The Creativity Crisis

[Dleg]

A truly fascinating article from Newsweek.

The Creativity CrisisFor the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.

... there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.” ...

I highly recommend reading it. Among other important points in the article, it appears psychologists have finally learned that engineers are just as creative as artists.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

If they're so creative, why can't they keep the Mongorians out?

 

[wilheldp_PE]

That's a very creative article.

 

[frazil]

video games.

 

[snickerd3]

video games.

ding ding ding, we have a winner!!!!

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I remember when Ataris came out in the late seventies. Dad wouldn't let us have one. "You mark my words: those things will be the ruination of America."

Smart man, Dad.

 

[Road Guy]

call me when they land on the moon

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Oh, Obama put the kabosh on that, for us.

As for the Chinese, I'm betting on 2015-16.

 

[TouchDown]

Oh, Obama put the kabosh on that, for us.
As for the Chinese, I'm betting on 2015-16.

I bet they could make it there sooner, seeing that they consider people expendable.

 

[Dleg]

I somewhat agree on the videogames thing. But what I did not know, until I read this article, is that it may be the result of changes to the curriculum and the way schools are evaluated in the US.

....In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style. Instead, Chinese schools are also adopting a problem-based learning approach.
Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

 

[Supe]

It probably has to due with the fact that teachers can't even teach any more. Every day is a continuous prep for some sort of midterm or year end standardized test, and beyond that, it's "social sensitivity training." Seen the modern day lineup of books they're covering in schools these days? Literary classics, especially the ones that spark any real interest like Orwell's stuff are a thing of the past. Now, if it's not in the Oprah Book club, they don't get to read it.

 

[Kephart P.E.]

It isn't video games, do you have any idea how crazy Asian folks are for games? It is riduculous how much they play.

Anyway I think we are definely on to something here, kids today have lots more organized homework than I ever did, but so little of it is open ended types of work.

I remember (circa 1980's) having to come up with lots of papers and project ideas, sort of on my own, now it seems like the focus memorizing stuff and passing standardized tests.