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Cecilia Conrad is the vice president for the MacArthur Fellows program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Reports of the death of American creativity are an exaggeration. The hyperloop, Google Glass, nano-pharmaceuticals and mind-controlled robotic legs are all examples of its continued vitality.

That said, people with innovative and cutting-edge ideas have likely spent much of their lives swimming against the tide.

It starts with the tests in K-12, and extends to investors' focus on short-term returns. What if, instead, we encouraged autonomy and flexibility?

Creativity flourishes at the intersections of traditional disciplines, but traditional means of assessment often marginalize individuals working to define new and unique fields of endeavor. From the high-stakes tests in K-12, to the academic tenure clock, to the economy's focus on short-term return on investments, American society's reward structures tend to discourage unconventional thinking and limit risk-taking.

And yet, creativity thrives in an environment where individuals have the freedom to devote time and effort to ideas and projects that may not have an immediate payoff - projects like John Dabiri's analysis of the aerodynamics of schools of fish, to inform the optimal placement of wind turbines. Creativity requires giving self-directed original thinkers space for the missteps and dead ends that are often prerequisites for groundbreaking work. That's the philosophy behind the MacArthur Fellows program and its "no strings attached" grants.

For over 30 years, the MacArthur Foundation has recognized and inspired creativity among the Dabiris of the world through its fellowship program. Each year the program awards 20 to 25 exceptionally talented individuals five-year, unrestricted fellowships, which the news media have dubbed "genius grants."

The widespread adoption of a "no strings attached" rewards structure is neither practical nor advisable. However, the basic insight - that the best incubator for creativity is an environment that gives the individual autonomy and flexibility - should inform the design of incentives in both the schoolhouse and the workplace. A healthy society requires that we cultivate the next generation of innovators to maintain economic competitiveness, to solve deep-rooted social problems and to create objects of beauty that inspire.

Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate.

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Cecilia Conrad is the vice president for the MacArthur Fellows program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Reports of the death of American creativity are an exaggeration. The hyperloop, Google Glass, nano-pharmaceuticals and mind-controlled robotic legs are all examples of its continued vitality.

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The Colorado Curriculum Overview Samples were written by and for Colorado educators as a way to understand and translate the state standards into curriculum. Users of the samples should feel free to copy, distribute and transmit the samples and to adapt them to fit their needs.

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K8 Curriculum Samples | K8 Homeschool Curriculum

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Comprehensive K8 curriculum samples from Global Village School

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Our curriculum samples are downloadable and include a description and outline of the entire year, along with sample lessons taken from the coursebooks. Don't forget to check out individual grade pages (preK-8) and course pages (high school) for more information and overviews of each grade or course. K-8 Curriculum

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Teachers that want to encourage creativity in the classroom should make sure they are giving their students a lot of choice and different options when it comes to assignments and projects.

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Nurturing divergent thinking
in studio art classes
© Marvin Bartel 2001 - 2008
author bio

What happens to our creativity as we mature?

84% rank high in creativity in Kindergarten
10% rank high in creativity in grade 2

from: Robert McGarvey "Creative Thinking" USAIR, June 1990, p. 36

-------------------------------------

The following is from the web site of the United Kingdom Literacy Trust, November 6, 2005

From Glasgow, A conference in March, 2005, by the Scottish Book Trust,

I quote:
"Sir Ken Robinson, chair of the UK Government's report on creativity, education and the economy, described research that showed that young people lost their ability to think in "divergent or non-linear ways", a key component of creativity. Of 1,600 children aged three to five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent ways. By the time they were aged eight to 10, 32% could think divergently. When the same test was applied to 13 to 15-year-olds, only 10% could think in this way. And when the test was used with 200,000 25-year-olds, only 2% could think divergently. . . . Education is driven by the idea of one answer and this idea of divergent thinking becomes stifled.' He described creativity as the 'genetic code' of education and said it was essential for the new economic circumstances of the 21st century." signed: (TESS, 25 March 2005)

source - http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/thinking.html#wither
Copyright © National Literacy Trust 2008 (UK)
The above quote is from 2005
This link was last checked on 23 August 2008, and the above statement was still posted.

Listen to this creative YouTube talk: "Do schools today kill creativity?" by Ken Robinson
It has been viewed 384,744 times as of October 9, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

What are the reasons children become less creative

Above is a child's bird drawn from experience and memory

This child is asked to color workbook birds for math (above)

Birds drawn by this child after the stereotyping effects of the workbook

These illustrations are taken from: Viktor Lowenfeld and W. Lambert Brittain.
Creative and Mental Growth, 6th ed. 1970. Macmillan, NY. p. 109

REVIEW of Practical Recommendations for avoiding this loss of creativity.
How do I, as an art teacher work at nurturing a culture of divergent thinking in studio artwork?

1. I avoid using stereotyping drawing guide books, drawing formulas (number of heads in a body), patterns, coloring books, dot to dot games, etc. In our family, our kids had lots of art materials, but no coloring books. They colored within lines that they created.

2. I encourage work from real experiences, observations, and imagination , not from imitation ? Experiences are remembered. Observation simply means that children can look at things and learn to draw them. Imagination is the unique ability that makes us human. Animals imitate. Children imitate things to learn uncreative stuff and they imagine things to practice being creative. Children can color their own drawings to develop their fine motor skill - no need to give them coloring books?

3. I provide ample materials and blank paper, not workbooks and coloring books?

4. I motivate with open questions questions to encourage innovation. An open questions has more than one answer. Often I say, "This part is good. Is there anything else that your picture needs?" This is a very open question that asks for thinking.

5. I ask "thinking" questions - I do not make suggestions - I do not draw for the child. To remind a child to include ears, I do not say, "Does your girl need ears?" A thinking question would be, "What kind of music does your girl like to listen to? How can she hear the music?" I do not ask, "Does the face need a mouth? I ask, "What is the best tasting vegetable? How does your boy eat it?" Artwork is owned by the artist who comes up with the ideas. Questions, not suggestions, allow this ownership based on observing, on experiences and on the imagination.

6. I e ncourage children to be choice makers . I have child decide what their work needs. If a child asks me for help, I help by asking the child to give me several of her ideas. Then I say that these are good ideas, and ask her which one she likes best.
Also #8 below.

7. I encourage practice-practice-practice while coaching to improve practice techniques and to make the hard stuff easy enough so that discouragement does not set in. I try to make learning hard enough to be challenging (not boring), and easy enough to avoid total frustration.

8. I encourage experimentation as learning. Instead of showing how something is done, I ask them to try it several ways (maybe on another piece of paper). I then ask the the child to select the best idea or discovery that comes out of experimentation. I remain open to and encourage fresh ideas from children. Even when I think something will not work, it is often better to encourage a child to learn from experience rather than to extinguish the experiment before it starts.

9. I affirm and celebrate mistakes as learning. The lack of mistakes is an indication of "playing it too safe." Many new ideas emerge from mistakes and solutions to mistakes. Both art and science are filled with important discoveries that began as mistakes. A Wikipedia search of the word "serendipity" lists many such examples. As teachers, we make a mistake when we penalize mistakes rather than help students make discoveries from them. Too often we teach children to fear mistakes rather than discover what can be learned from them.

10. To build awareness I focus attention to visual detail such as texture, proportion, counting parts, color changes, tonal changes, and so on during observation and during experiences even when the child is not actively drawing. This can happen in many places such as a nature walk, looking at buildings, studying toys, visiting an animal, and so on. I use lots of questions. Later, when drawings are done, they include much more.

11. I ask for careful attention to experiences. I ask lots of awareness questions about what we are seeing, touching, smelling, tasting, hearing, etc. Drawings and life will be richer. I ask for conclusions from observations. Review with emphasis on child's own observations and experiences. Ask, "How could you draw, paint, or model this?"

12. I emphasize the importance divergent approaches by changing habits of work. "Where do you like to start your drawing? What happens when you start it at a different place?" "What if you start with the background?" "How is it different when you plan the arrangement of things than when you just start with what is most important?" What does this say about freedom? It generally means that assignments must have new requirements and limits, but it does not show a model to follow.

13. I encourage creative peer interaction where children are coached to cooperate and compete with peers in demonstrating divergent thinking and outcomes. I use games activities that give points or positive feedback for unique ideas and expressions rather than copying and mimicking each other. I coach children to ask each other questions as they help each other learn to do new things.

14. I encourage the "What if". . . . . ." questions and use the "Try it." answer.

Workbooks and coloring books are probably a fairly small part of the issue. What other possible reasons are there for the huge drop in divergent thinking ability from Kindergarten to grade two? Human instinct and normal development may be largely responsible for our drop in divergent thinking as we mature. Does this excuse us when we teach in ways that reward copying and minicking rather than letting kids know the secrets and strategies that highly creative people use when they think.

What are other possible reasons there are fewer creative children in second grade than in kindergarten? Before reading my list, what if you jot down your list? What if you try out your own divergent thinking and see what your list looks like? This is my list.

| Bartel HOME PAGE for Art Education Topics back to AfternoonSabbatical.html

Bartelart.com Art Department Bartel Courses Marvin Bartel Home Bartel Artwork

last update 8-23-08

All rights reserved. © Marvin Bartel. 2001. contact the author

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Creative thinking decreases as children get older

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Nurturing divergent thinking in studio art classes © Marvin Bartel 2001 - 2008 author bio What happens to our creativity as we mature? 84% rank high in creativity in Kindergarten 10% rank high in creativity in grade 2 from: Robert McGarvey "Creative Thinking" USAIR, June 1990, p.

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They may not be as creative as we had assumed, a new study finds. Education expert Amanda Ripley on the lessons for American teachers and parents

Wherever I go, from Santiago to Seoul, I am always comforted to hear one consistently positive thing said about Americans: we may not be the wisest or the thinnest people on the planet, but we can think outside of the box! The world will give us that.

Usually, this assertion is accompanied by a passing reference to Steve Jobs or Google, and no one argues the point. In fact, each year, officials in places like South Korea and Singapore leave their higher-performing education systems to come study how we Americans cultivate creativity in our schools and universities. Never mind that the actual Steve Jobs loathed school for much of his childhood. There must be something we are doing right here!

Yesterday, we got a bit more data to put this assumption to the test-through a new, fairly sophisticated test of creative problem-solving administered in 40 countries in by the OECD. This computerized test, a subset of the organization's larger international exam (known as the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA), attempts to measure how well 15-year-olds can creatively solve realistic, 21 st century problems with no obvious, standard solutions.

Try out a few of the questions here and see for yourself. Personally, I'm not sure this test even begins to measure the important and more operatic aspects of creativity (from optimism to risk-taking), but it is still intriguing. Relative to the vast majority of tests, these questions do seem better designed to assess our abilities to identify patterns, to tolerate doubt and to use intuition and initiative to sort out a workable solution.

One sample question features a new air conditioner system-one that comes with no instructions. The unit features three unlabeled controls, as well as a digital display of the current temperature and humidity. The student's job is to figure out how to work it-interacting with the sliding control knobs on the screen to try to suss out what does what. It's like an IKEA Rorschach test, one that's all too real for most adults.

Admittedly, these are probably not the skills that lead to Hollywood stardom (though I look forward to that PISA test...), but they are the kinds of skills that good jobs now demand: the ability to quickly process lots of ambiguous information in order to make a judgment call and act; the skills to adapt when things don't go the way you expect.

The results, it turns out, are not entirely demoralizing for the United States, which is a nice change from other international tests. U.S. teenagers actually do slightly better in problem solving than they do in math, for example, and even a bit higher than other kids from other countries with similarly mediocre math, reading and science skills.

So we are creative! Right? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, these results do suggest that our teenagers are more creative than they are learned, which is worth something in an era when knowledge is cheap and thinking is priceless.

Then again, we are not as creative as everyone seems to think-and certainly not exceptionally creative relative to the rest of the world. The Asian education powerhouses trounced us on this test, just as they do in math. Canada, Australia and Finland also scored well above the U.S.

We rank somewhere between 12 and 21 on the list, around the same level as Italy and Germany. South Korea ranks at the top of the world, up there with Singapore, even though Korean students, parents, teachers and politicians all universally told me that their system stifled creativity-by focusing too much on rote learning and test scores.

So what to make of it all? For me, the takeaway from these results is that creativity-just like grit-does not occupy a separate sphere from academics. In the best of all worlds, these things interact, and that's where great innovation happens. After all, all over the world, teenagers who did well on this test also tended to do well on the main PISA test of critical thinking in math, reading and science. They are comfortable identifying connections, building mental models and remaining flexible when things change.

There is no short cut, in other words. Creativity requires a foundation, one that includes self-discipline, deep learning and the ability to reason-all of which are taught to great effect in rigorous classrooms.

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

It may be that Korean students are doing less rote learning than they think-or it may be that they are doing a lot of all kinds of learning. Whatever they are doing, Korea's system is leaving students-even large numbers of poor students-with remarkably remarkable levels of higher-order skills, in a wide range of disciplines. (Poland, by contrast, does very well on the main PISA subject tests but worse than the U.S. on this new problem-solving exam, suggesting that the Poles need to work harder to help students transfer academic skills to unfamiliar, real-life problems.)

For the United States, our so-so results are neither depressing nor affirming. They suggest that we "do not make the most of student potential in core subjects," as the OECD analysis puts it, rather politely. If we did make the most of our student potential, imagine what we could do! We could do math and movies, and maybe the next Steve Jobs wouldn't dread elementary school as much as the first one did.

Wherever I go, from Santiago to Seoul, I am always comforted to hear one consistently positive thing said about Americans: we may not be the wisest or the thinnest people on the planet, but we can think outside of the box! The world will give us that.

Usually, this assertion is accompanied by a passing reference to Steve Jobs or Google, and no one argues the point. In fact, each year, officials in places like South Korea and Singapore leave their higher-performing education systems to come study how we Americans cultivate creativity in our schools and universities. Never mind that the actual Steve Jobs loathed school for much of his childhood. There must be something we are doing right here!

Yesterday, we got a bit more data to put this assumption to the test-through a new, fairly sophisticated test of creative problem-solving administered in 40 countries in by the OECD. This computerized test, a subset of the organization's larger international exam (known as the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA), attempts to measure how well 15-year-olds can creatively solve realistic, 21 st century problems with no obvious, standard solutions.

Try out a few of the questions here and see for yourself. Personally, I'm not sure this test even begins to measure the important and more operatic aspects of creativity (from optimism to risk-taking), but it is still intriguing. Relative to the vast majority of tests, these questions do seem better designed to assess our abilities to identify patterns, to tolerate doubt and to use intuition and initiative to sort out a workable solution.

One sample question features a new air conditioner system-one that comes with no instructions. The unit features three unlabeled controls, as well as a digital display of the current temperature and humidity. The student's job is to figure out how to work it-interacting with the sliding control knobs on the screen to try to suss out what does what. It's like an IKEA Rorschach test, one that's all too real for most adults.

Admittedly, these are probably not the skills that lead to Hollywood stardom (though I look forward to that PISA test...), but they are the kinds of skills that good jobs now demand: the ability to quickly process lots of ambiguous information in order to make a judgment call and act; the skills to adapt when things don't go the way you expect.

The results, it turns out, are not entirely demoralizing for the United States, which is a nice change from other international tests. U.S. teenagers actually do slightly better in problem solving than they do in math, for example, and even a bit higher than other kids from other countries with similarly mediocre math, reading and science skills.

So we are creative! Right? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, these results do suggest that our teenagers are more creative than they are learned, which is worth something in an era when knowledge is cheap and thinking is priceless.

Then again, we are not as creative as everyone seems to think-and certainly not exceptionally creative relative to the rest of the world. The Asian education powerhouses trounced us on this test, just as they do in math. Canada, Australia and Finland also scored well above the U.S.

We rank somewhere between 12 and 21 on the list, around the same level as Italy and Germany. South Korea ranks at the top of the world, up there with Singapore, even though Korean students, parents, teachers and politicians all universally told me that their system stifled creativity-by focusing too much on rote learning and test scores.

So what to make of it all? For me, the takeaway from these results is that creativity-just like grit-does not occupy a separate sphere from academics. In the best of all worlds, these things interact, and that's where great innovation happens. After all, all over the world, teenagers who did well on this test also tended to do well on the main PISA test of critical thinking in math, reading and science. They are comfortable identifying connections, building mental models and remaining flexible when things change.

There is no short cut, in other words. Creativity requires a foundation, one that includes self-discipline, deep learning and the ability to reason-all of which are taught to great effect in rigorous classrooms.

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

It may be that Korean students are doing less rote learning than they think-or it may be that they are doing a lot of all kinds of learning. Whatever they are doing, Korea's system is leaving students-even large numbers of poor students-with remarkably remarkable levels of higher-order skills, in a wide range of disciplines. (Poland, by contrast, does very well on the main PISA subject tests but worse than the U.S. on this new problem-solving exam, suggesting that the Poles need to work harder to help students transfer academic skills to unfamiliar, real-life problems.)

For the United States, our so-so results are neither depressing nor affirming. They suggest that we "do not make the most of student potential in core subjects," as the OECD analysis puts it, rather politely. If we did make the most of our student potential, imagine what we could do! We could do math and movies, and maybe the next Steve Jobs wouldn't dread elementary school as much as the first one did.

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Wherever I go, from Santiago to Seoul, I am always comforted to hear one consistently positive thing said about Americans: we may not be the wisest or the thinnest people on the planet, but we can think outside of the box! The world will give us that.

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One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1963). The reason for teachers' preferences is quite clear creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others. Other characteristics, although not deserving the label obnoxious, nonetheless may not be those most highly valued in the classroom.

....Research has suggested that traits associated with creativity may not only be neglected, but actively punished (Myers & Torrance, 1961; Stone, 1980). Stone (1980) found that second graders who scored highest on tests of creativity were also those identified by their peers as engaging in the most misbehavior (e.g., "getting in trouble the most"). Given that research and theory (e.g., Harrington, Block, & Block, 1987) suggest that a supportive environment is important to the fostering of creativity, it is quite possible that teachers are (perhaps unwittingly) extinguishing creative behaviors.

From Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?, a good review paper. What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are "sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable." In other words, the teachers don't know what creative students are actually like. (FYI, the research design would have been stronger if the researchers had actually tested the students for creativity.) As a result, schooling has a negative effect on creativity.

My experience as a parent is consistent with the idea that teachers don't like creative students but I try not to blame the teachers too much. Creative people, for better and worse, ignore social conventions. Thus, it can be hard for teachers to deal with creative students in a classroom setting where they must guide 20-30 students en masse. As Jonah Lehrer puts it:

Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem? The point is that the classroom isn't designed for impulsive expression - that's called talking out of turn. Instead, it's all about obeying group dynamics and exerting focused attention. Those are important life skills, of course, but decades of psychological research suggest that such skills have little to do with creativity.

One hope I have for personalized learning, ala the Khan Academy, is that teachers will not feel the need to suppress creative students when classroom dynamics do not require that all the students follow all the rules all the time .

Hat Tip: Erik Barker.

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Teachers Don't Like Creative Students - Marginal REVOLUTION

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One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, ...

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With the increasing pressure on schools to prepare students for high-stakes tests, and a growing dependence on Google and gadgetry for quick answers, is creativity endangered?
Do schools provide young people with enough opportunities to be creative?

Room for Debate recently asked a panel to respond to a similar question, "Is Creativity Endangered?" Cecilia Conrad, the vice president for the MacArthur Fellows program at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, offered this response:

Reports of the death of American creativity are an exaggeration. The hyperloop, Google Glass, nano-pharmaceuticals and mind-controlled robotic legs are all examples of its continued vitality.

That said, people with innovative and cutting-edge ideas have likely spent much of their lives swimming against the tide.

Creativity flourishes at the intersections of traditional disciplines, but traditional means of assessment often marginalize individuals working to define new and unique fields of endeavor. From the high-stakes tests in K-12, to the academic tenure clock, to the economy's focus on short-term return on investments, American society's reward structures tend to discourage unconventional thinking and limit risk-taking....

Students: Tell us ...

How often does your school encourage you to do something creative? To design, invent and imagine new ideas? Tell us about a creative activity or project you have worked on.

Do you think schools provide young people with enough opportunities to be creative? Why?

Are you a creative person? In what ways?

How important do you think creativity is for success? Why?

The Room for Debate piece begins with the statement: "Critics have lamented the 'creativity crisis' in recent years ..." Do you agree with those critics? Do you think America is facing a "creativity crisis?" Explain.

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Do Schools Provide Students With Enough Opportunities to Be Creative?

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With the increasing pressure on schools to prepare students for high-stakes tests, and a growing dependence on Google and gadgetry for quick answers, is creativity endangered? Do schools provide young people with enough opportunities to be creative? Room for Debate recently asked a panel to respond to a similar question, "Is Creativity Endangered?"

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Do Schools Provide Students With Enough Opportunities to Be Creative?

# data[].attributes.subject
Do Schools Provide Students With Enough Opportunities to Be Creative?

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yes