<p>Well, I'm practicing for the SAT next week and am trying to figure out where my essay is. Please give a grade on the 1-6 scale. Also, any comments and suggestions would be appreciated!</p>
<p>Prompt:
"Given the importance of human creativity, one would think it should have a high priority among our concerns. But if we look at the reality, we see a different picture. Basic scientific research is minimized in favor of immediate practical applications. The arts are increasingly seen as dispensable luxuries. Yet as competition heats up around the globe, exactly the opposite strategy is needed."
Adapted from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention</p>
<p>Assignment:
Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>Essay (reproduced faithfully):
Creativity is paramount in today's complex world. This is evidence in science, business, and art.</p>
<p>In science, creativity is extremely important because it allows unconventional solutions to problems. Many of the simple, straightforward scientific questions have been solved: we now understand many of the basic laws of the universe and technologies, such as microscopes and imaging tools, has allowed us to definitely answer simple questions sch as: what are we made of? While these questions confounded previous generations of scientists, their answers are creating new questions. Scientists are no wondering how our universe came to be. Questions like this can't be resolved by mere experiment: they require scientists to speculate about unconventional answers, to think outside the box, to be creative.</p>
<p>Creativity is also needed more than ever in business. In today's supercompetitive economy, anything that can be automated will be. As Malcolm Gladwell remarked in The New Yorker, "If a computer can do your job, you probably won't have it tomorrow." Thus, modern business demands employees who can think on their feet and come up with unconventional solutions everyday. Workers today need to leverage the skill computers can't automate (yet): their creativity.</p>
<p>Artists, ironically, need to be more creative than they ever were before. We have always liked to surround ourselves with beauty, but traditional forms have been exhausted. Pastorals are a dime a dozen and photography has made the portrait practically extinct. To continue to push the envelope, artists such as Andy Schwarz need to be ever more creative, as he is with his vivisected animal exhibits.</p>
<p>The forces of globalization and technology have made our world ever more competitive. Therefore, creativity is indeed needed more than ever.</p>