The Death of Creativity

Over spring break, I had the honor of applying my humble beginnings as an art educator to the artistic creations of my younger cousin. As a seven year old who is intrigued with all-things-factual (read: every ounce of history he can consume), Nate showed a very analytical approach to drawing. He paid attention to a great deal of detail, at first drawing a surprisingly realistic interpretation of the continental United States, identifying the location of Washington D.C. with a little star. His brain was swirling with patriotism, which inspired a United States-sized Statue of Liberty to sit next to the country she became an icon for. Even at age seven, he gave her a five-pointed crown, and accurately depicted a torch in her right hand and a tablet in her left.

If I was asked now, as an art student, to draw an accurate illustration of Lady Liberty, I’m not even confident I could do as good of a job as Nate did. Sure, I had learned American History nearly every year of school up until my senior year. And yes, I could identify the capital on a map without fail. But at age seven, I was drawing paint palettes with a finger hole and swirls of paint on them—had I ever used one before? No. I was drawing pictures of doctors for a What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up assignment complete with medical masks and scrubs on. Had I ever been admitted to a hospital to observe these outfits firsthand? No. So how is it that children can replicate all these shards of imagery without ever observing them in person?

Why does the distraction of social assimilation have to quell
creativity in teenagers while their ideas were more free-flowing
than ever only a few years before? (Pinterest)

This thought provoking question left me considering the following: children’s art is heavily influenced on latent learning. This type of learning is successful primarily because of the way the human brain associates information. It does not provoke an immediate or consistent behavioral response, but allows us to retrieve information when it becomes relevant in our lives. When children are doodling trivial pictures, it is very easy for them to draw one image, have that image spark another image, and so on in an artistic type of chain reaction. Even if information is resting in the deepest caverns of their psyches, children’s scatterbrained thought processes frequently stir up existing information when it is least applicable to reality. However, in creative processes, there is no reality; thus making all thoughts and ideas fair game.

At an elementary level, children are often taught material and expected to learn it verbatim. This information consists of how to spell words, how to do simple math problems, reading books without much metaphorical meaning, and replicating artwork. They never feel as though they’re wrong because it is difficult not to get lessons right when everyone in the grade is completing the same work. When all students are on the same page, I believe it allows them to be themselves a lot more because they never assume they’ll be judged. In fact, judgment never even crosses their minds. As children age into greasy adolescents, the paces of everyone shift greatly—not only in terms of developmental maturity, but also behaviorally and mentally. Once students are stratified into learning “tracks,” the ones in below-average levels are quite aware that they are not honor students, thus beginning and perpetuating the fear of judgment. This fear alone dissolves innocent creativity.

This helps to explain Lowenfeld’s Gang Stage: the stage in which students begin paying attention to social implications (Lowenfeld, 1947). Why do they feel compelled to abide by these implications, and singlehandedly suffocate all of their childhood creativity? That is a question no amount of childhood artistic research will ever be able to answer.

Lowenfeld, Viktor (1947). Creative and Mental Styles: A Textbook on Art Education. New York: Macmillan