Closing the Creativity Gap
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Ross Danis, Program Director, Education
You may hear the mention of a number of “gaps” when people are talking about education: the achievement gap between various income groups and races; the gap in funding between school districts; and the gap between athletics and, say, the arts. Perhaps the most serious gap is between the skills of even the most successful, best educated students and the skills required to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing, and very challenging world – the creativity gap.
View the situation this way: our children are just as literate as they were 20 years ago, but the standards for being literate have changed. The stakes are higher. Today, children will enter, as adults, a world where the “creative class” will rule. In fact, creativity is right up there with the basics of mathematics and reading. UNESCO reports that almost 60% of all the jobs in the 21st century will depend on the capacity to be creative. (more…)
