Ted Talk Final Draft Divergent Thinking
Vihar Desu
Tedx Talk Title: Divergent Thinking in the 21st Century
Good Afternoon,
I wanted to start of the talk with a little thought experiment called Divergence Thinking Test. It’s sort of like an IQ Test, but instead of logic and reason, you have to use your creativity and your imagination. Your test is to come up with as many alternative uses for an Apple as you can think of…People doing this at home, give yourself about 5 minutes. How many uses do you think you can come up with for an Apple? The average person can come up with around 10 or 15, which is surprisingly low. But people that are good at this can come up with around 100.
Now, this experiment tests one’s Divergent Thinking...Which in essence, is one’s ability to generate solutions and ideas by exploring a wide variety of approaches to a question. Moreover, it tests one’s ability to interpret a problem in many ways and think quote un-quote “outside of the box”.
There is a book called Break Point and Beyond co-authored by George Land and Beth Jarman that talks about a study in which Kindergartener’s took a similar Test where they were tested on their Divergent Thinking. According to the protocol of the test, 98% of the kids were considered geniuses at Divergent Thinking. However, when the same test was re-administered 5-years later to the same kids…only about a third of those kids scored high enough to be considered geniuses. The same downward trend continued 5-years after that. The study showed that kids seemed to get worst and worst at Divergent Thinking as they went through school.
But, why is this happening? Why are kids losing their essential capacities to think creatively as they go through school? Why isn’t it considered important? Divergent Thinking encompasses many essential real-life skills—the most important of which is decision-making. Whether you are a CEO of a company, a writer or, perhaps even an electrician, creative problem solving is essential for success. Yet, school still
Tedx Talk Title: Divergent Thinking in the 21st Century
Good Afternoon,
I wanted to start of the talk with a little thought experiment called Divergence Thinking Test. It’s sort of like an IQ Test, but instead of logic and reason, you have to use your creativity and your imagination. Your test is to come up with as many alternative uses for an Apple as you can think of…People doing this at home, give yourself about 5 minutes. How many uses do you think you can come up with for an Apple? The average person can come up with around 10 or 15, which is surprisingly low. But people that are good at this can come up with around 100.
Now, this experiment tests one’s Divergent Thinking...Which in essence, is one’s ability to generate solutions and ideas by exploring a wide variety of approaches to a question. Moreover, it tests one’s ability to interpret a problem in many ways and think quote un-quote “outside of the box”.
There is a book called Break Point and Beyond co-authored by George Land and Beth Jarman that talks about a study in which Kindergartener’s took a similar Test where they were tested on their Divergent Thinking. According to the protocol of the test, 98% of the kids were considered geniuses at Divergent Thinking. However, when the same test was re-administered 5-years later to the same kids…only about a third of those kids scored high enough to be considered geniuses. The same downward trend continued 5-years after that. The study showed that kids seemed to get worst and worst at Divergent Thinking as they went through school.
But, why is this happening? Why are kids losing their essential capacities to think creatively as they go through school? Why isn’t it considered important? Divergent Thinking encompasses many essential real-life skills—the most important of which is decision-making. Whether you are a CEO of a company, a writer or, perhaps even an electrician, creative problem solving is essential for success. Yet, school still