For the next few Mondays, I’ll be writing a series of posts focusing on creativity – why it’s important for our children and how we can foster it – for the folks over at Willow Creek Pediatrics. It’s a topic I’m very passionate about, so hop on over and check out this week’s installment. Here’s a little taste:
With our country’s current emphasis on standardized test-based education, anyone anywhere can find loads of statistics on how states, districts, schools, even individual children are scoring on math and reading (both important, to be sure). But can anyone know how much creativity is being nurtured and encouraged in any one school or classroom? No one’s following the creativity quotient of every schoolchild in America. But should they?
A few groups of researchers in this country are monitoring creativity in a sample of American students. One in particular, Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William and Mary reviewed nearly 300,000 samples of measured creativity and came to a conclusion almost one year ago that has left many who follow her research concerned. Typically, each subsequent generation produces higher scores on measures of both intelligence and creativity than the one before, products of their increasingly improved and enriched environments. But, as Kim discovered, creativity scores have been consistently declining for America’s youngest citizens, a trend that began about 20 years ago.
What exactly is creativity, and why is it important?
Read the whole post and get in on the discussion, over at Willow Creek Pediatrics!
Top photo by clix.