Davison's Doodle

Creativity and Problem Solving

I am lucky, blessed to have several peers in ministry that are friends.  Between us we read many websites each day and come across interesting articles.  We are an eclectic group.  My thanks to Randy for the forward of this article from Newsweek online.  It highlights the need for a liberal arts education, but moreover a change in the educational standards that are devolving in the public school system.  If teachers are judged, promoted and salaried based on how well students do on standardized testing, then one day teachers will be removed from the classroom altogether.  There is more to teaching than memory work and more to being a grounded, educated person than a score on the SAT.  I took the SAT once.  My score was 770.  I am lucky that the TCU admissions people read my references and looked at whatever else they did beyond my SAT.  Our culture, government and denomination needs divergent and convergent thinking right now.

The Creativity Crisis
by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman | Newsweek.com | July 10, 2010

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).