The Creativity Crisis

July 12, 2010 | Source: Newsweek

American creativity scores have been falling since 1990, College of William & Mary researchers have discovered.

One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools.

Meanwhile, other countries — in Europe and China especially — are making creativity development a national priority.

The good news is that creativity training that aligns with the new science works surprisingly well. The University of Oklahoma, the University of Georgia, and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University each independently conducted a large-scale analysis of such programs. All three teams of scholars concluded that creativity training can have a strong effect.