“Parents think I’m a fortune teller. “They’re sending me their children’s drawings. I’m getting questions whenever I go outside. Restaurant owners, they even ask me. They want to know about their own creativity!” —Kyung Hee Kim
slipping and had been for over 50 years left readers either defensive or deeply alarmed. Kim grew upset at a reporter’s insistence she isolate the culprit. She was forced to begin screening media calls. “People asked me how we can foster children having more creativity,” Kim says. She points out there’s no single, simple answer, or handy sound bite that satisfies this question. Parent education is needed, she says. “Parent education must be mandatory for every single parent,” Kim believes, for parents can smother the spark that burns in all children. “I have been in this country for only 10 years. I haven’t been here long enough to criticize. That is not what my research is about. I don’t study politics. I just want to help creative people, and children who are creative, so that parents don’t kill their creativity and their lives become miserable. I just want to help those people, but no reporter has been interested in that so far,” she stresses.
THE CREATIVITY OBSESSION “She is a member of the Center for Gifted Education and teaches research methodology classes,” says Bruce Bracken, a William & Mary colleague and fellow UGA alum. “She is a rising star at the College, coming to us with a mature, well-developed line of research, which is unusual for assistant professors. Her research has already brought considerable attention to us through her Newsweek citations, as well as her other notable research (e.g., meta-analyses) and presentations.” “The term ‘creativity’ is understood by everyone,” says Tracy L. Cross, executive director of the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary. Perhaps, Cross says, that’s why the public’s so interested, he writes in an email. “Of course, that means that there are nearly an infinite number of tacit definitions operating. Moreover, most people enjoy talent domains such as art and in those domains one can easily tell when they are witnessing something that they cannot do themselves. So, creativity is in everyone’s world from the practical arts to the high arts. It makes sense that so many people are interested in it.” And interested they were. As a scientist, colleague, friend and parent, Kim said 500 emails daily filled her inbox since that headline and others like it broke. The emails carried entreating subject lines, and Kim remained under siege to give interviews months later. Kim sighs, swiveling away from a PC screen that pings with incoming email alerts, that she could longer do her research. “Finger pointing,” she says, her eyes blazing. “Whose fault is that? It focuses on blaming people and I don’t want to do that. Also, they
don’t know. People don’t appreciate their air right now; it’s just there. I came from a different culture and then I came to America.” Here, the air allowed her to breathe as a free thinker. She wants the blame-game to cease. “I believe it is the land of opportunity. Even if they want to blame, I don’t blame—I want to thank the country, and the American people!” As days wore on after the research became public, panicked parents accosted Kim, asking if their child, or they themselves, were uncreative. “Parents think I’m a fortune teller,” Kim says. “They’re sending me their children’s drawings. I’m getting questions whenever I go outside. Restaurant owners, they even ask me. They want to know about their own creativity!” Americans are panicked at the news that we are either growing more dumb or less creative or both. Kim isn’t happy about that response, either, and gestures with a stop sign by holding up her hand. America, she says seriously, is where she found opportunity and personal freedom. “Being creative is being mentally healthy,” Kim asserts. “Since I came here, I let out my creative energies. I’m healthier; I’m happier and more independent.” With an intake of breath, Kim gathers herself. “This country has saved my life! It’s the best country on earth!” she explodes. “You know that. Don’t you?” Since leaving Korea for the United States 10 years ago, Kim has become devotedly American. She tells how she was once bound by a traditional culture in which family and village elders held complete sway. “There is no other place on earth like the United States. No other country. Compared to any other country in the world, it is the best.” On this point, Kim is adamant. To know how great her clarity, one must go with Kim to the journey that has made this known. But Kim warms to the creativity topic slowly. First, she reveals how she jumpstarted her own creative life, and, finally, how she wound up at the epicenter of a creativity maelstrom.
A PHD, WIFE AND MOTHER, ONCE HOPELESSLY CAUGHT IN A WEB OF TRADITION… Kim is a native of Bugye-myon, Gunwi-gun, which she compares to a province, in Kyungsangpook, which she further explains, is like a state, in the country of Korea. “It is really deep South. Remote countryside. Mountainous—a small village,” Kim explains. Village elders weighed in on all matters, along with family. When Kim, the second of four children, was identified as a promising student, her relatives discouraged her attending school, saying it might make her disobedient. Her parents finally relented, allowing Kim
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