What Kills Creativity in Children?

First, please forgive what will likely be a somewhat long and complicated response. To me, this is a great question and so warrants a serious answer. Also, I admit, people have offered a lot of personally relevant thoughts already. There is, however, quite a difference between personally relevant thoughts and answers based on a legitimate science.

Admittedly, the OP did not mention the word science in her or his request. I’m choosing this path as for some people it may serve to clarify things. Also, for those who may not be familiar with what I mean by “a legitimate science,” hopefully, the following explanation will help.

I promise, all this stuff will pay off in the end.

The first thing a legitimate science must do is properly define its terms. Most things currently referred to as scientific fail this test. How? If a science does define its terms (often it does not), these terms get defined “dictionary style.” By this, I mean, using unsorted lists of what this thing is thought to be, or what it looks like.

How would a legitimate science define its terms? By limiting descriptions of the terms used to only what makes this thing, this thing (its essence; its sine qua non). It would also include a clear concise statement of what this thing is not. Moreover, together these two statements would account for all possible instances of this thing.

Add to this that these two statements would, by their very nature, offer a way to properly identify and measure this thing outside of a lab. Here “properly” means “result in clear and certain outcomes, even in real world settings.”

So how do I define “creativity?” First, by defining its complementary opposite; the word “genius.”

Genius is “the ability to find meta-patterns in already existing things.”

Creativity is “the ability to destroy already existing things in order to discover new meta-patterns.”

So what kills creativity in children? The main thing? At this point, hopefully, it’s obvious.

Once babies achieve a significant degree of mobility, most of the adults around them, in an effort to conserve what they consider worth saving, do their best to prevent, interfere with, discourage, and generally frighten the shit out of any baby who dares to scientifically explore these adults’ already existing things.

Enter a well-civilized baby.

A person who is programmed to either not touch anyone’s shit OR programmed to perform endless steams of useless experiments, wherein he or she changes things in infinitely small increments, in carefully controlled settings, none of which resemble real world settings.

And for those who may be interested in the rest of what makes something a legitimate science, here’s a logically geometric map.