I don’t know that I would call it exactly a “crisis” myself, at least not as described in Po Bronson’s and Ashley Merriman’s Newsweek article, The Creativity Crisis.  New research looking at American’s creativity quotient (like IQ, except it measures an individual’s ability to create something original and useful) shows that CQ scores in the U.S. had been rising steadily up until 1990, when they began to consistently drop.

It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.

I would argue that TV and video games are a lot more complex than the authors give credit.  Many of today’s TV shows require fans to follow very complex plots that arc over years of episodes with characters and events influencing shows seasons later.  Video games today are equally complicated and not like traditional games, where the rules are established and learned from the beginning.  In a video game you learn what to do by probing and figuring out what you’re supposed to do to play the game.  You have to learn to think creatively in order to probe the game and work out how to play it.

As far as creativity development in schools, there are some interesting points raised in the Newsweek article.