Design Writing

           Creativity in adults and children is typically analyzed through something called a Torrance Test. It is comprised of two parts, a verbal and a figural test. The Verbal test evaluates creativity on a verbal level...

and the Figural test asks participants to complete drawings and utilize their imaginations...

...using cues like these:

          Using the Torrance Test, a 2019 Polish study by Dorota Jankowska and Maciej Karwowski found that children from higher socio-economic households had higher creative thinking ability at the start of a formal education (Kindergarten), but as the school year progressed the household’s income had almost nothing to do with the rate at which a child adapted to and implemented taught creative thinking processes. A similar study regarding race and social class was conducted by Joseph Moreno and John Hogan in 1976. They came upon a similar conclusion, that education and environment effected a child’s creative thinking ability more than un-controllable factors such as race.

           I find that these results make me slightly uncomfortable. It’s not that I believe low-income, non-white, uneducated parents can’t produce creative children, what makes me uncomfortable is that the structure and resources required to promote creative thinking abilities are not made available to all children. Both of the studies above discussed the influence of quality education on children’s measurable creativity, which, unfortunately, is something that low-income neighborhoods and their surrounding schools do not typically have access to (because of tax-dependent funding). Matthew Lynch, an author for “The Edvocate”, expresses this sentiment in his article “Poverty and School Funding: Why Low-Income Students Often Suffer”. In it, he laments the fact that Title I schools have been receiving less and less funding every year since 2010, meaning that low-income students are missing out on learning resources, which furthers the creative gap between low-income and high-income schools.

           Furthermore, Jankowska and Karwowski acknowledged that the key to higher creative thinking ability in pre-school aged children is “…both autonomy and structure”. From both personal and professional experience, autonomy and structure for a child are easier to achieve in a safe neighborhood, in a home that receives consistent and adequate income, and with at-least one parent or responsible caregiver available to the child at any given time. They also tied the number of books present in a home to a child’s Torrance Test score before being enrolled in formal schooling. This means that families with more disposable income and with educated adults in the home have a higher likelihood of sending a creative child into the school system.