If you suspect that your little child at home is a true genius, you might actually be right! Scientists believe that our little children might be as smart as they appear to be to us!

At TEDxTucson, Dr. George Land revealed the findings of a creativity test developed by NASA, which was later used to test school children, and he shocked the audience.

NASA had contacted him and Beth Jarman to develop a highly specialized test to measure the creative potential of their rocket scientists and engineers.

The test served its purpose, but the scientists remained perplexed, and wanted to learn where does creativity come from. They wanted to understand: do we develop creativity throughout time, with experience, or are we born with it?

Therefore, in 1968, they gave the same test to 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5, who were enrolled in a Head Start Program, and the findings shocked them!

The test evaluates the ability to come up with new, different, and innovative ideas to problems, and 98% of the children fell in the genius category of imagination!

Scientists were amazed, so they decided to conduct a longitudinal study and five years later, they tested the children again.

What they found was that only 30% of the then-10-year-olds fell in the genius category of imagination!

Five years later, when the kids were fifteen, only 12% of them fell in that category! Land was disturbed by the results and decided to conduct this same test on 280.000 adults aged 25 and up (with an average age of 31).

The findings?

Only 2% of adults were still in contact with the creative genius after all those years!

Land said that they concluded “that non-creative behavior is learned.”

Many experts claim that the implications of this profound study are rather self-evident- from the moment we enter the schooling system, we dramatically get dumbed down.

Gavin Nascimento explained that the results have been replicated over a million times, which leaves no space for us to doubt their consistency.

He writes that the school system and our education robs us of our creative genius:

“The reasoning for this is not too difficult to apprehend; school, as we plainly call it, is an institution that has historically been put in place to ultimately serve the wants of the ruling class, not the common people.

In order for the so-called elite to maintain their lavish lifestyles of overt luxury — where they contribute the least but enjoy the most — they understand that children must be dumbed down and brainwashed to accept (and even serve) their rapacious system of artificial scarcity, unending exploitation, and incessant war.”

Yet, Land maintains that we can remain at 98% if we want to, and we can all revitalize our creativity.

They discovered that there are two kinds of thinking occurring in the brain, and they use different parts of it. The divergent one is our imagination, that creates new possibilities, and convergent thinking makes decisions, evaluations, and judgments.

He explains:

“We found that what happens to these children, as we educate them, we teach them to do both kinds of thinking at the same time.”

Plus, when we suggest a certain idea, someone can say: “We tried that before”, “That’s a dumb idea”, “It won’t work” and so forth, and this discourage us to think in the same direction again.

Land adds:

“When we actually looking inside the brain we find that neurons are fighting each other and actually diminishing the power of the brain because we’re constantly judging, criticizing, and censoring.

If we operate under fear we use a smaller part of the brain, but when we use creative thinking the brain just lights up.”

Land explains that we should judge less, and try to understand more. We need to be more curious and criticize less. Moreover, he claims that we fear and anxiety as extremely counterproductive.

He adds that the capability we all have at the age of five does not go away, so we should exercise it daily when we are dreaming.

He even challenges us:

“Tomorrow, you take a table fork, turn your five-year-old on and come up with 25 or 30 ideas on how to improve on the table fork.”

Sources:
www.unilad.co.uk
truththeory.com
curiousmindmagazine.com