...after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim 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.”Read full article.
I'm actually dubious of the ability to perform a standardized test of creativity. What exactly is being tested? How does the bias of the evaluators color the results?
However, I will say that it seems patently obvious that if there is indeed such a crisis - which I don't otherwise doubt - then it is this very homogenizing impulse that is the real culprit.
Schools don't have budgets for creativity anymore, and if anything, the test (as weird as it may be) might be capturing that. Music, art and library funding in schools is being cut down or out because they're not seen as vital. We need orderly cogs in the machine, not interesting ones. Unfortunately, removing curricular creative expression also dulls the mind. It protects the bottom ($$$) line though, so who cares? Short-sighted, short-term gain is all anyone cares about anymore.
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