Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children? | Scathing Purple Musings

Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children? | Scathing Purple Musings:

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Is Testing Inhibiting the Development of Creativity in Children?

Reseachers have evidence which leads them to believes so:

It sounds like the complaint of a jaded adult: Kids these days are narrow-minded and just not as creative as they used to be.

But researchers say they are finding exactly that. In a 2010 study of about 300,000 creativity tests going back to the 1970s, Kyung Hee Kim, a creativity researcher at the College of William and Mary, found creativity has decreased among American children in recent years. Since 1990, children have become less able to produce unique and unusual ideas. They are also less humorous, less imaginative and less able to elaborate on ideas, Kim said.

Has modern society really extinguished the creative spark among our youth?

Experts say creativity is innate, so it can’t really be lost. But it needs to be nurtured.

“It’s not that creativity can necessarily disappear,” said Ron Beghetto, an education psychologist