The Decline of Creativity?

I recently was honored to present at a workshop on creativity in south central Wisconsin, where creatively gifted high school students are gearing up for a Global Biomimicry Design Challenge as part of a Department of Public Instruction Gifted and Talented Grant. Creativity is at the heart of this challenge, and our workshop focus was to help prepare teachers to guide students through the incubation of ideas, process, and product design of viable solutions to world problems, using biomimicry as the platform.
In preparation for this workshop, I read widely, concentrating on tried-and-true research on theory and practice, as well as some of today’s most cutting-edge research. As I prepared, I was especially struck by an article in Psychology Today entitled:  As Children’s Freedom Has Declined, So Has Their Creativity:

New research suggests that American schoolchildren are becoming less creative, and I chose to share this article for discussion with the educators at the workshop. The discussion was rich, deep,  and varied, and left me with questions to pose to you, as parents, educators, and creatively gifted readers:
Do you really believe that children’s freedom has declined? If so, how, and why? If not, why not?

• If children’s freedom has declined, what is the cost to creativity? Why does this occur?
• What effects have standardized testing, standardized curriculum, and “one size fits all” curriculum contributed to limiting creativity in students? In teachers? In our view of what education “should be”?
• How does creativity enhancement in childhood nurture or prepare adults for creativity across the lifespan? Why is this important?
• How many creative children are we losing along the way, and what is the price of this?
• How can we effectively “push back” against policies, mandates, and attitudes that stifle human creativity?
• What can we do with our “Power of One” - our own personal power? How do we unite our “Power of One” into powerful combined voices, the “Power of Many”?

Great discussion alone does not solve big problems, but it is fertile ground for proposing action to solve big problems. As central Wisconsin students use their creativity to design solutions in the Global Biomimicry Design Challenge, I challenge you to use your wisdom, power, and collective commitment to advocate for our most creative students.
As always, I hope that this foray into other ideas, and then linking them to the gifted perspective, has made you think.  I welcome hearing from you!