Are people becoming less creative? That’s how it looks in a certain part of the world…
Go ahead and check out Newsweek’s The Creativity Crisis.
What dulls one’s creativity? Info-overload.
Ask your child how much information is being stuffed into their heads nowadays, and compare it with how things were when YOU were a child. Of course, there are people who say that we shouldn’t put any limits on what our minds can absorb. Still, it makes me wonder…
What’s a possible sign that someone’s creativity is declining? Discouragement and boredom.
Does your child get easily discouraged or bored, and is unable to think of a solution to their problem?
Here’s one suggestion on how to increase your child’s creativity: Encourage your child to ask questions.
Hopefully, this will help keep your child interested in the world around us. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? If you simply keep quiet, you’ll become complacent with whatever knowledge you have.
If, on the other hand, you keep asking questions, you’ll eventually have more answers than when you simply kept your mouth shut. And as the answers flow in, you’ll become curious and end up asking even more questions. And so continues a cycle which in effect helps make people more creative.
Awhile ago, over dinner, some nephews were questioning why they had to learn certain things in school. They wondered, for example, what was the whole point of learning about imaginary numbers (square root of -1). And you know what happens when people don’t find something important, right? No wonder some students are studying less.
Still, I’m glad those guys took the time to ask me what was the whole point of “unreal” math.
In the end, we parents need to exercise some amount of creativity, so that we can help our children have a better future. We may not have all the answers at the moment, but that does not mean we should just give up, throw our hands up and say Bahala na!, and then just leave everything to the schools our children attend.
Hmmm… perhaps I’ll have a quick chat with my kids about the report on declining creativity and ask them what they think.
To-do: Research on Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method
