U.S. Creativity Declining?
July 11th, 2010 by ComputerBob
I’ve mentioned a few times in the past that, many years ago, I did my Masters thesis on the topic of creativity training.
I administered a small subset of activities taken from a “creativity training” book that was popular at the time, and then compared my “trained” subjects’ subsequent creativity test scores to the scores of a similar, “untrained” group of subjects.
The results convinced me that creativity — at least as measured by the creativity test — can be enhanced through even minimal “creativity training” activities.
Although I haven’t kept up with all of the literature and research on creativity since then, I occasionally find an article on the subject that piques my interest.
A current Newsweek article got my attention, but its conclusion troubles me. Here’s the gist of what it says “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.”
Creative thinkers can probably think of some good reasons for that.
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