During an event organized in 2011 in Arizona (United States), Dr. George Land, author and disseminator, revealed to the audience the shocking result of a test he had conducted for NASA, but later decided to apply among children of young age.
The original test was to measure the creative potential of rocket scientists and engineers, and although the results obtained were satisfactory for NASA's purposes, Land wanted Apply it to children in order to measure their creative potential. The results he got were really amazing!
Is creativity born or made?
One of the questions asked by this scientist after completing the tests that NASA had asked him was: "Where does creativity come from?" Is it something innate in the human being or does it develop over time and lived experiences? At what time and why is it lost? Why are there creative people and others who are not?
Given so many doubts and questions to solve, George Land and his scientific colleague Beth Jarman decided to conduct an experiment among a group of 1,600 children with ages between four and five, and the results they obtained were incredible.
The tests carried out focused on examining children's divergent thinking, as well as their ability to face a problem and find the solution through innovative and creative ideas. 98 percent of the children examined were classified as geniuses of the imagination.
Five years later, they again tested the same children (who at that time were already ten years old), but then only 30 percent of them were listed as a genius of imagination.
And finally, when the children were reassessed at the age of 15, the percentage of geniuses had dropped to 12 percent: What killed the creativity of the children in those ten years?
Killing the creative genius that we all carry inside
Those tests were replicated many more times, always obtaining the same results, which led scientists to consider that the school system and education that most children receive Kill the creative genius that everyone has inside.
Creativity is something innate in children. They are born being free and creative beings by nature, but as they grow, and influenced by different environments, both at school and at home, creativity ends up being lost or repressed, according to the guidelines of the surrounding adults.
At this point, surely many of you will be wondering Why does this happen and how can we avoid it?
As Land explained, there are two types of thinking that take place in the brain and that work differently:
On the one hand there is the divergent thinking, which is used to invent, generate or create new possibilities or ideas.
On the other side is the convergent thinking, which is what we use to judge, make a decision or evaluate the pros or cons of something.
Divergent thinking functions as an accelerator, while convergent thinking slows down all new occurrences and possibilities we devise.
Young children use mostly divergent thinking And your imagination has no limits. But in most cases, as we educate and teach them, convergent thinking begins to weigh more, acting as a brake on their creativity.
"If we operate with fear we use a smaller part of the brain, but when we use creative thinking, the brain simply lights up" - explains Land.Therefore, scientists advise not to kill children's creativity, not fill your head with fears and doubts, and let them dream and be what they want to be.
Both from home and in schools, we can encourage children's natural creativity with ideas and advice that do not numb your overflowing imagination and your innate ability to seek solutions to all problems.
Let them dream, be original, divergent, think and skip the norms of the expected. Let's not kill the creative genius that all children carry inside!
