Remembering the “Father of Creativity” and his gifts to gifted education.
Just over four years ago, E. Paul Torrance died at the age of 87. While many people would not give a detail like that a second glance, those of us in the education world who have a particular interest in Gifted Education all took a pause to reflect on what a loss that was.
Torrance was to the scholarly study of creativity what Eli Whitney was to the development of the cotton gin.
Creativity was not necessarily a characteristic that was highly valued in schools and in the market in the 1950s. There was a different emphasis at that time on what was important and what was not. Then along came E. Paul Torrance, who believed that high scores on IQ tests were not the only indication of a person’s intelligence. After years of study, he created a new kind of assessment that could measure a person’s level of creativity, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, which measured higher-order thinking skills among other traits.
Torrance may be best known, however, as the leader of the “Creativity Scene,” at the University of Minnesota in the late 1950’s and early 1960s as detailed in The Torrance Kids at Mid-Life - Selected Case Studies of Creative Behavior. Torrance performed a long-term study of over one hundred children who took the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking to see if the test was valid and reliable, or in other words, did the kids who scored high on the test become creative adults as well? The answer came back as a resounding ‘yes.’
Torrance was an excellent teacher in the developing world of gifted education, especially in helping teachers identify giftedness in diverse populations, and how to nurture the gifted children’s growth.
Torrance’s passing four years back might not have made network news, but it was a tough day for educators who respect what gifted and creative children and adults can bring to our world. If gifted education is important to you, it would be worth your time to take a few minutes and Google E. Paul Torrance.
