It has been stimulating to pay attention again to the design world — and this time as it intersects with business. So different media pieces now attract my attention. My colleague and co-instructor in the upcoming B.Com Sauder D-Studio, Ron Kellett, drew my attention to a recent article in Newsweek — actually the front-page story:
Creativity in America — the graphic is an American flag made with whole and broken red, white and blue crayons. Quite effective.
The article itself is fascinating. It is called The Creativity Crisis. (Newsweek July 19, 2010). “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong — and how can we fix it?” Several pages report on the research undertaken at a variety of institutions. Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary analyzed almost 300,000 Torrance scores (the standard creativity test) for children and adults. Apparently creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have gone down, especially in younger children.
This is a serious matter. As the authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point out, the necessity for human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.” The authors posit several reasons for the decline — hours in front of the TV, video games — but perhaps even more profound is the gap in our curricula for learners to engage in creative activity.
One of my favourite points from the article is that
…creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom…creativity isn’t about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact-finding and deep research are vital stages in the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way.
Enter the studio and the pedagogy attached to the studio. The studio environment is designed to support the development of creative and critical thinking with a learner-centred approach. This is sometimes a shock to students who are used to being told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. An upcoming blog will talk more about the studio and its methodologies for teaching and learning.
Just to finish off the Newsweek piece — they devote a page to de-bunking brainstorming as an effective technique (as well as a lot of commercially available creativity training that focus on imagination exercises, expression of feelings, or imagery). “They pander to an easy, unchallenging notion that al you have to do is let your natural creativity out of its shell.” I agree that these techniques alone are not what developing our creativity capacity is about. But I’m not sure I cast them in the garbage so freely.
The techniques suggested by the authors that “do” boost the creative process are:
Don’t Tell Someone to “Be Creative” — instead “Do something only you would come up with — that none of your friends or family would think of” — this is a more useful request in terms of boosting creative responses.
Reduce Screen Time — if a child spends 3 hours in front of a TV that could be a 1/3 reduction in creative time
Get Moving — every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise (get thee to the gym or playground)
Follow a Passion — develop a deep passion and pursue it 100%
Ditch the Suggestion Box (electronic or physical) — they stifle creativity as most employees feel they go into a black hole — so the deal is implementing ideas, e.g. Toyota’s plant in Kentucky is successful — it implements 99% of employee’s ideas
Take a Break — multi-task with problems/projects — keep more than one going at a time
Explore Other Cultures — cross-cultural experiences force us to adapt and be more flexible
It is great when these ideas go out into mainstream media like Newsweek. Lots of good information and ideas for moving ahead.
I read this article online last month. I’ve been thinking along these lines for some years, and have been meaning to write a blog-rant about it for just as long, but this is the first time I’ve bumped up against long-term research on the topic.
I’d also like to blame TV and video games, but I fear they are just more distractions (albeit major ones) in what must be a highly distracting world for a child, one where there is simultaneously a great overload of stimuli and a mental environment that doesn’t exactly encourage originality.
The phrase about how there is little creativity development in schools is particularly telling; children do become less creative when it’s not encouraged – there are always other things to do than use your imagination. It’s not just that things like art and music education, even in their most rudimentary forms, are discarded as “frills”, and untestable ones at that, it’s also that there are fewer and fewer teachers left who have any idea of how to encourage creativity – and the spiral goes on and on.
Hi Brian:
Great to hear from you. It does make one wonder about our Faculties of Education and how much emphasis there is on creativity — not just in the “arts” subjects but everywhere. Hope all is well with you.
Moura