After analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults, researcher Kyung Hee Kim (College of William & Mary) discovered creativity results have been steadily declining, just like IQ scores, since 1990. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is most serious. Dr. Kim states that “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant.”

Kyung Hee Kim analyzed creativity scores (TTCT) collected from schoolchildren in K-12th grade for two decades. The scores at all grade levels started declining from 1984-1990 and have continued to decline ever since. The decreases are massive and significant, because every aspect of creativity has fallen. The largest drop is in Creative Elaboration: the ability to take an idea and expand on it in an interesting and novel way.

• Between 1984 and 2008, the Elaboration TTCT score from K-12th grade fell by more than 1 standard deviation.
• More than 85% of children in 2008 scored lower on this measure than did the average child in 1984.

High-stakes testing has caused the creativity crisis in the U.S. During the 1990s, US politicians pushed test-taking skills to emulate the success of Asian students. High-stakes testing costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year, but the real cost is much higher. Highly selective university and graduate school admissions rely on high-stakes tests such as the ACT and the SAT. Testing companies reap the vast financial benefits: $18.5 billion (2017).

1. Killed curiosities and passions
2. Narrowed visions
3. Lowered expectations
4. Stifled risk-taking
5. Destroyed collaboration
6. Narrowed minds
7. Killed deep thought and imagination
8. Forced conformity
9. Solidified hierarchy

“America has an increasingly limited number of individuals who are capable of finding and implementing solutions to problems our nation faces today. Children have become less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle.” Dr. Kyung Hee Kim.

While the potential consequences are sweeping, the necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number one leadership competency of the future. In reanalyzing Torrance’s data, Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University summarized that the correlation of lifetime creative accomplishment to childhood creativity was more than three times stronger than the correlation of lifetime creative accomplishment to childhood IQ. Children who conceived more inventive and original ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers.

Carl Brigham, the inventor of the SAT, conceived the test for the military and disowned it five years later. The SAT creates a shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students. It was supposed to measure intelligence and verify students’ high school GPAs. It has failed to accomplish this and is irrelevant, because it has nothing to do with what children learn in high school and does not predict how individuals will transition into a career. Yet students who do not test well or who are not strong at the kind of reasoning the SAT assesses often compromise on their collegiate futures, all because we have accepted that intelligence can be measured by a single test score.

“Education is the system that is stifling the talents and abilities of students while killing their motivation to learn.
Schools are draining people of their creative possibilities and producing a workforce that’s conditioned
to prioritize conformity over creativity.” – Sir Ken Robinson

Our entire educational system is predicated on a questionable hierarchy that places conformity above creativity, and the consequences are that many talented, brilliant, and imaginative students never discover their gifts and therefore fail to realize their true potential. For children to be successful in the classroom and beyond, they must learn the skills that foster innovation, independence, leadership, and critical thinking.

• Deutsche Bank CEO predicts that half of its 97,000 employees will be replaced by robots.
• Separate research shows that accountants have a 95% chance of losing their jobs to automation in the future.
• 67% feel that they lack the necessary skills and resources to succeed creatively.
• One survey revealed that 39% of jobs in the legal sector could be automated in 10 years.
• However, work that requires a high degree of imagination, creative analysis, and strategic thinking is harder to automate.

• Creativity will drive the U.S. economy (US News).
• Surveyed CEOs stated that the most valued employee skill is creativity.
• The Creative Industries have faster job growth and slower job loss than other sectors.
• Artists have higher levels of education when compared to the U.S. work force as a whole.
• 78% of people believe that expressing creativity makes a real difference in their jobs.
• From 1998 and 2015, the arts and culture sector’s GDP contribution grew by 40%.
• Artists and creative companies added a combined total of $50 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015.