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Excerpts from interviews with E. Paul
Torrance
You can discover your child’s creativity
and encourage it if you know the signs.
Suppose your child gets only average or slightly higher than
average scores on the IQ tests given him at school. Does this mean
that he/she isn’t gifted? That his/her potential for
achievement in school and in life is only average?
That’s the general assumption . But according to Dr. E. Paul
Torrance, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on
creativity and intelligence, no fallacy has done more harm to
children or robbed society of more creative talent.
Dr. Torrance explained: “IQ tests do not measure creativity.
By depending on them we miss 70 percent of our most creative
youngsters. It is true that outstanding creativity is seldom found
among children of below average IQ. But our research shows that
above 115 or 120, IQ scores have little or no bearing on
creativity. Creative giftedness may be found anywhere along the
scale except, possibly, at the bottom. The child with a so called
genius IQ of 180 is in reality no more likely to make outstanding
creative achievements than the child with a slightly above average
IQ around 120.”
Dr. Torrance and his associates have studied thousands of boys and
girls from pre-school to sixth grade. Their findings show that most
children start life with a valuable creative spark and that most of
them have it knocked out of them by the time they reach the fourth
grade. It is not that parents and teachers deliberately squelch
creativity; rather, the fail to recognize it.
In most elementary classrooms the good pupil is the one who
produces what he/she is told and makes pictures like the ones in
the book. The creative child, on the other hand, is not content to
learn by authority. They want to make up their own stories. They
draw what they see the way they see it. And because they want to
make sense out of what they see and hear, they are constantly
asking questions that may appear ridiculous.
“Which is more,” asks a four year old child, “12
miles or 12 hours?” “Don’t be silly,” the
child’s mother says. Actually the child’s question is
highly intelligent. So far in the child’s young life the
number 12 has always been connected with something – miles,
hours, marbles or eggs. Now it is beginning to dawn on this child
that 12 is a number with an identity of its own. With this
discovery the child takes their first step into mathematics.
How does creativity differ from the kind of mental ability measured
by IQ?
When your child takes an IQ test, some of the questions he/she is
asked have a predetermined “best” answer. If he/she is
asked, “Why is it better to make buildings of brick rather
than wood?” The expected answer is that brick is stronger,
longer lasting, safer, and provides better insulation. A child who
mentions at least two of these factors will get full credit. But
the child who answers that it is better to use brick “to save
our national forests” will get no credit. Neither will the
child who argues that brick isn’t the better material
“because brick is cold and ugly while wood is warm and
beautiful.”
Creative thinking, like the thinking required in the IQ tests, is a
problem solving process. But the problems that call for creative
thinking are the kind that have more than one right answer. And
this category includes the basic problems we all face in growing
up, earning a living, and finding order and beauty and meaning in
life.
The problems in creativity tests devised by Dr. Torrance and his
associates, unlike those in IQ tests, have no predetermined right
answers. In the “Product Improvement” test, for
example, the child is handed a toy (say a stuffed plastic dog) and
asked to think of as many ways as possible for changing it to make
it more fun to play with. A conventional minded child made three
suggestions: shorten the nose, lengthen the tail and change the
color. A highly creative child made a dozen suggestions including
“sew fleas on his back” and “put a magnet in his
nose so he can chase a rabbit with a magnet in its
tail.”
In another test, a child is given a pencil and a piece of paper
filled with 36 circles and asked to see how many things he/she can
make out of the circles. When one second grade girl was told she
had only ten seconds left to complete the test, she still had two
rows of unused circles; she immediately drew a girl blowing
bubbles, with the unused circles as bubbles. Such improvisation is
characteristic of creative children.
“Because there are no right answers to these creativity
tests, there will never be a CQ, or ‘creativity
quotient.’ Sizing up a child’s creativeness will always
be a complex matter. But by observing the child at work and play
you may detect creativity. Here are key signs to look for:
Curiosity. The child’s questioning is persistent and
purposeful. He/she digs under the surface. As a baby he/she handles
things, shakes, twists and turns them upside down. Later he/she
takes things apart to see how they work. He/she experiments with
words and ideas, always trying to wring new meaning from
them.
Flexibility. If one approach doesn’t work, the imaginative
child quickly thinks of another. To older boys trying in vain to
throw a rope over a high branch to make a swing, an eight-year old
suggested, “Why not fly a kite over it and then pull up the
rope with the string?”
Sensitivity to problems. A child is quick to see gaps in
information, exceptions to rules, and contradictions. A father
tells of reciting Mother Goose to his inquisitive four-year old.
“You try something simple and straightforward like
‘Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son.’ Right away he starts
interrupting: ‘Was Tom about my age? If Tom was my age, how
did he carry a pig? If the pig was so small, how did it kill the
goose? What’s a calaboose? You mean they put little boys in
jail?’”
Redefinition. Children can see hidden meanings in statements that
others take at face value, and see connections between things that
to others seem unrelated. It was a creative child who said,
“Eternity is a clock without hands.”
Self-feeling. Children are self-directive and can work alone for
long periods – on their own project. Merely following
directions bores them.
Originality. Children have surprising, uncommon ideas. Their
drawings and stories have a style that mark them as their
own.
Insight. Children have easy access to realms of the mind which
noncreative people visit only in the dreams. As one five year old
told Dr. Torrance at a birthday party when she put her hand into a
grab bag. “This is how I get ideas – just reach in and
scrunch around in my mind till I feel like pulling something
out.”
Dr. Torrance found our society pretty savage in its treatment of
creative young children. In a number of first, second and third
grade classrooms, he asked teachers and pupils to nominate those
children who talked most, those who had the most good ideas, those
with the most ideas for being naughty and those with the silliest
ideas. Teachers and pupils voted pretty much alike. They credited
the “best ideas” to children who tested average or low
on creativity. The boy who was cited for having the
“silliest” ideas and the most ideas for being naughty
proved in subsequent testing to be the most creative member of the
class.
In another experiment children were organized into teams of five
with just one highly creative boy or girl in each. Teams were given
a time limit to examine and manipulate science toys – to find
out what could be done with them. In every group, although the one
highly creative member usually produced the most and the best
ideas, he seldom got credit. After ridiculing his ideas, teammates
often adopted them. When the creative member was a girl, she was
likely to pass her ideas along to some boy, who then got
credit.
Parents, too, Dr. Torrance found, are hard on creative children.
Even those who insist that they want their children to learn and
think creatively are disturbed, irritated and embarrassed by
children who do so. “Why can’t he be like other
kids?” they groan. Under this parental pressure children
often feel guilty about their gifts and try to convert themselves
into more conventional types, either hiding or destroying the
talents that make them different.
How can a parent eliminate or mitigate the pressures that make
children give up their creative spark? Dr. Torrance
suggested:
Don’t discourage fantasy. One of the qualities of the
creative person, young or old, is their ability to move freely
between the world of facts and reason, and the vast realms of the
mind that lie just below the surface of consciousness. Their
greater flexibility, depth of feeling and keenness of insight come
from being open to vague feelings and hunches others dismiss as
ridiculous.
Don’t hold your child back. Don’t be so intent on
sparing your children the hurt of failure that you deny them a
chance to learn from their mistakes. To learn creatively, children
have to bite off more than they can chew, overestimate their
capacities and take risks. Educators have found that many children
can start learning long before they reach the supposed
“readiness period.” The point is not to teach them
creative thinking but to stop interfering with it.
Avoid sexual stereotypes. Don’t let your boy feel that it is
“sissy” to be open to feelings and interested in color,
form, movement and ideas. Don’t make your daughter feel that
it is wrong for her to be intellectually curious, interested in
exploration and experimentation. Such stereotypes are destructive
of creativity.
Don’t judge your children by their reading and writing.
Creative children often lag behind the group in verbal abilities.
One nine year old, at the bottom of his class because of reading
and writing problems turned out to be near the top on creativity
tests. Most children love to dictate stories to their parents, and
this is an excellent way to keep their ideas flowing.
Help your child use their creativity in social relations. One of
their biggest problems in life will be getting along with others
without sacrificing the qualities that make them different. Show
them how to use their sensitivity to be kind, their insight to be
understanding and tolerant of those who don’t see things
their way. Suggest that they can assert themselves without being
domineering or hostile, work alone without being withdrawn, be
honest with others without being overcritical.
“I don’t want my child to be a genius,” many
parents say. “I just want him to be a normal, happy, well
adjusted kid.” But, as Dr. Torrance pointed out, happiness
and good mental health consist primarily of using one’s
capacity to the fullest. “Creative people,” said Dr.
Torrance, “are, in the final analysis, happy people –
provided they are free to create.”
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