Children are born creative
In 1968, George Land and Beth Jarman were hired by NASA to test the creative potential of its scientists and engineers.
They came up with a test that required test-takers to come up with as many ideas as possible. The test worked well for NASA’s purposes, but it left Land and Jarman with more questions than answers.
They decided to give the same test to 1,600 kids between the ages of 4 and 5. The results surprised them. A full 98 percent of those kids qualified as “geniuses” when it came to their imagination!
They then waited 5 years and gave the test again to those same kids when they were 10 years old. Now only 30 percent of them qualified as creative geniuses. By the time the kids were 15, the number had dropped to 12 percent.
Finally, Land and Jarman gave their test to 280,000 adults and found that 2 percent of them qualify as “geniuses” when it came to their imagination. “What we have concluded,” wrote Land, “is that non-creative behavior is learned.”
All children are naturally creative—our job is not to nurture their creativity, but to help them keep it alive by refraining from crushing it.
At LNG that is what we try to do , we don’t scold kids for coloring the grass blue; we let them be free to make up elaborate imaginary scenarios, invent their own games, and tinker with everything they see in a way that is natural for them, and hope that this helps them stay creative for rest of their lives.
