NASA’s 1968 Study Showed Education Kills Creativity
How we are forced inside from outside the box
We live in a world that claims to value innovation and original thinking, yet as we move grade through grade, we are indoctrinated out of making unexpected connections between disparate subjects to arrive at creative solutions.
We are forced to sit still, when we need to be moving. To wake up early when we need our sleep. We are expected to pay attention for long periods of time to learn in one specific style, measured against arbitrary standards using one type of test, in a staid environment, for which we are graded.
We are forced inside from outside the box.
The baffling thing about the system of educating children and teens is its whole-cloth misapprehension of what children and teens need. This is why our system excels at diminishing our creative capacity. By the time we’re fully grown, our school system has eradicated our innate inventiveness by nearly 100%. This is not hyperbole, nor conjecture. This, dear readers, is fact.
In 1968, NASA wanted to assign their most innovative engineers and scientists to tackle the most challenging problems. But they lacked the tools to precisely identify the most creative and imaginative on their team. They commissioned Dr. George Land, author and general systems scientist who discovered Transformation Theory, and business leader Dr. Beth Jarman to create an instrument to pinpoint creativity.
While the method was successful, it didn’t answer a fundamental question: Where does creativity come from?
To answer this question, Land replicated the study, but this time used 1600 children aged 4-5. The test presented children with problems and asked the kids to come up with new or different ideas to solve them.
What they discovered stunned them—98% of those 1600 children scored at the “creative genius” level for imaginative thinking.
That’s right.
You heard me.
Brills.
They decided to follow these children, and turned it into a longitudinal study.
Testing them again at 10 years old, the children’s creativity and imaginative thinking had plummeted to 30%. By age 15, the number had dropped to 12%.
The longitudinal study on kids ended there (apparently, the teachers who were running the studies got too depressed by the results—😂), so they decided to test adults.
People, buckle up.
We scored a measly 2% for creativity.
These findings led Land to a profound conclusion: non-creative behavior is learned.
The implication is clear - our education system and societal norms are inadvertently stifling the natural creative abilities that we all possess as children.
To dig deeper, I turned to the work of the late and wonderful Sir Ken Robinson, a renowned educationalist and creativity expert.
In his celebrated TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?", (scroll down) Robinson reveals the sundry ways education squanders imagination, creativity and talent. Instead of elevating our innate sense of wonder, schools are the largest contributor to the decline in creative thinking.
As children, we are unafraid to be wrong. We take risks. We don’t consider falling off a balance beam a failure, we view it as part of the learning process. It’s only when we begin school that we are shamed for our mistakes, for improvising, guessing and taking risks.
For a brief and beautiful window, children absorb the world firsthand. Everything is new, without reference points, preconceived notions, shoulds, or ideas about how to experience, say, see, or do things. We are nothing less than creative geniuses.
Then we go to school.
School, the environment meant to enrich and nurture our intellectual and creative life, does its best to educate us to be less original. School teaches children to fear being wrong, to fear trying because the consequences of our mistakes impacts our social standing and sense of self. Instead of being celebrated for the wondrous difference that makes us unique, we are shamed for what makes us special. Our education system, and by extension society, actively choose to hew to the entrenched systems of the status-quo.
Our flexible thinking is squashed into a single rigid mold, and our creativity is flattened.
Robinson was convinced that putting academic achievement above all else, kills creativity. He explains that the current educational model was shaped by the needs of industrialism, placing an undue emphasis on job-related subjects like math and science, at the expense of creative disciplines like art, music, and dance.
School insists that information—the external “what” of data—is more essential than the internal “why” of creativity.
By equating information with intelligence, students of imagination, creativity and wonder, learn that their interests aren’t valuable—that they’re not the right kind of smart.
But intelligence is not fixed. It’s diverse, dynamic and distinct, and we think and process information in a variety of ways.
By narrowly defining intelligence through academic performance, Robinson insisted we are overlooking and undervaluing the vast array of human capabilities.
According to the neuroscience, as Land and Robinson explained, our brains engage in two types of thinking: divergent (imaginative, idea generating) and convergent (analytical, idea evaluating).
While both are essential, our education system emphasizes convergent thinking at the expense of divergent thinking.
As we progress through school, we're taught to use both types of thinking simultaneously - to generate ideas while immediately judging them. Land said this is akin to driving a car with one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake. It diminishes our brain's power and inhibits our natural creative abilities.
Creativity is the cornerstone of innovation, problem-solving and adaptability. By encouraging risk-taking, embracing mistakes as learning opportunities, and valuing imagination, we can cultivate an environment where creativity thrives.
As George Land aptly put it, we need to ask ourselves: "Are we going to have a culture that realizes that imagination is more important than knowledge?" This doesn't mean disregarding knowledge, but rather recognizing that the ability to imagine, to see possibilities where others see obstacles, is what drives human progress.
Because here’s the best thing—our divergent brain doesn’t disappear. It never goes away. We are all capable of being the creative geniuses we were as children. Creativity is innate, it’s school that drums it out of us.
The more we depend on right answers that are repeatable, that are always predictable; the more we stigmatize wrong answers, consider failure the definitive end point instead of a crucial step in the growth process, the less we’ll change the world for the better.
The decline in creativity as we age, so starkly illustrated by Land's study and articulated by Robinson, is not inevitable. It's a consequence of how we structure our education system and, by extension, our society.
Once we recognize the harmful pattern, we can work to reverse it.
We have to challenge our approaches, reform our learned behavior to stifle creativity by nurturing it. We must value diverse forms of intelligence, encouraging imaginative thinking, and creating environments where it's safe to take risks and make mistakes.
But, hang on.
If creativity is innate, how do we tap into that creative genius?
Spend time every day challenging yourself to come up with new solutions to old problems. Make a list of 10 improvements to the chair.
Become an innovator by being curious about everything.
Look at inanimate objects through the eyes of an eight month old baby. What are they?
Dr. Land would ask you to look at a fork. Then get out a pencil and come up with 10 ideas that might work better.
Act like a 5 year old.
Amanda
I'm so aligned and sobered by this piece Amanda. And unfortunately, the current political climate in this country is just going to make this worse. But I also believe that something amazing is going to rise from the ashes of public education - as long as we are intentional about building system that nourishes a child's innate creativity. I'm glad to discover you here!
Thank you for offering us this open examination of the stark reality of our educational system. There are so many threads to pull on. Perhaps the most provocative is to ask if this is all by design. In other words, do you think that there has been a plan, conceived long ago, to keep us thinking inside the box?