The Creativity Crisis
According to a recent study at the U.S. College of William and Mary, children are falling behind in their ability to be creative. From 1958, when the first Torrance Test of Creativity was administered to almost 400 children from kindergarten to grade six, to 1990, creativity has been on the upswing. But the opposite has been happening since then.
A review of 300,000 scores shows that something is very wrong. Why the drop? It’s possible that television, video games, and computer are contributing to the decline as well as lack of creativity development in schools. Around the world, some countries are making creativity development a major priority. For example, Britain revamped its secondary-school curricula in 2008 to emphasis idea generation in all areas of study, the European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity, and China has started education reforms that are replacing rote learning with problem-based learning. Newsweek magazine’s report “The Creativity Crisis” looks at the issue in detail.
Annie Wood is a knowledge curator, content strategist, publisher, and writer based in Toronto, Canada. She was the publisher and creative director at the children’s book publishing company, Kids Can Press. Her book list included topics previously unexplored in Canada that helped to create a more inclusive literary culture for children.
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