Creativity and the Youth of Today

#cmc11

Until our recent Google Hangout on 4/6/13 I had strongly felt that the technology of today is crippling the creativity of today's youth.  Having a 3 and 6 year old has made more sensitive to this as one of the best parts of being a child is pretending that wooden blocks are tanks and that plastic army men are waging war across the house.  Colleen's comment about how they don't necessarily lose creativity, but achieve creativity at a higher level made me start to reevaluate my point of view.  I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to write about this during this week’s blog post.  After doing further research I modified my view on this topic as technology is not the blame for the decrease of creativity in our culture, but may be directly related to how the early educational system has changed in the last few decades.

One of the articles in the CDL project page reinforced my belief that kids are becoming less creative as a study showed that since 1990 children have been less able to produce creative ideas that are unique or original.  This doesn't mean that this is true for every child, but overall seems to ring true according to the research.  What I think is the most important point from our video discussion and the NBC article is that creativity needs to be nourished on a consistent basis and not suppressed (Rettner, 2011).  My daughter, Jayden, has been in school for almost 2 years and I am surprised to see the amount of generic homework that comes home every week to reinforce the math, reading, and writing skills as well as the lack of creativity in the classroom.  It seems that the education system has changed in the last 30 years to have a lesser focus on music and art, and a more rigid focus on rules, regulations, and testing.  Although I am not good at art or music I still enjoy it and believe that every individual has the ability to create unique and creative pieces.  I understand that this is to help improve on the New York educational system by ultimately creating smarter students when they get to the point of graduation followed by higher education experience, but it appears that it may ultimately change society in the long run if there isn't a drastic change to the educational system at an early level.  The world needs more software developers, independent entrepreneurs, inventors, and authors that bring their creativity to their work.  Children’s IQ has been shown to increase, however their creativity has decreased over the recent years according to Torrance’s creativity tests (Newsweek, 2010).

With the technology available in movies, television, computers, smart phones, and tablets it doesn’t seem that much is left for the imagination.  At 36 years old I can appreciate the interesting things that technology can do, but it still doesn’t compare to reading a good book like Fahrenheit 451 or The Hobbit which allows your mind to paint the picture in your mind based strictly on the author’s words. 

References:

Rettner, Rachael (2011).  Are Today's Youth Less Creative & Imaginative?  Referenced from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44121819/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/are-todays-youth-less-creative-imaginative/?fb_ref=.TlaScMsLuZ9.like&fb_source=home_oneline#.UWHSspNwpAK

Newsweek (2010).  The Creativity Crisis.  Referenced from http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html