Creativity is the US edge and it comes from a burning desire to be engaged

"...we have to find our niche, what are our niches, what our students can do, and the US has traditionally been excelling in creativity that means if you look at today's economy, the information age, a lot of our new technology were actually, in fact invented in the US, and we have more patents than any other countries so far, and that comes from a level of creativity, which many other countries, even like countries we admire in terms of the test score, Singapore, Japan, Korea and China, they all want creativity. They are actually reforming their schools in an opposite direction. They want to relax; they want more flexibility for students, for schools and they want to expand the definition of success to include the ability in other areas as music, as arts...

Creativity comes from really a strong interest, a burning desire to be engaged in something and through those engagements you will learn, you will find out...

So, I am hoping that the fact of the local control of scoring the tradition in the US gives more diversity in how we treat different talents, how we value different talents in different communities."

Interview with Dr. Yong Zhao, Michigan State University
University Distinguished Professor of the College of Education
Director of the Center of Technology and Teaching
Director of the US-China for Research on Educational Excellence
Executive Director of the Confucius Institute