An article in Psychology Today says that studies of creativity show it is on the decline.
The decline of creativity is concurrent with the rise of testing and accountability in American schools.
This is particularly disturbing because America’s trump card has always been creativity, ingenuity, wit, and innovation.
In our reckless pursuit to “race to the top” of test scores, we are sacrificing what matters most to our nation’s future economic success.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am not surprised. When all you do is rote learning where do the suits think creativity and original thinking is going to come from? O..wait. That’s one of the goals; to make an underclass of rote workers. Silly me.
Once again, their children are not suffering the same fate.
I get tired of saying it, but it’s once again other people’s children
I also blame the ubiquity of electronic gizmos. Kids spend too much time watching flickering screens and not enough time actually doing stuff. Adults too.
I read the article with some skepticism, since I believe that a great deal of creativity takes place in private and in quiet, not in school (even schools that foster creativity). Also, it exists on the individual’s terms. A person who scores low on a “creativity” test might have composed a sonata, and we wouldn’t know it.
That said, I found this part intriguing:
“According to Kim’s research, all aspects of creativity have declined, but the biggest decline is in the measure called Creative Elaboration, which assesses the ability to take a particular idea and expand on it in an interesting and novel way.”
I can see reasons why “creative elaboration” would have declined. Students are not encouraged to engage in sustained thinking. Lessons consist of a succession of brief activities; as soon as a student warms up into one, it’s time to move on to the next. Students work in groups, where there’s lots of talk; they don’t get a chance to think things out on their own. Teachers make homework assignments simple and brief in order to help ensure “success.”
Not all classes and not all schools are like this. But the pull is overwhelmingly toward short activities and small-group talk.
On the other hand, I’ve seen some remarkable creative work from my students–work that not only started out with a good idea, but carried it through.
Thanks for drawing attention to this piece. The key is how one defines terms like creativity, freedom and even testing. perhaps standardization is the real villain, whatever that is. Freedom…well it depends on whether it is freedom to or freedom from. I think one of the villains in this scenario is the way we are dmistorting and mismeasuring competition. Alfie Kohn surely would agree.
Everyone should just be quiet, get back to work, and make sure you hit your numbers.
Or else.
We, teachers, are part of the problem. We all, or most of us have known for along time what is going on is wrong. Our voices have been unheard. It’s time we get some backbone and speak out!
This has been the prevalent notion for years about “underlings” and not just in education. What ever happened to all that extravagant talk about more egalitarian work places? It all sounded like nonsense years ago as the educational leaders formed all the committees and then ignored them and did precisely as they pleased. But at least, they knew to form committees to cover themselves. Now it’s all a Race to the Bottom with the pooh-bahs completely in charge. And when they fail (and they will) it will be somebody else’s (read that teacher’s) fault. It’s really astonishing that our “leadership” can be so arrogant and dumb at the same time. Enough! If I go any further I’ll start to throw things…..
While all kids appreciate opportunities to express themselves through the arts, we have found that special education children can often express themselves most clearly and freely in this subject. To deny them this place to shine is sinful.
a few years ago, I had a pair of boys who were among the worst students I’ve ever taught, in terms of academic skill and behavior. When I assigned them a creative project, they worked their butts off and made one of the most incredible examples of student work I have seen. It was the Circe episode from the Odyssey done as a a stop-action, claymation film. It required research on the Odyssey and an enormous amount of creativity, task-commitment, not to mention a wide variety of technical expertise.
I hate to think of such potential withering on the vine.
STEM subjects can foster creativity. As a related arts teacher, I am baffled by the instistence by so many of my colleagues that my subject is an outlet for kids. ALL subjects can speak to the creative mind. As well not every minute of an arts class is spent on creativity–just like with any other area, there is a need for understanding rules of structure.
I agree heartily with LG. There is much more to the arts than creativity and self-expression. (I’m especially wary of the association of the latter with the arts; even artistic works are not necessarily expressions of the creator’s self.
I wrote about this in a recent blog, “A Sense of Tuning and Timing”:
Wonderfully written article. Your words echo a part of my approach as an arts educator, primarily of music.
Music is a human reflection–a true representation of the being, yet a source of “self-interaction with humanity as individual” can “speak” for all through its study. To know art, one must know himself–to know the art of others one must know others.
I had the great honor to study with music education philosopher David Elliott at a time when I was re-assigned to K-5 general/vocal music after having built a strong 6-8 instrumental program in my district. My attitude was desperate as I searched for how I could make a difference teaching a level and medium with which I never felt comfortable. Elliott gave me food-for-thought. His philosophy is that music is a human experience and thus ought to be “known” through a series of spiraling experiences (experiential knowledge) coupled with a supervisory knowledge borne from the acts of being a musician. He believes the ultimate purpose of music education is to bring human joy to the participant.
I believe that creativity is innate and comes from the self, but the archetypes of our sense of aesthetic are so tightly knit in our cultural experiences that we are but conduits for human creativity. We are the sum of all of our learning, and branches from the growth of our fellow “trees” brush up against us thus informing our own growth. Musical experiences are unique in that we become them through our participation in them. This is the philosophy of arts education that I adopt. Experiences inform the being–and it’s up to the educator to guide the student to these experiences so that they may be adopted in a personal fashion by each student. This task may seem monumental, but one need only look at the experience itself to know how it can be humanly satisfying in that there is, at the very least, one thing musical for every learner in every situation. It is the educator’s job to find that one thing and bring the student to that place in himself that ultimately enjoys the experience. Sometimes that one thing requires a more logical, formal approach, but the ultimate goal is the development of the human aesthetic, not necessarily the musical one although that is often a happy by-product of the endeavor. This approach goes against the aesthetic concept of arts study and instead puts the human at the center of the purpose. Thus, the philosophy can be applied to any subject area.
As an arts teacher in a public high school (and I’m one of the lucky ones right now — I still have a vibrant music/drama program with an administration and a community that, by and large, supports it), I have seen my students’ willingness to take risks tragically affected by the standardizing culture. They never want to be “wrong”. They don’t understand that experimentation and yes, even “failing” are necessary in order to learn. The don’t understand this because “failure” has been drilled into them as the ultimate in shame and disgrace rather than an opportunity to learn and grow as thinkers, artists, and human beings. They also don’t understand that one’s resiliency and attitude in the face of “failure” or even just mild adversity is what demonstrates true character. At the first hint of challenge, they shut down and want to quit. I have seen it time and time again. They won’t take risks because of the possibility that they might “fail”, even if it means they will learn and grown in the process.
And who can blame them? They have grown up in a world where there was one right answer, you had to bubble it in properly with the proper pencil, and the outcome of the bubbling determined more than they could possibly comprehend but they knew its ramifications were huge. True creativity demands the use of divergent thinking and the possibility that there may actually be more than one way to solve a problem. That’s what makes America great — our ability to innovate, collaborate, and solve any number and complexity of problems. I shudder to think of this generation’s inability to do just those things as a result of “education reform”. It needs to stop, and soon.
Sadly I am sure this applies to both students and teachers.
Thank you to the science teacher who let my son hand in elaborate hand-drawn cartoons explaining scientific processes. And to the history teacher whose project options allowed for students to act out interviews with historical figures. Thanks to my daughter’s high school English teacher who allowed the students to make puppets and perform scenes from A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Thanks to the physics teacher who let the students design and build model bridges and catapults (and I mean really build them, by hand, not using a computer program.) Thank you to my own teachers. I still remember the diorama I made showing features of the state of Oregon. I was in fourth grade and it was 1959. In 6th grade my teacher let me write lyrics to a song that was performed at an assembly. Funny, I don’t remember many standardized tests. I believe my students need creative learning opportunities — to grow, to shine, to look forward to school, to deepen their understanding of complex ideas.
I teach computer class to inner-city middle schoolers – Knowing that the CORE Curr. is looming over my colleagues in CORE subject – I try to extend their lessons creatively – using Web2.0 like Glogster,GoAnimate, Xtranormal – we all need to collaborate w each other against the rising tide of testing…we, as teachers, can do our part to encourage creativity even in typing class. We can do it!