America is experiencing a creativity crisis. That's what is being reported, and it appears to be true. Tests and measures of creativity (the Torrance creativity index) in school-age children indicate a decline that began two decades ago.
Let's begin with two quotes from different sources with different questions in mind. The first cites the decline in American childhood creativity, and implies the obvious questions. The second, poses a broader question, a baffling unknown, really, about the evolutionary development of human civilization and the evolving creativity that paved the way. I suggest that the most recent thinking on the answer to the second supports or affirms the answer to the first. First from Newsweek:
Let's begin with two quotes from different sources with different questions in mind. The first cites the decline in American childhood creativity, and implies the obvious questions. The second, poses a broader question, a baffling unknown, really, about the evolutionary development of human civilization and the evolving creativity that paved the way. I suggest that the most recent thinking on the answer to the second supports or affirms the answer to the first. First from Newsweek:
[A]fter analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults, [Kyung Hee] Kim [at the College of William & Mary] 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."
The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 "leadership competency" of the future. Yet it's not just about sustaining our nation's economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.
It's too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it's left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there's no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.
Then next, let's consider this seemingly unrelated question posed in an article in the Wall Street Journal:
Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?
As to our first question posed, the Newsweek article offers considerable evidence for a decades-long decline in the creativity in American school children, and the opinions of the experts cited are that it is material, indeed. And if it is too early to determine conclusively why, the culprits suggested are apparently the most likely ones. But the Newsweek article says not another word about children's time and attention consumed with television and video games. Rather, it moves directly to a discussion of creative activities and curricula in their schools. I understand.--"Humans: Why They Triumphed," by Matt Ridley, Wall Street Journal (5.22.10). Matt Ridley is a well published and respected science writer, and the author of Genome and Nature Via Nurture.
I too will leave the impact of excessive time spent before television sets and video games largely unaddressed here, although I too suspect this is a material contributing factor. But even if it is, legal restrictions on watching television or access to video games would rightly seem most inappropriate in a freedom-loving and freedom-protecting America. Here open markets and freedom of choice rule, and access to instruments, substances and pastimes (e.g., weapons, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and gambling) that ruin or end lives are considered well within the rights and choices left to our citizens. The effects of television and video games would appear to most tame and benign by comparison, whether that is true or not. Caveat emptor remains the watchword, and each person--and each parent on behalf of their children--must marshal available information and exercise care in their choices as an informed buyer or user, however poorly those choices are often made.
But education and curricula are different matters. Those are matters parents and citizens care very much about regulating--as do our government, school systems, and teachers. But that does not mean change would be readily sought or accepted. There are many and varied personal, professional, organizational and governmental interests to be negotiated and served. And some of those varied interests are served only to the exclusion or diminishment of others. We all know that. So let's deal with our our remaining questions on curriculum and creativity.
I am unaware of a discrete, creativity-based curricular foundation or structure on or with which a subject area curriculum is integrated and taught. At least not in public or or most independent schools with which I am acquainted. If that is correct, one might reasonably assume or argue that we have managed well enough for most of our past without concerted creativity development programs in our public schools. Why then should we believe that now, all of a sudden, creativity is something that has to be taught or integrated into school curricula--or that it even can be?
And more, there is a group of citizens who will likely argue that the creativity problem is more likely related to the failure of schools to teach basic subjects and information as well as we did in our more distant past, that we need to accelerate and complete the initiative started in most schools to teach more factual information for memory, to test more often and in more depth for factual knowledge, and further to teach more of what is deemed necessary to perform well on those tests. And isn't that the approach so long and so effectively employed to develop the high-achieving test takers in Asian countries?
This is by now a decades-old dispute. For many others--most all in educational research on teaching practice, in fact--would disagree with that assessment and understanding. They would argue that it is that movement in the direction of stressing too much the teaching of factual information that has robbed the curriculum and subject area teaching of the necessary time for discussion and exploration of ideas, for the development of original thinking. They would argue that if creativity in students is declining, it is because the new stress placed on teaching to a set of facts or a knowledge base, and teaching to the testing of them, is now bereft of the prior built-in opportunity to practice and exhibit more creativity. So who is right?
Let's start with the fact that many other countries are moving away from America's new direction and toward our older model, and that includes some of the Asian tigers known for their knowledge testing, but not for their creativity and inventiveness. From the Newsweek article:
Around the world, though, other countries are making creativity development a national priority. In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation, and pilot programs have begun using Torrance's test to assess their progress. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. 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. 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.' "
And as I noted, most of those researchers in America's graduate education schools would agree. Yet teachers are overwhelmed by the current curriculum requirements and standards, and believe there is no more time in the day or room in the curriculum for a "creativity class." But researchers say the argument that we can't teach creativity because students are already expected to learn too much is "a false trade off."
And for those who argue that creativity is a genetic prescription, and not at all learned, the current research evidence does not support that. Yes, there is a creative capacity or ability that each student is born with, and it differs from student to student. But the opportunity to learn and practice creativity skills influences directly how much of that capacity is realized, and how much of that ability finds confident expression. The Newsweek article:
And for those who argue that creativity is a genetic prescription, and not at all learned, the current research evidence does not support that. Yes, there is a creative capacity or ability that each student is born with, and it differs from student to student. But the opportunity to learn and practice creativity skills influences directly how much of that capacity is realized, and how much of that ability finds confident expression. The Newsweek article:
To understand exactly what should be done requires first understanding the new story emerging from neuroscience. The lore of pop psychology is that creativity occurs on the right side of the brain. But we now know that if you tried to be creative using only the right side of your brain, it'd be like living with ideas perpetually at the tip of your tongue, just beyond reach.
When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn't come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the "aha!" moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it's come up with.
Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.
Is this learnable? ...[T]here are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone to divergent thinking. But convergent thinking and focused attention are necessary, too, and those require different neural gifts. Crucially, rapidly shifting between these modes is a top-down function under your mental control. University of New Mexico neuroscientist Rex Jung has concluded that those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains' creative networks quicker and better. A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.
So, how might this translate into curricular reform that, in addition to subject matter learning, would provide opportunities for practicing and strengthening individual creativity? And would it work? First, experiments with building creativity training into the curriculum in a way that aligns with the research is proving successful. Programs have been experimented with independently at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan's National Chengchi University. The results at all three affirm that creativity training can have a strong effect on students' expression of creativity, that "creativity can be taught."
But, what might this change look like, how might it operate, in "America's standards-obsessed schools?" And how will it incorporate the vast amount of subject information that also has to be taught? An example is given of a new public middle school in Akron Ohio, the National Inventors Hall of Fame School. They placed a creativity based structure at the center of the process, and worked subject matter information into it. Again. from the Newsweek article:
But, what might this change look like, how might it operate, in "America's standards-obsessed schools?" And how will it incorporate the vast amount of subject information that also has to be taught? An example is given of a new public middle school in Akron Ohio, the National Inventors Hall of Fame School. They placed a creativity based structure at the center of the process, and worked subject matter information into it. Again. from the Newsweek article:
Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding. How does sound travel through materials? What materials reduce noise the most? Then, problem-finding—anticipating all potential pitfalls so their designs are more likely to work. Next, idea-finding: generate as many ideas as possible. Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing? Then teams developed a plan of action. Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.
Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity: alternating between divergent and convergent thinking, they arrived at original and useful ideas. And they'd unwittingly mastered Ohio's required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. "You never see our kids saying, 'I'll never use this so I don't need to learn it,' " says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. "Instead, kids ask, 'Do we have to leave school now?' " Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state's achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.
With as much as three fourths of each day spent in project-based learning, principal Buckner and her team actually work through required curricula, carefully figuring out how kids can learn it through the steps of Treffinger's Creative Problem-Solving method and other creativity pedagogies. "The creative problem-solving program has the highest success in increasing children's creativity," observed William & Mary's Kim...
[And in conclusion:]
While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses...Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
A reasonable and strong case made, I'd say. Not water tight, and not likely to deter or assuage the "drill and test" advocates; we'd need a lot more experience with the new model for that. But it is a strong case, strong enough to justify broader experimentation and experience with similar programs in a variety of school settings.
But then we have to ask whether there are other sources of information, affirmation or support that might move us to even greater confidence in this new approach to creativity development? I had recently read another article, the Ridley article in the WSJ. Not only did it appear related, it struck me that the answer to the puzzle of the evolution of human innovation was, surprisingly, a cultural evolutionary process very similar in nature and process to these proposals for developing creativity in school curricula. They both appear to be based on the same or similar developmental factors and influences. Perhaps it's just me, but if anything might help undergird the validity of this new pedagogical approach--other than it really appears to work, and the neuroscience appears to help explain it--it might be its evolutionary history. So let's explore further what is now known about it.
When we left Mr. Ridley, he was laying out the previously unexplained puzzle of how or why human civilization just "took off" about 45,000 years ago, even though the basic physiological development and tool technologies had been unchanged for about 500,000 years. From the WSJ article:
But then we have to ask whether there are other sources of information, affirmation or support that might move us to even greater confidence in this new approach to creativity development? I had recently read another article, the Ridley article in the WSJ. Not only did it appear related, it struck me that the answer to the puzzle of the evolution of human innovation was, surprisingly, a cultural evolutionary process very similar in nature and process to these proposals for developing creativity in school curricula. They both appear to be based on the same or similar developmental factors and influences. Perhaps it's just me, but if anything might help undergird the validity of this new pedagogical approach--other than it really appears to work, and the neuroscience appears to help explain it--it might be its evolutionary history. So let's explore further what is now known about it.
When we left Mr. Ridley, he was laying out the previously unexplained puzzle of how or why human civilization just "took off" about 45,000 years ago, even though the basic physiological development and tool technologies had been unchanged for about 500,000 years. From the WSJ article:
The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as never before...
Scientists have so far been looking for the answer to this riddle in the wrong place: inside human heads. Most have been expecting to find a sort of neural or genetic breakthrough that sparked a "big bang of human consciousness," an auspicious mutation so that people could speak, think or plan better, setting the human race on the path to continuous and exponential innovation.
[But,] Trade was the most momentous innovation of the human species because it led to the invention of invention.
But the sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. It is a collective enterprise. Nobody—literally nobody—knows how to make the pencil on my desk (as the economist Leonard Read once pointed out), let alone the computer on which I am writing. The knowledge of how to design, mine, fell, extract, synthesize, combine, manufacture and market these things is fragmented among thousands, sometimes millions of heads. Once human progress started, it was no longer limited by the size of human brains. Intelligence became collective and cumulative.
In the modern world, innovation is a collective enterprise that relies on exchange. As Brian Arthur argues in his book "The Nature of Technology," nearly all technologies are combinations of other technologies and new ideas come from swapping things and thoughts.
It is at this point that Ridley connects this defining corner turned in human cultural evolution by analogy to our biological evolution and the medium of sex.
The notion that exchange stimulated innovation by bringing together different ideas has a close parallel in biological evolution. The Darwinian process by which creatures change depends crucially on sexual reproduction, which brings together mutations from different lineages. Without sex, the best mutations defeat the second best, which then get lost to posterity. With sex, they come together and join the same team. So sex makes evolution a collective and cumulative process in which any individual can draw on the gene pool of the whole species. And when it comes to gene pools, the species with gene lakes generally do better than the ones with gene ponds—hence the vulnerability of island species to competition with continental ones.
It is precisely the same in cultural evolution. Trade is to culture as sex is to biology. Exchange makes cultural change collective and cumulative. It becomes possible to draw upon inventions made throughout society, not just in your neighborhood. The rate of cultural and economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex.
So, as I move to close, what have I learned? When there are more exchanges and discussion of ideas, and more individual interests created and satisfied, more individual reward both tangible and psychological, then there is more creativity and innovation resulting--and greater collective benefit as well. But we already knew that didn't we? And should we be surprised that I just broadly described the proposed approach to building creativity development into subject matter teaching nearly as well as the cultural evolution of human innovation through trading relationships? Mr. Ridley concludes:
There's a cheery modern lesson in this theory about ancient events. Given that progress is inexorable, cumulative and collective if human beings exchange and specialize, then globalization and the Internet are bound to ensure furious economic progress in the coming century—despite the usual setbacks from recessions, wars, spendthrift governments and natural disasters.
The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income ninefold—world-wide—in little more than a century is driven by ideas having sex. And things like the search engine, the mobile phone and container shipping just made ideas a whole lot more promiscuous still.
Now, doesn't that bring it all back around and connect the cultural evolution of human creativity with the importance of a complementary educational process that strengthens individual creativity--to the advantage and betterment of both the individual and society? Should we be concerned that we are retreating from anything like this type of pedagogical model while other countries are racing toward it?
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