English Language & Literature — CBSE Class 10 board question

(1) Creativity is our most precious resource and the most inexhaustible one. As anyone who has ever spent any time with children knows, every single human being is born creative; every human being is innately endowed with the ability to combine data and perceptions, materials and ideas and devise new ways of thinking and doing. What fosters creativity? More than anything else: the presence of other creative people, contrary to that creativity is the province of great individual geniuses. In fact creativity is a social process. Our biggest creative breakthrough comes when people learn from, compete with, and collaborate with other people. (2) Cities are centres of creativity. With their diverse populations, dense social networks and public spaces, people can meet spontaneously and spark or catalyse new ideas. With their infrastructure for finance, organization and trade, they allow the idea to swiftly reach its destination. (3) A study tracking the decline of unconventional thinking ability as children age, states that while 98 percent of 3 to 5 years olds exhibited creative thinking, this dwindled to 10 percent among 13 to 15 years olds and a mere 2 percent among 25 years olds. Thus, adulthood witnesses the erosion of innate creativity. There is a variance in creative vitality across cities. Although all cities harbour creative individuals by default, some are saturated with leaders, institutions, and people that inhibit creativity. (4) Creativity (or the lack of it) follows the same general contours of the great socio-economic divide – our rising inequality – that plagues us. According to estimates, roughly one-third people are able to do work which engages our creative faculties to some extent, whether as artists, musicians, writers, techies, innovators, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, journalists or educators. That leaves a group termed “the other 66 percent”, in which their creativity is subjugated, ignored or wasted. (5) Creativity itself is not in danger. It is flourishing all around us – in science and technology, arts and culture, in our rapidly revitalizing cities. But we still have a long way to go if we want to build a truly creative society that supports and rewards creativity of each one of us. (Created for academic usage / 410 words)