The Creativity Crisis

AUTHORS: Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

PUBLICATION NAME: Newsweek

PUBLICATION DATE: July 10, 2010

SUMMARY: Research shows that creativity in America is declining. In 1958, professor E. Paul Torrance developed several tasks with which to measure creativity, which is defined as "the production of something that is original and useful". Creativity requires an individual to come up with original ideas and merge those ideas together into a result. Using Torrance's tasks, Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered that the creativity scores has been rising up until 1990, at which point they declined. The decline is reported to be most serious for children from kindergarten to sixth grade.

It is likely that the lack of creativity is due to children spending more hours in front of the TV and playing video games, rather than with creative activities. Other culprits could be the lack of creativity in schools and the fact that many children stop asking as many questions as they used to.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gary G. Gute, while studying the childhoods of highly creative people, found that they tend to have grown up in families that give stability, yet also encourage uniqueness, which resulted in adaptability. Clear rules kept the kids stay in control during times of stress, but the kids were also able to flourish in creativity during times of boredom. These highly creative adults also frequently grew up with hardships, which doesn't necessarily have a direct link to creation, but forces them to become more flexible, which in turn, helps with creativity.

American teachers say that "there’s no room in the day for a creativity class", but Rex Jung, a neuroscientist at the University of Mexico claims that creativity can be improved with practice. According to him, habitual practice and consistency gradually changes the patterns in the brain to gear toward creativity. New research also says that creativity is part of the brain's normal function. However, the researchers conclude that very little is being done to spur the rates of creativity in America, although creativity is highly prized in our society.

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ARTICLE: The Creativity Crisis

SUBMITTED BY: Kimberly Truong