How do we get adults to be as creative as 5 years old children?

“The creative adult is the child who survived.” – Ursula Leguin

A lot of people have viewed Sir Ken Robinson’s 2007 Famous TED Talk “Do schools kill creativity”. It resonated highly with a lot of people because a lot of people are wondering about the negative effects that formal education has children remaining creative.

NASA was searching for a way to efficiently compute the imaginative potential of their rocket scientists and engineers. Dr. George Land and Dr. Beth Jarman created a test designed to detect the capacity for divergent thinking and creativity for NASA.

During their research, Land and Jarman tested a diverse group of people, and included a population sample of younger people. They added 1,600 children between 3-5 years old to their sample group. They later re-tested the same children at 10 years, and again at 15 years of age.

The test results: Percentage of creative geniuses
98% (5 years old)
30% (10 years old)
12% (15 years old)
2% (280,000 adults)

“What we have resolved,” wrote Land, “is that non-creative behavior is acquired.” This is based on research that was conducted from 1968.

Now look at those numbers-: 98% of kindergartens were deemed creative geniuses. This is an amazingly astronomical number, they continued with testing the same group of children as they grew up. By close to the end of Primary school, only 30% of the children were considered creative geniuses. By high school (senior secondary school) there were only 12% left. This is an ominous sign because when the same test was carried out on a group of adults, the results were spiraling down. Less than 2% of the adults tested in studies were creative geniuses.
What makes this scary is that creativity is one of the key 21st Century skills. It enables being able to keep up with the future of work, and working on new solutions to novel problems, and this can’t be done if there are no creative geniuses leading the offensive.
Instructing for the future of work requires that things aren’t done the way they have always been done. Our people have to figure out how to keep the creative juices from childhood intact and remain innovative adults.
Next week, we will delve into various findings about how creativity can be assisted and supported in adults borrowing what we do with children. Children are natural innovators with powerful imaginations. Creativity poses intellectual, emotional and even health benefits; these are the things we will discuss next week.

Adetola Salau; Global Educator / International Speaker / Author/ Social Entrepreneur/ Innovative Thinker/Future Readiness Advocate/ STEM Certified Trainer

She is an Advocate of STEM Education and is Passionate about Education reform. She is an innovative thinker and strives for our society & continent as a whole to reclaim it’s greatness.

E-mail-:[email protected]

facebook-: Carisma4u

twitter-: @Carisma4u

Website-: www.carisma4u.com

—
photo
Adetola A. Salau
Executive Director/Founder, Carisma4U Educational Foundation
+2347081049793 | +17853714497 | [email protected]; [email protected]
Carisma4U.com | Skype: tollybaby08

“Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking.
Create your own email signature