Alex Croce

Pace Prep Course

The Creativity Crisis

            Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s article in “Newsweek” “The Creativity Crisis,”  brought forward something that I had never heard of before; divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the process of generating various unique ideas, while the Convergent thinking process combines those unique ideas into the best result. From previous knowledge I know that our brain is the control center of all the body’s functions. This includes walking, talking, swallowing, breathing, taste, smell, etc. However, in addition to those, it also controls all of our thinking functions, our emotions, how we behave, along with all of our intellectual activities; such as how we perceive and understand the world and its physical surroundings, how we learn and remember and so on. All of these bodily functions and processes are unique to themselves and creativity is a process, that according to Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman has been lacking or as they said; “With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.”
            I feel that creativity and learning in modern times has not been lacking in our youth nor adulthood in the United States, but rather other countries and generations before ours are more competitive due to the fact they weren’t as lazy! Creativity and the ability to learn are perceived differently person to person, each defining it on their own terms. In my opinion, in order for someone to be creative, all they have to do is find what they are good at and the creativeness will come to them in different ways. In “ The Creativity Crisis,” they mention, “Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.” I agree with this statement. In order to be creative you must be able to not only combine both thinking processes, but you must also exercise your mind. A point brought upon in the article that really stuck with me is when they expressed their belief that the means in which we are being taught, is the reason for our generation lacking the creativity gene. I would agree with this statement. The way our curriculum is composed today is not accommodating, nor modern enough to keep up with the usage of technology that would best suit our generation and their style of learning and apprehending such things.

In my experience, under the circumstances in which I was taught, I cannot express to you how many times in class I would doze off because the teacher had no emotion or passion for what they were teaching, along with the way they taught it. I reason that our school systems would benefit from changing the way they teach students at all grade levels. Technology is key. If each school incorporated technology in an interactive way I think students would stay focused and be more involved in the class. Creativity and learning aren’t lacking, but the way we are being taught is too primitive. I don’t think our creativeness will continue to lack if the school systems change the way in which they teach. Creativeness is instated in everybody, it just takes the right surroundings and self-motivation to embody this creativity and put it to use.