Saturday, November 2, 2013

Creativity: Is It Learned Or Innate


I was talking with a friend who told a story of her now one year old son suddenly having put together a string of words that as far as she know he was never exposed to. Yet he created a sentence on his own. The event mirrored material in a learning module I recently studied online at the Khan Academy It seems there is an age old mystery about how a child will create words and phrases they were never exposed to. Also on a different tangent a child will take from time to time learn an action than initiate variations and take it a step farther. These type of events suggest we all are born with the basic traits of creativity.

Being creative doesn't necessarily your an artist, musician, or whatever. It means you do what the root of the word suggest. You create. When you do something even as simple as rearranging your desk, you are showing the ability to be creative. You can learn to draw in some fashion. It's when you take it beyond the drawing of that line and make whatever you are applying imagination. Imagination is that intuitive sense we all have that fuels the vision to see beyond what is in front of you and leads you down the path of creativity. Learning the basics is fine. Taking them even a little bit farther is creativity at work. You are expanding the boundaries and going to the next level.

What I am saying is we all have in us the ability to create. Introducing any form of variation or newness is creativity. It is already intertwined with our mesh of synapses and neurons that lace though out our brains. And an interesting fact is we can develop it our by exercising it like we do our muscles as well as feeding it by learning. Two free tools online to do just that are Lumosity.com and the previously mentioned Khan Academy. And I am sure there are more. In conclusion creativity is the product of being innate and learned and the boundaries are limitless.


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