“Our research on creativity reveals that the vast majority of small children are actually creative geniuses. One of the authors gave eight tests of divergent creative thinking to 1600 children in the early days of the Headstart program. He gave the same tests to these children over several years. The first tests were given when the children were between three and five years of age. Ninety-eight percent of the children scored in the genius category. When these same children took identical tests five years later, only 32 percent scored that high. Five years later it was down to 10 percent. Two hundred thousand adults over the age of twenty-five have taken the same tests. Only two percent scored at the genius level.” (George Land and Beth Jarman “Breakpoint and Beyond. Mastering the Future – Today.”, 1992, p.153)
What would have happened, if our creativity was preserved, instead of schooled out of us? Would we be still living like we live now? Would we be still accumulating possessions and destroying the Earth, our only real home, in the process? Would we be still discussing and living outdated societal and political systems? Or, would we be creating new ways of living, new ways of relating? In whose interest is it to keep people’s creativity controlled?
