher-level thinking questions have been posed by the teacher and students, where whole group, small group or partner work, and individual activities have been experienced – why aren’t students then able to write about what they’ve done without looking to the teacher for support? (I’m talking about average students without learning/emotional issues.)

When I pose a higher-order question to my students, whether prior to the start of an activity or when it’s time to write and/or draw about the experience, I let my students squirm a bit to push them to think deeply – and some kids do. They are always free to go back to the manipulatives, chart we made at the end of the lesson, books that we may have consulted during the lesson, the artifacts we may have used, etc. – but many look to me for more than the appropriate amount of support.

I wonder if the myriad of choices children have today, where they spend a few minutes on each thing but don’t seem to really dive into something is reflected here. Also many busy parents today don’t allow time for their children to “figure things out” for themselves. They also schedule very young kids for so many (wonderful & creative) activities outside the home that they don’t have time to just play. Think about it, how many children do you see running through a sprinkler, jumproping, playing hide-and-seek, kicking a ball around the backyard, biking, etc. – activities that allow kids to figure out the rules, make decisions about, and extend when they get bored.

As a manager hiring and training college grads for more than 20 years, the biggest change I have notice is in my new employees learning to think and act indepentently. The creativeity seems to come once they understand that I respect them, am looking for their thoughts and ideas, and am wanting them to work in independent but collaborative ways. Twenty plus years ago my new hires undestond this from the moment they walked in the door. They wanted to drive their work and points of inquiry. Today it takes me 2-4 months to get a college grad to move from constantly expecting me to tell the what to do when to acting and thinking for themselves. Once the transition happens. I have rarely found a want of creativity.

Point of disclosure: My wife and I homeschool our children becasue we find the whole education system has moved to “teaching to the test” and less emphasis is give to learning to think for oneself and to articulate one’s thoughts in a variety of ways.

We’ve been using research validated methods to improve creative thinking, creative problem solving and innovation skills in both youth and adults for the last 15 years, and others for a long time before that. Only recently, as commerce has become interested in innovation skills as a competitive advantage has their grown to be a significant increase in societal interest in this area. I’m thrilled to see that happening! There are big benefits for us all if that occurs. Read some additional thinking here: http://www.newandimproved.com/newsletter/

Pure doublethink is a huge part of the problem.
We want America to be a great and advanced country,
yet there is a huge war on Science and knowledge by
evangelicals and fundamentalists. Knowledge is evil
and the most blatant fictions are elevated to absolute
truth. Can’t have it both ways. The Protestant evangelical’s undermining of the foundations of the Republic plays a large part in our downward trajectory w.r.t. competiveness on the world stage.

I attendd a school for grades 6-9. It had a teaching philosophy called “Central Subject”. For a grade, you would have a subject that all of your classes tied into. For instance, if the subject was “The Americn Civil War from Antebellum through Reconstruction”, your reading, writing, history and geography classes all dealt with that subjuct. In music class, your learned about musicians, instruments and songs from that time period. World problems in math used names of people and places from that time. Part of science class covered disscoveries and invenions of the time period. We used techniques and drew, painted, sculpted about the subject in art class. We were contantly tasked to relate what happened then to our present. Our creativity muscles were definitely put to good use.
A good portion of the corect responses I have when watching Jeopardy are from my 6th through 8th grade years, al thanks, I believe, to the Central Subject method.

To clarify for orlandoawilliams, it is not that we expect students to not read until third grade. When George Bush was Governor of Texas, he launched a massive program to reform Texas schools because he found that a high number of minority students were being promoted to the next grade, and many could not read. Third grade is a benchmark because educational research has shown that if a child has not learned to read by third grade, chances are he will NEVER read. Many NPR listeners might take for granted that everyone can read, but that is simply not true. For all his faults, President Bush had on his agenda in 2001 education as a top priority. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND had good intentions – literally, require ALL kids to be able to read, but has had the unintended consequences of changing curricula to conform to reading and math tests and therefore dulling school for many other higher achieving students.

A lot of interesting theories, and I’m sure all these things have effect… Though i feel creativity and/or critical thinking persists despite these things, is there a deep root to the problem, or merely a combination of many unintended consequences? Two things I haven’t heard mentioned much was for one the over medication in the school systems, especially with SSRI’s.
Also, the change in diet, with the convenience and taste combo of fat, sugar, and salt of processed foods, people and especially children aren’t eating real food anymore. This may seem simplistic, but as anyone who has changed to a real food diet, especially freeing from corn syrup, pesticides and other chemicals, you know just how much energy and mental clarity is recovered. I for one think this is a huge factor in attention span, and creative development.

I doubt ‘creativity’ is just something you sit a child at a desk to learn. The world of the child is not just the school, they are exposed to the whole culture. Is our whole culture showing a creative bent? First test: Turn on the radio. Pure product. Nothing much new worth listening to. Why is this? I blame the ubiquitous antidepressants. Artists used to always be unhappy and trying to work stuff out. Now they just get a prescription. To really come up with something that turns heads you have to be driven and practice your craft obsessively, no matter where you went to school. Dissatisfaction can drive ambition, but now dissatisfaction is too easily treated.

I’m thinking there are two sides to the sort of super-programming of children we see today. Children are at team sports; they are in music class; they are in local service projects. The ferrying of children to this and that, up to age 16, is a big part of the (upper) middle class way of life. If I am understanding Lynne, and reading the tea leaves right, that does cut into a child’s time to be creative in their own terms, versus say writing short stories for that short story class they take in the summer on Wednesdays.
Downtime is less available as children are kept away from running wild as a pack and playing their own games in their own ways. I get that.
I wonder about how to enlist a more genuine engagement in learning, which almost by definition is creative. The lucky children who discover self-propelling interests can work all the needed skills into the pursuit of that interest. The deluge of gifts (toys) designed to coax a child into a self-propelling interest suggest the idea is alive and well. I think for instance the museum set of puppets replicating to some extent Javanese puppetry is partly simply for cross-cultural exposure. Consider the involvement of a child, however, in the first paperdoll set that became a launching pad for the 4-year-olds concept of extended community. It is rooted in her past and in her future, in what she knows and seeks to understand. There should be something that engages children at every age in that way. It should be so compelling that school feels like a silly distraction. Sure standard education complements what the child manages to teach his or her self; it standardizes the development of the understanding, knowledge, collaborative skills.
But I don’t see education as doing the best part. I think summer vacations were originally designed to let the children apply all their new skills to real farm work, which is really more compelling, and more rewarding. The farming was the best part of education.
It is sort of sad that a graduate would go looking for a job and require years to acquire that baseline engagement where one is not following along as required but integrated in the problem set and generating on one’s own.
In a country where most expect to be cogs in smoothly running social and economic machinery, creativity isn’t so necessary. We might forget its crucial role (not so much in maintaining the status quo but in adapting, changing).

Assuming that there is a quantity called “creativity” that can be measured and that the research showing its decline is valid, the conclusions that the decline has to do with outmoded educational approaches is hardly supported by the facts. As an educator with over 25 years experience teaching at both the high school and college levels, I witnessed and participated in multiple waves of changes in pedagogy emphasizing the importance of things like creativity and experiential learning, starting with changes brought about through Gardner’s influential theories on multiple intelligences in the 80’s. Whatever else one can say about education after 1990, it was NOT your father’s education: the rote, “banker’s model,” sit-up-straight-and-stuff-your-head-with-facts approach to education now being demonized as the reason for creativity’s decline. In fact, educational institutions and approaches to education changed so much around this time wouldn’t it be more logical to blame any ostensible decline on those changes, since the earlier pedogogies and methodologies apparently generated greater creativity? The real problem, here, is that we continue to look to schools and teachers as the source of both our problems and possible redemption. What is never considered, maddeningly, is the vast, radical change in life in the past half century, which encompasses unprecedented technological revolution, the complete transformation of social relationship among men, women and children, the complete breakdown in any commonly-held beliefs, and other, completely radical, fundamental change. Consumer capitalism has triumphed, and the only “right” most people believe in is the right not to be discomfited by anything. If the coming generations are more apt to sit back and passively consume rather than create I’d suggest we look at these historical changes as the more likely explanation. Schools are an effect of the changes, and not the cause.

I listened with great interest to your program on Creativity today. I am the product of a quite effective education that encouraged my creative and critical thinking at every turn. I was fortunate to have been educated in a public high school in New Hampshire which was a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, Souhegan High School. I also am an alumna of the Destination Imagination Program in Creative Problem Solving. I now volunteer extensively for the program.

It was perhaps because of these educational and personal experiences that I found today’s program incomplete. Though the announced content included “How to Fix It”, I felt that though there was an excellent discussion of the problem…including the detrimental effects of the more wide spread educational models emphasizing information and regurgitation over thinking, there was little information about the real efforts of schools like mine, and programs like Destination Imagination to provide remedies.

Please consider a second program which emphasizes what can be done to make our children more creative and makes our country able to regain its place as a champion of invention and innovation. Each year I am fortunate to be able to attend the Global Finals Tournament of Destination Imagination where I see first hand the amazing results of teams trained to use their creative minds to analyze problems, generate and organize solutions. Along the way they learn to maximize teamwork and they have an enormous amount of fun in the process. Perhaps examining the Destination Imagination website at http://www.idodi.org, and contacting them might be an excellent starting point to develop this idea. They are engaged in developing creativity every day in children around the world, including much of this country.

Your listeners need to hear more about how to fix this problem.

Dear Tom,
Many thanks for bringing creativity into discussion. When we are unable to be alone with our thoughts we cease to be able to wonder and imagine new possibilities. If we do not read and embrace the ideas of diversity, history, science , philosophy, mathematics, literature etc. we cannot converse, debate or create new ideas. If we overschedule our children with activities, we do not foster them to create their own friendships, entertain themselves, or seek the ideas of their peers or mentors. If we provide our children with instant consumerism and gratification, they will not have the desire to create something for themselves or even imagine the possibility of being a creator. If we engage them in our hobbies and the hobbies of neighbors, grandparents, we expose them to a treasure trove of generations of ideas. While sharing our ideas and ourselves we are exposing them to wonder and even the old can become new and even improved. Gazing at the stars at night, watching the glow of a firefly in flight, gardening, art, music, listening to the sounds of nature can release the most primal thoughts and unlease the imagination. This is the classroom our children are really missing. The classroom of doing nothing and listening to their hearts. Finding a passion and and taking a risk. In this classroom , we open the doors to curiosity and experimentation. We become excited and energized and we take a risk to create. Encouraging our children in conversation and encouraging them to seek the diversity of opinions of others, is crucial in order to be able to think critically. Children must embrace failure as a learning tool and not a fault or they will never take another risk to try and create. To create a future you must know the past and children’s exposure to family history, cultures , museums, libraries, and the opportunity to travel, if only a bike ride in the park promote new ideas and creativity. My fondest memory of creativity in childhood was being able to take a found object and create something new and unusual with it. I sill take pride in “Thinking Outside the Box”

1st we need to get rid of early academics. Kids 6 and under should be spending their time developing their gross motor skills and doing lots of PLAY. The early we push academics, the more we fall behind.

2nd we need to teach the whole child. We cannot just teach the brain, we need to engage the body. This is especially important for little boys who are doing FAR worse than girls.

3rd we need to get rid of high stakes tests like the MCAS (in MA), so that precious time isn’t wasted on teaching to the test. Rather students and teachers can use that time to collaborate on projects that apply knowledge learned.

4th THROW OUT THE TV AND COMPUTER for kids under 13. NO MEDIA AT ALL. All it does is WASTE TIME. There is no value in exposing kids to technology that will be obsolete by the time they reach high school. And TV is like having an open sewer running through your house

5th GET OUTSIDE. Children need to be outside, experiencing the world around them. They don’t need to be playing on 4 sports teams, taking dance classes etc…they need to be outside riding bikes, digging in the dirt etc. yes, even in the city! We have overscheduled our kids so much they have no time to just “be” and daydream.

Clayton — your thoughts are right on target…has anyone LOOKED at a school lunch menu lately? Such garbage we are feeding our kids…it’s a wonder they can learn at all!

Think Pre-school programs. More academic. Time broken into small bits. Teacher led.

Think two parent working families. The kids are not at home running around the neighborhoods with time on their hands to invent uses for.

What a wonderful educational forum On Point commentary can be! I was especially intrigued by these posters:

SRG- This educator believes creativity can be taught. I doubt the literality of that statement and think this teacher gives permission for creative imagination that develops expressive skills and interests that provide a healthy outlet for expression. Some children retain latent creative potential that can be cultivated, but I think most Americans are tragically repressed, and with good reason.

Mari- The theory that pre-technological exposure provides time and space for creative impulses and acts interfaces well with the idea of “giving permission” above. I am a weaver and spinner who neglects my work due to technological and media distractions so I understand how dependent modern people have become on outsourced stimulations. Quiet and thought are usually necessary to developing vision. Collaboration can also be key during sought periods of relative isolation and
disciplined focus. (If you read about people of virtuosic accomplishment notice how their peers and mentors are instrumental.

Barry- He asks us to define creativity but concedes it is a tangible measure and valuable culturally and politically. His conclusion that modern society sniffs out the spark it needs is apt. Corporate profit and hierarchical control are societal addictions. An addiction excludes the vital in order to pursue a fetish or synthetic experience. Just as the skyscraper is an aberration of human compatible design our ranking by wealth and concentrated power is also counterproductive and has is resulting in a police state (USA) run by corporate oligarchy. Creativity is one of the last remaining viable method of resistance. Notice how puppeteers and other political artists were seen as dangerous (political conventions, trade group meetings) and their work pre-empted by police after intelligence work at great expense to taxpayers. It is not such a miracle that the Internet exposes scandal and conspiracy among the elite sometimes, as it is that the servants of said elite are able to censor, delete, counterinsurge, re-spin and strategically deny attempts at truthful revealation. Notice how many people are employed in national and corporate intelligence, as reflected in this morning’s Washington Post (about intelligence glut). About one in thirty Americans is a frightened paid informant. So many more are police and guards (military, security, prison). The old East German state security apparatus would be jealous. Watch between the frames and read between the lines creative people.

I too(like the caller) am a Millennial and have participated for 12 years in Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination. The “think outside the box” strategies are still serving me well in my professional life. These programs along with other activities such as theater, shop and art classes need to be supported in our schools and communities. As we keep cutting these programs we continue to do a disservice to our children.

The amount of time my daughter spends repeating her mathematics and preparing to hit the middle of the bell curve makes me sick. Once she gets a concept, she is ignored because she’s “fine.” Well, fine is actually bored. Challenge them to think and they will think. Challenge them to be average, and they will be average. It’s like I’m watching the public school drain the blood out of her body – except it’s her brain they’re draining. I am heartbroken. She has become an “above average” statistic from 9 to 3 every day.

Grady Lee Howard says one in 30 Americans is a “frightened paid informant,” seemingly citing yesterday’s study of the proliferation of intelligence contractors and agencies, in the thousands, and their agents. If there are about 300 million Americans, then 1 in 30 would be 10 million (10 million x 30 = 300 million). I didn’t hear that. I believe I heard 850,000 agents or people involved in intelligence-related work, or closer to 1 million or 1 in 300.
Feel free to correct me. That is nonetheless a prodigious number, but it seems to me those 850,000 might cost us less than the Defense Department, the armed branches of it, and maybe should stand INSTEAD of the expanding use of the (armed) military, which didn’t stop the Yemeni jump-offs, for example.
Besides the cost, ask how “intelligence” has cramped our style, versus the cramping of our style if none of us could trust that those funding terrorism weren’t existing in the apartment next door, unbeknownst to anybody. For instance. We have to trust the reporters and the media to make sure the mandate to keep us secure is not going Stasi (I think those were the East German secret police).
Do I, because of US counterintelligence, delete the icons on my desktop for Muslim this and that, Chinese this and that, links I might otherwise forget? Nope. When they lock me up for wanting information from all sides, I’ll say they go too far. That was the Communist downfall; they didn’t want people to see the whole world, just their part of it. Right?

In Asia they push their kids to learn Math, Science and Music but that tradition is not accepted in America.

Americans call it “Child Abuse”. In Asia we call it persistent.

I grew up in Asia. We clean our own classroom after classes. We get graded for cleaning our classroom but If I don’t help my fellow students by the end of the school year I will have to submit a special project given to me by my adviser/teacher. If I don’t I fail social studies.

I noticed Americans teach different math technics when solving math problems. We do it different in Asia.

We can never change how American school system works or how we going to change the technic of teaching young kids to solve math equations or problems solving by the age of 6.

I wrote my first Essay when I was in Kindergarten.
Essay was about – “What do I want to be when I grow up”

by the way there is no Student loans where I came from.

My parents paid cash and my college education was only worth $25,000 for 4 years.

Compared to America college students have students loans and educating a kid in America cost $100,000 or more for a college degree.

In fact Americans go to school to be educated in how to pay off a student loan debt.

1) If you can, watch the first series of Treme from HBO. The extraordinary musical and theatrical (costume design) imagination of the Mardi Gras Indians is what is missing in so much of American COMMUNITY LIFE!! In the series, a young early teen boy is attracted to the MG Indians for the musicality and creative productivity AS WELL AS FOR the mentoring he receives from the older men. We need this in ALL our communities. There is a HUGE local parade where I live: what is MISSING every year is true musical, theatrical and artistic creativity.

2) WHY do we watch American Idol wondering who will be the ONE WINNER???!!! THAT IS NUTS!!! If, INSTEAD, ALL those talented contestants participated, along with a host of others, in LOCAL MUSICAL/THEATRICAL/ARTISTIC/COSTUMED/WRITTEN productions CREATED COMPLETELY AT THE LOCAL LEVEL, and, if this happened in ALL communities ACROSS THE AGE SPANS: we would have not only a creative country, but a happy, connected country!!!

3) I taught visual art (mainly drawing and painting) in several varied settings. The SKILLS of those areas of artistry CAN BE INTRODUCED IN A WAY THAT IS BOTH OPEN TO INDIVIDUAL INSTRUCTION WHILE AT THE SAME TIME IMPARTING INFORMATION ABOUT THE SKILL. I feel strongly about this: when we ONLY focus on “creativity” without giving any skills, we wind up consigning many potential artists to doing nothing more than RAINBOWS and HAPPY FACES. They get bored, give up, and LAZY, under-educated educators get to CLAIM that only a FEW kids have “talent”. It IS true that some kids are more EASILY and NATURALLY able to hop right into visual artwork or into making music or reading music, but THERE ARE SKILLS THAT CAN BE TAUGHT, and ONCE THEY ARE, especially when, sorry, “lessons” are ALSO given about opening up to Creativity, MANY, MANY, MANY MORE students, adults & kids, become creative individuals, often going on to create wonderful works that “catch up” to the “natural talent” of the other kids, who, without the same Facilitating Opportunities, may begin to repeat their “sthticks” until they are bored to the point of quitting. WELL EDUCATED art and music and theater teachers can accomplish all of this AS WELL AS helping with integrative techniques and ideas for use along with the regular classroom teachers!! Sadly, not all colleges of art education are created equal, and not all school administrations recognize what is really needed in their artS educators.

Ellen Dibble,

You are doing some of your very best writing on this topic!!! Thanks!

Just a data point.

The rate of childhood obesity in the US started to sky rock starting around the 90’s.

I thought this data point is interesting in relation to this study because:

1) The increase in childhood obesity so closely correlate with this study.
2) The increase in childhood obesity is such a marked change in American children at the same time of this study.
3) And the increase in childhood obesity at the scale we are experiencing is specific to the US.

There are a multitude of health and developmental issues caused by childhood obesity.
Could the causes of childhood obesity relate to the outcome findings of this study?
Could childhood obesity directly cause some of the outcomes of this studiy?

…. Anyone looking for a Masters Project?

and more still…on the idea of Mardi Gras Indians etc posted by Anne, it goes right back to the Caribbean for me where carnival runs the years. Everybody is making their costumes, by hand, CREATIVELY, designing and working as a community it is something to behold. “Costumes” of the Kind and Queen would fit in a small airport they are sooo big and so wonderfully constructed. Fabrics and glue guns and feathers and sequins all are in production all year by hand for the carnival which ends on Ash Wednesday, it is like broadway outdoors and crazy good. Also, on the teaching of skills in the art room I agree…drawing techniques can be taught, “seeing” such a huge part of visual art, Can be taught, color theory, mixing and properties of different paints CAN be taught, but the creativity comes from elsewhere. All you need to do is look at Jean Michael Bisquait’s graffitti work from the 80’s and Pollack and you see raw creativity there. Being creative can’t be taught I don’t believe, technique yes, creativy? It’s in there or it’s not.

charlie you have absolutely NO idea what you are talking about-it has nothing to do with conspiracy theories–there are students in university classes that are hyper-religious-conservatives who cant deal with critical thinking-see it as an affront to their ignorant beliefs and they complain, and pressure is put on professors to dumb down lessons and avoid analysis. The religious question often coincides with fascism in government–the need for big daddy to dictator to command all you actions and thoughts and wave that flag!

Charlie–you absolute off-point non-sense about unions and capitalism is laughable–it has nothing to with anything–conservative rhetoric talking points that are exactly what is destroying education–it is republican standardized testing and standardized society and brown-shirt conformity that is destroying this country, education, and creativity–all you want is a spartan society of lunatic savage killer warriors.

The red-tape bureaucracy you are talking about is all republican–corporate fascism. You are so lost.

I am impressed by some of the things being talked about on the show. I agree with many of the statements made about video games and walking to the street corner for ice cream and staring out windows–there are too many electronics plugged into kids. Get rid of the cell phones and the ipods and play-stations. get rid of TV. Regulate it to an hour a day or less.

This caller who supports memorization and drill and kill is completely wrong. Come to china and find out how ridiculous rote learning is–these Chinese kids are completely unable to have a thought of their own. I was never very good at memorizing but i think of myself as very creative–combing through ideas and synthesizing them and coming up with new ways out of the box is my specialty–but i cant memorize the spelling of my name.

Why the did this creativity change show up in the 1990’s?

It might be worth considering the major entry of women into the work force, the subsequent atrophy of family, neighborhood and community structures. Before, what, the 80’s, children were formed by any number of long-standing informal and non-formal education systems and had varying roles , responsibilities and opportunities. Today their education is more controlled, differently structured , and more professional.

More expensive, obviously. Better? That’s the $64,000,000 question.

Super Nintendo which was one of the first widely owned home game consoles came out in 1990.

Sam E. i was thinking the same exact thing–Atari was subprime and Nintendo was a revoloution that changed the way kids thoght and played and it just kept evolving so now twenty year olds and younger need to be pluged in at all times and anything less is inhumane or inborg an boring. Kids cant even focus on a five minute conversation without checking the phone–nothing irks me more. Nintendo did it!

Adding to the articulate observations on the show-in addition to allowing kids time for free play, converstaions with a range of adults, and less mind numbing homework, we need to improve the talent pool in teaching. Over the past 30 years, pay for teachers has not kept up with the costs of living in many communities-particularly urban areas so teaching is a less attractive career choice for most college students. Thirty five years ago, women used to have few career choices despite their level of talent or education. Access to a wider range of jobs enabled women to move out of teaching, and many were replaced by people who had less education, less talent and less motivation. Talented, highly motivated teachers know how to fashion exercises, projects and give lectures that challenge students to think, to solve problems, to collaborate. These experiences help children beome more resourceful, think “outside the box” and generate real intellectual inspiration. While people may vary in recognizable creative talent, everyone can learn to be resourceful, to find alternatie ways to solve a problem, adapt materials to different uses, and find more efficient ways to get work done. However, kids need practice in being resourceful, thinking of new ways to get things done all thru elementary and secondary years in order to have richer lives and enjoy success which contributes to real growth and innovation in our society and economy. Mediocre teahers are rarely capable of leading this effort and the demands of test teaching make the task very difficult for even the most capable teachers.

Schools and classrooms are not responsible for the problem. I would place the blame on computer games and the changing shape of play. Children have less opportunity to use their own imagination in play. This is changing the way they socialize. Interactions with other kids is where creativity is developed.

Here is the website of the study’s author:

http://kyunghee.myweb.uga.edu/portfolio/ttct.html

Creative?

The conservatives did it. Good god, where do you find more liberals; where do you find them in more absolute control than in education? And who could be more hostile to creativity with political correctness and rigid obsession with arbitrary rules of thought crimes and thought control?
Maybe it is because there are no more farmers, by necessity among the most inventive and creative people on earth. Maybe it is because teen age boys no longer tinker with hot rods. Zoning boards forbids so much as changing a spark plug. Safety rules and throw-away engineering thwart curiosity and the ability to take things apart, explore and solve problems.
Children are organized, regimented, supervised, collectivized from the earliest age. We are viciously intolerant of eccentrics.

I am just curious if students from Waldorf schools were given the CQ test for this study and if so, how did they fare?

The responses to this topic are all amazing and passionate. My guess is that a kid can survive and even thrive in spite of where they attend school, as long as they are encouraged by a parent or guardian to use toys that don’t program the outcome of the play. And in that regard, anything can be a toy – all it takes is some imagination and a creative solution to a problem. Give a kid a paper bag and say, hey, here’s your toy for today -see what happens……

The fact is that critical or creative thinking has not been even envisioned in any real sense in this discussion.

Pamela (above) says her children are ‘creative non conformists.’ This is no doubt the prescribed creative non-conformity with which which Pamela is comfortable.

So then comes the day Pamela says, “Johnny, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And Johnny or Jenny answers, “Ma, I’m going to be an anarchist.”

On that day Pamela will value creativity a lot less.

Yes, this is a fantasy. It is as much a fantasy as the sort of controlled creativity well-to-do parents envision for their children which is imitating the real thing.

What are the demographics of the groups who were tested over the years? If the test was always given in public schools then it’s possible that the drop in the “creativity quotient” is related to the changing demographics of the population being tested.

Over the last 25 years, well-educated, upper middle class Americans have been fleeing the public schools in droves. I am in my mid-50’s and everyone, even the wealthiest families, used to send their kids to public schools when I was young. They were all neighborhood schools, segregated by income, and the quality varied enormously — if you lived in an area with expensive homes, the schools were generally better. But everyone went to public schools; private schools (other than Catholic schools) were rare or non-existent in most areas.

Over the past few decades, this has completely changed. The quality of public schools has dropped significantly and I and my friends and family members all over the country have felt the need to send our kids to private schools for at least some part of their K-12 education. The lucky ones have children who are able to pass the stringent entrance exams for high-quality public magnet schools. This situation simply did not exist in my day.

So my guess is that, if the creativity test is only being administered in public schools, over the past couple decades they have begun to miss an increasingly large percentage of the upper middle class population. The absence of this population may be skewing their results.

By the way, creativity, problem-solving, divergent thinking, etc., were never taught anywhere in my experience.

Stillin,

Thank you for recognizing my points about the individual AND community Creativity of Treme’s Mardi Gras Indians. I will DISAGREE with you on your other point, however. You say,

“on the teaching of skills in the art room I agree…drawing techniques can be taught, “seeing” such a huge part of visual art, Can be taught, color theory, mixing and properties of different paints CAN be taught, but the creativity comes from elsewhere. All you need to do is look at Jean Michael Bisquait’s graffitti work from the 80’s and Pollack and you see raw creativity there. Being creative can’t be taught I don’t believe, technique yes, creativy? It’s in there or it’s not.”

Since my first exposure to art teaching was from punitive and judgmental teachers who also did NOT impart or demonstrate any basic design or media-use, I made it my mission to learn about the (the?!!) Creative Process (Processes!) so that I could help ALL students open up to the world of creativity and to themselves. The teaching and/or facilitating and/or social learning of Creativity is in many ways the granting of specific Permissions, or specific Constraints, specific Intents, or a host of other Openings or Closings or Multiplyings, etc. If you tell a classroom of kids to “be creative”, you will ONLY find the Basquiats. If you want to support a classroom of Creatives who are not yet ABLE to access their own Creativity, or, who may feel they are not allowed to access their creativity because they fear “making a mess”, “screwing up”, “looking stupid”, “not being as good as Basquiat, who is a real artist”, YOU, the teacher, the facilitator, the friend, the parent CAN suggest and/or require the exposure to and use of various specific transformative design principles, and YOU create lesson options FOR THAT LEARNING. THAT is one of the FUNDAMENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES of a teacher!!!

You can have a Contract with each student, which, along with other things, designates how many projects will be those Projects That Increase Exposure to Design AND/OR Creative Principles (i.e., teacher-devised assignments), and how many projects will be those devised completely by the student.

Design principles can be concrete (patterning or material usage, say), or they can be completely abstract, for instance, when they address issues of intent, or audience. Today’s kids lucky enough to have a community of friends who explore computer graphics, illustration, and animation together, often collaborate within the context of setting up particular challenges, particular permissions and constraints. Each one of those challenges and how they all inter-relate is, in effect, the group self-teaching itself to operate within the Creative Process. Perhaps NONE of the transformative processes, principles, materials, or engagements that you, the teacher, introduce will be what is ultimately used by the individuals you teach. However, the students WILL have a far greater sense and experience with their choices and their exigencies; AND, exposing/teaching specific aspects of the Creative Process WILL allow an individual, as well as groups, to stop the mental gridlock that prevents new visions and/or ways of doing things!

In teaching, I did NOT use the pedagogical tone I am writing with here; in fact, my tone varied from the whimsical to the serious to other reaches; and, the way in which I presented various principles was NOT as abstract as my writing is here; in fact, I usually found a concrete metaphor for the principles I wished to share. At the same time that I was trying to share Creativity and Transformation, I tried to TRANSFORM myself, my language and my presentation to fit the situation. I KNOW Creativity can be taught because I have done it, and I have been thanked by my students, ages 8 to 88. I ALSO know that MANY times I took my clues from the students themselves, taking THE ideas inherent in THIER work or in THEIR remarks to a place where they could be shared with the entire class. Never did that result in work that looked like or mimicked that of the original student! Thanks!

I wanted to thank the guests and Tom for such a great discussion! It could have been too broadly discussed by wonderfully articulate guests and callers. It was terrific and facilitated even more consideration of the topic.

THANKS!

Ann..I enjoyed reading your response and I have to say I DO all the things you point out and more which is why I am AN EXCELLENT TEACHER. I do feel like I have a “contract” with each student…and I demonstrate and plan around art from the elements and principles to giving students the freedom to experiment and the materials and space to work in…open discussions with room for disagreeing…shows currently up through internet and back in history through scholastic art…I do all those things with every age, yes all students but I still believe although yes everybody can create art, creativity shows up NOT in every single student. Everyone creates and it’s our god given right, but I don’t believe every person is creative and on that note we do disagree which is O.K.

Ellen said:
“it’s a big mistake to isolate creativity to art and music class, if that’s what you mean.”

Absolutely true. And if you read the Newsweek article, they are clear about the role of creativity in science, technology, engineering and math.

“Why can’t a teacher, trying to drill the multiplication tables into her class, ask the students to come up with better ways of remembering this or that”

Two reasons come to mind – 1) the teachers who teach the multiplication tables are too often not mathematically adept enough to evaluate those better ways, so they stick with what they know, and 2) curricula that enforce that kind of creativity tend to alienate parents who are in the same boat with the teachers.

It can be done without alienating parents and teachers, and it must done. Rote memorization is the safety fallback in this country, but rote memorization is not math. A more creative approach to arithmetic can prepare students for success in Algebra and higher mathematics.

And keep the art and music please. For now, that’s where creativity still exists in our schools.

So this researcher hasn’t yet published this report. That means this study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet. a) shouldn’t we wait to discuss this until we know the data is legit b) what business does she have talking to a reporter before it is peer reviewed?

I can point to a significant change. I was in primary and high school during the timeframe directly before 1990. Under Reagan art, music and physical fitness programs were slashed throughout the country in public schools. If one was lucky enough to attend a school in an affluent community those programs may have been preserved. I don’t know if many remember but there was a lot of debate at that time about the impact that the loss of those programs would have on children. I guess, we now know. So now kids can pass an aptitude test but they don’t know a C-cleft from an abstract expressionist. Who needs those “soft” programs?

I just wanted to say that I’ve enjoyed reading (nearly) all of the comments — lots of good and well thought points. And I’ve loved hearing from the clearly wonderful teachers who have both posted here and e-mailed me — I hope that my son has teachers like you in his future.
Very best,
James Kaufman

Great show! But how did nobody mentioned the most important thing – for a kid (or adult) to be creative, they must be INTERESTED in the subject matter.

My background is science/engineering R&D, and most people would probably describe me as creative in this area. What they do not realize is that I am simply passionately interested in the topic, and this is what drives “creative” behavior.

A relevant collateral question for educators to explore then should be “how to make X interesting” … creativity will automatically follow.

Cheers!

I just listened to this podcast and a few things come to mind. Firstly, what have the kids of the US done wrong to be constantly labeled as underachieving in one form or another when compared to the rest of the world. What have the educators and education administrators done wrong to constantly bear the brunt of such US pedagogical self-loathing. Surely, just as improvements in the existing status quo needs to be examined and refined, the US has, continues to and will continue to properly educate our young ones to the extent that it’ll continue to draw K-12 foreign students from Japan, South Korea, China, India, and a host of other countries who we in the US often prop up as models to follow. If they’re such models, parents from say South Korea wouldn’t be spending on average 60% of their total incomes to educate their kids in the US where private school quotas in the north east often are 2 spots for 200+ applicants from any of the above listed Asian nation. Even hgh performing public schools in the Boston area charge up to $10K per foreign student and they’re paying these tuitions. I wonder if Dr. Kim, whose report this is show of largely based, has kids in South Korean or US education systems or if given the choice, where she’d choose to educate her own children to be more creative, free, nurturing and so on.

Also, just as a point of reference, Asians are not per se genetically or even culturally any better than their north American counterparts in math and science. What everyone seems to disregard is the heavy governmental funding and societal emphasis following WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam War and so forth that place an emphasis on the most practical needs to rebuild their respective country’s destroyed infrastructure. Civil engineers needed to be well educated in math. Doctors and nurses need to know something about sciences and so forth. These are the field where the jobs also existed most and where one could most easily feed one’s family.

How do you measure creativity? I have 2 children ages 17 and age 21. They are both creating music and art for a purpose using natural materials and technology. These two grew up in the generations cited in the article. Both are products of our public education system. They both come from a family that believes each of these young Americans have a job to do for their society. Their “job” was to find out what their ‘giftedness’ is and use it to make the world a better place in some way while enjoying the amazing life they have been born into as American citizens. Both attended an International Baccalaureate program in Middle School and High School. Their academics involved an emphasis on “global” awareness. Since necessity is the mother of invention, they were aware of a need to be satisfied. Creative people are people. Perhaps giving people a reason to think is the answer.

Remember when people used to say that before T.V. kids had to use their imagination to listen to the radio? Creativity is almost by definition creating entertainment rather than being entertained. I would look at video games first.

I am also critical of the “one size fits all” school system that seems to believe that everyones highest level of personal development involves a Phd.

I am a retired electronics engineer who, during my fifty five year career, worked for eleven companies no two of which was even in the same field. I did this because I always wanted to learn something new and explore different fields. When I retired, I realized that the few years had been spent arguing with younger engineers, who wanted ‘push button’ solutions to their problems and rebelled against using new products.

I have been introduced to a program called ‘philosophy for children’ which has children from the age of five discussing philosophical questions which have no concrete answer so that they can come up with the most outlandish ideas and have them taken seriously by the rest of the group. Thus even the most reticent children come to realize that they can have valid ideas and all learn that being wrong is not bad if you learn from it. I have long said that, if you make no mistakes it is because you are not really doing anything.

Having recently audited a course on philosophy, I think that education should be based on philosophy.

For information on Philosophy for Children (P4C) see:-
http://cehs.montclair.edu/academic/iapc/whatis.shtml

I did my master’s in the study of creativity. I can only say there is so much more to understand. For the most part, people don’t have a shared definition of creativity. It’s a fuzzy, slippery concept in many ways. I can tell you that the creativity literature examines the creative person, process, product and press. Considering all that, I’d say neither our current education system nor our lifestyles support or invite creative thinking. Want to change things? Get away from the TV and all other entertainment apparatus long enough to think for yourselve in new ways. Experience the world directly and ask questions. It is possible. It’s human. And look at other work by Dr. Torrance: the Torrance Incubation Model of Teaching and In Search of Satori.

Dr. Kaufmann,

I just saw your post (it’s several days after the show). Thanks for reading our posts and for your reply!

I’m using a false name so you won’t feel that you need to attach this comment to (a) previous one(s) I may have made!

I believe it is the result of the “dumbing down of America”, creating all followers with Government leading. This has nothing to do with the conservative movement. It is about good vs. evil. A group of creative individuals, who have the freedom and are independent thinkers are not easily controlled. When trying to control the creative, the result is rebellion not submission, thus the govern has the economy requiring two incomes for families to survive. Morals are missing, thus divorce rate up, single parent families, funds cut thus over worked under paid teachers with huge classrooms, school budgets cut thus limited choice of subjects, teachers who are bombarded with paperwork, who cannot even know their class, children going to day care or empty houses, filling spare time with computer or games. No communication, no role models, parents so busy, they can’t be involved with kids, they have to work. Working causes them to be unaware of both children and laws that government is passing for them. Rights, freedom of speech non-resistant. Literature, Internet monitored and controlled by government as China does, per Obama. . Government becomes Big Brother……USA becomes part of One World Order…….and….We look for Jesus…..this is only a piece of a much bigger puzzle. Being self deceived……as the master deceiver intends…the deceiver is the prince of the air…

I have but one request of the “creative” community.

Could you PLEASE come up with an alternative to the phrase “think outside the box”.