A recent Newsweek opinion piece by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman titled “The Creativity Crisis” has a subhead that reads as follows: “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong — and how we can fix it.” Provocative, to be sure. But my hope is that as is almost always the case in journalism, the headline and subhead was written by a Newsweek copyeditor to be provocative, and was not authored by Bronson and Merryman.

I say that because their well-researched piece actually does not support their thesis.

Is American creativity in decline? That is not my personal experience, based on the dozens of artists and creators we have been interviewing on camera for our Creators Across America series. But my evidence is anecdotal; there can be many truly creative artists out there in a society where fewer new creators are emerging.

A couple of caveats on Po Bronson and his writing (I’m afraid I’m not familiar with Ms. Merryman’s work, only as a co-author with Mr. Bronson). Mr. Bronson is a compelling writer, a great storyteller, and a good interviewer. He’s thorough. But his work doesn’t always sync with the premise he (or his editors) lay out. For example, in his fascinating book “What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question,” a reader would expect to encounter inspiring stories of people who gave up an uninspiring “career” to successfully pursue their “dream.” That is frequently who the reader encounters, but too often in his book, after throwing off the shackles of their old lives, they find themselves disappointed with their new ones. Sometimes they even return, tail tucked, to their old professions. The book, to be honest with you, is a bit depressing.

Mr. Bronson did reinvent himself, as he notes in the book, abandoning a dull job in the financial industry to become a successful writer. He also found success by writing about technology innovators during the dot-com boom. Not surprisingly, his Newsweek piece consciously seeks to dismiss the association of creativity with art, instead applying it far more broadly to innovation in general.

There’s nothing wrong with that approach — it is the business model of hundreds if not thousands of business books. But my focus is on creativity among artists and creators, and I maintain that level of creativity in America has never been higher, and has never had such potential for growth and expression.

The Newsweek piece focuses on the “Torrance” creativity test. It seems during the last few years, the scores of children and adults on this test have been in decline, particularly among young children.

Let me add some caveats here. First, I refuse to believe creativity can be “tested.” Creativity is by definition unquantifiable. As I have written, creativity stems from approaching a problem not in a linear fashion — the way in which a standardized test subject ideally would — but in approaching it in what a scientist might believe is an illogical, meandering path. The research of scientist Dr. Rex Jung’s has documented this.

The Newsweek writers compare the Torrance test to an IQ test, noting that IQ scores have risen each generation under a phenomenon knows as the Flynn effect. They write: “Enriched environments are making kids smarter.” But as Nicholas Carr argues convincingly in his new book, “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” the rise in IQ scores is not quantifying more smarts, it is simply a reflection of changes in society and exposure to information.

(By the way, Mr. Carr’s primary thesis is that the Internet and its hyperlinked culture makes it nearly impossible to focus on any one text passage for any significant length of time. If you’ve read this far, congrats, you’ve defied that thesis. If you manage to read this whole blog post, feel free to take credit for that accomplishment in the comments section below!)

We are not getting smarter, despite what a standardized test might suggest. And thus, it’s fair to assume that we are not getting less creative, despite to what a standardized test might suggest.

The Newsweek article subhead also suggests the article will explain “[w]hat went wrong.” To the credit of authors Bronson and Merryman, they don’t claim to have the answers. They do argue that if young people are failing to explore and develop their inherent creativity, it could be a result of too much time playing videogames and watching TV. There’s probably merit to that — as the father of a teenage girl I’d add time texting and using Facebook — but my generation watched a heck of a lot of TV. And in fairness to the videogame industry, there is some evidence that some gaming can increase cognitive ability. (Although Carr also successfully demonstrates in “The Shallows” how such claims are overstated.)

Should there be more focus on encouraging creativity in schools? Absolutely, and I feel art classes are a critical component of that, although the Newsweek authors seem dismissive of that, noting (correctly) that creative thinking involves more than just art. True, but a scientist who can read music brings a more attuned creative mind to her scientific problem-solving. Also, a dearth of teachers who truly encourage creativity over conformity is nothing new; it is the theme of the late Harry Chapin’s moving song “Flowers are Red.” (I’ll confess that song has brought tears to my eyes more than once, as I hear the creative child broken by an oppressive teacher.)

It is always dangerous to leap to broad conclusions based on limited data over a limited period. Mr. Marty Baker makes that point in faulting a companion piece by the same authors in Newsweek, in which they argue that brainstorming simply doesn’t work.

We’ve all been in disastrous Dilbert-like “brainstorming workshops.” My wife once was summoned offsite to a management brainstorming retreat. Their first task? Come up with a “theme song” for the Fortune 500 company. She and her coworkers secretly settled on The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”

But Mr. Baker argues the fault there is poor leadership by the individuals leading the brainstorming. He argues what the Newsweek authors overlooked was that much of the creativity stemming from brainstorming occurs not in the actual session itself, but later on, often individually. This would support my thesis that creativity stems from unconventional thinking; the brainstorming session forced an unconventional approach, and the brain later led to useful new insights.

After reading the brainstorming critique, Mr. Baker writes: “I feel like the forensics expert watching and laughing at CSI shows — fully aware that DNA doesn’t come back in a few hours — it takes weeks.”

Ultimately it isn’t really important if some standardized test suggests creativity is in decline or on the rise. What is important is that we are fortunate in America that our culture is awash with creative individuals, including artists and artistic creators, and that many of these people choosing the challenging path of leading “art-committed lives” are embracing new technological tools to further explore their creativity and find audiences for their creative works.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 9:53 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under creativity, creators, culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.