Does school kill creativity? This question has been debated for years and was previously explored in this post and in our first Urban Myths book. But new research sheds fresh light on how children’s creativity actually develops over time.

A recent study by Jankowska and Karwowski followed children from preschool to early primary school, measuring their creativity at multiple points. What they found contradicts the widespread belief that creativity inevitably declines as kids age.

Three Creativity Trajectories

Rather than a universal slump, the study identified three distinct developmental paths:

1. Low start, moderate growth—The largest group (about two-thirds of the children) started with lower creativity scores but improved steadily over time.
2. Medium-start, intensive growth – These children began with moderate creativity but experienced significant growth.
3. Stable-high – A smaller group of children started with high creativity levels and remained consistently strong.

So, rather than an inevitable decline, creativity seems to grow—but at different rates for different children.

What About Divergent Thinking?

The study also looked at divergent thinking (the ability to generate many different ideas), another key component of creativity. Here, they found an increase in fluency (how many ideas a child can come up with) and originality (how unique those ideas are), but flexibility (the ability to shift between different perspectives) showed little change. This challenges the idea that kids’ creative thinking dries up as they enter school.

The School Effect: Help or Hindrance?

This study suggests that while school doesn’t necessarily “kill” creativity, the environment matters. Some kids naturally flourish, while others need more support to develop their creative abilities. Education systems that encourage exploration, play, and problem-solving may help more children follow the ‘intensive-growth’ path rather than stagnate.

The Takeaway

Rather than assuming that school crushes creativity, we should ask how schools can nurture different creative trajectories. With the right approach, education can be a catalyst rather than a constraint.

Abstract of the study:

How does children’s creativity change? Although this is a central question to the developmental studies of creativity, longitudinal investigations that follow the changes in various aspects of children’s creative abilities are scarce. This study longitudinally examines the trajectories of the development of synthetic creative abilities in preschool (N = 194) and early school-age (N = 236) children. We also analyzed if this development was associated with changes in divergent thinking. Children solved the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), a measure of synthetic creative abilities, either four (preschool children) or six times (primary school students), with sessions six months apart and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (three times). Latent growth curve models demonstrated the increasing trend in synthetic creative abilities, yet there was also substantial variability in the rate and pattern of changes among participants. Latent mixture models revealed three trajectories of changes in synthetic creative abilities: (1) low-beginning-moderate-growth trajectory, whose synthetic creative abilities started low yet increased in time; (2) medium-start-intensive-growth trajectory, whose synthetic creative abilities increased substantially, and (3) stable-high trajectory, who scored high in synthetic creative abilities in the first wave and kept stable afterward. These trajectories tended to differ in their initial divergent thinking and the patterns of changes in fluency, flexibility, and originality. We discuss these differences in light of potential idiosyncrasies in creativity development and the possibility of integrating person-centered and dynamic approaches in the creativity literature.