The Creativity Crisis Analysis

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman argue in the “Creativity Crisis” that the public’s creativity is decreasing and that it is important to try and start to increase the creativity in children. Creativity can be defined as the ability of a person to “think outside of the box” or to find an alternative way to see a problem. A class on creativity can not be created because people are born with creativity, it would hurt the school’s budget, and there is no way to measure a student’s creativity accurately. Just like people are born with a certain degree of knowledge or the ability to problem solve, people are also born with the ability to be creative. Supporters of creating a class on creativity will say that creativity is learned. By looking back
Schools around the nation are considering cutting, or have already cut, classes like music and art which are considered creative classes. Adding more of these classes would only serve to draw much needed money from the school’s budget. Art programs, for example, are a way for students to express their creativity but not necessarily to increase creativity. In a class like art, money from the school is needed to supply paper, pencils, paints, and other types of materials which rack up the cost of the class. Hiring another teacher for the class would also place a strain on the school’s budget because of the added salary and benefits. Because of the costs of the class and the money needed to pay a teacher, creating a creativity class is not an option for many
The problem with a class of this type is that there is no established way to test a child’s creativity level and then be able to grade them on it. In a regular classroom, the student is graded on what he or she can comprehend and this is measured by a test or quiz. Another way a student’s intelligence can be measured is by an IQ test and that will indicate the learning potential the student has. Both of these ways allow a teacher to gauge how well a student is doing in the class or understand the level of knowledge a student has. Even though there are ways to measure knowledge, like an IQ, there is no standard way to measure creativity and without a way to measure creativity, grading the class would be an immense