Preserving children's creativity in the age of AI
NASA commissioned a test to identify their most innovative minds. Researcher George Land later gave that same test to 1,600 children aged 4 to 5.
The result? 98% scored at genius level for creativity.
He retested the same children over time. By age 10, it dropped to 30%. By age 15, just 12%. When given to 280,000 adults, it plummeted to 2%. (Source: George Land & Beth Jarman, Breakpoint and Beyond, 1992.)
The conclusion? Children don't naturally lose creativity; traditional schooling often trains it out of them by prioritizing convergent thinking—finding the single "correct" answer. Ironically, that is exactly what AI now does faster than any human.
Divergent thinking—originating the question, finding meaning, and imagining what doesn't exist yet—is what AI cannot do. That is true human creativity. Children arrive at preschool fluent in it. They just need an environment that doesn't unteach it.
At ChildFirst, we treat AI as a creative partner, not a worksheet machine.
For example, to celebrate Singapore's 60th birthday, our children co-created an original digital story: "The Great SG60 Ice Kachang Disaster!"
The children developed a chaotic, brilliant plot with Gemini (featuring a giant melting ice kachang wave and a sneezing Merlion). They drew the characters with crayons, and used DALL-E to compose the HDB backgrounds around their drawings. Finally, they programmed photon robots to help clean up the sticky streets just in time for the sunset fireworks.
The AI handled the mechanical execution. The children provided the soul: the original idea, the character design, the humor, and the punchline. Instead of letting AI erode our children's creativity, we use it to amplify it.
The question for parents today isn't whether your child will know how to use AI. They all will.
The real question is whether, by the time they grow up, they will still have a creative voice of their own left for AI to amplify.
Your child is in the 98% today. Which group will they be in by age 15?