The gradual changes in educational practice since World War II have certainly not amounted to a radical rupture with the past: they are real, but intangible and difficult to explain. To examine these ‘everyday changes’ in the elementary classroom we need a certain lens, a foothold that can help us to introduce more structure and insight into “the chaos of the educational past.” We propose to look at postwar change in European schools through the lens of 'creativity' - but not to see whether creativity in schools has increased or decreased. Such a research question would assume an uncritical and ahistorical acceptance of the notion of creativity. As historians, we should look at the emergence of the notion of creativity as a historical event in itself. In this paper, will try to untangle how the word was given shape by the historical circumstances of its emergence, both in the US, where it originated, and in Belgium, where we will try to trace a reception history of the term. Our theoretical framework will be based on 'conceptual history' (Koselleck, 2002), with additional references to the theory of 'speech acts' developed by historian Quentin Skinner (Skinner, 2002).   

In most western countries, promoting creativity in children is accepted as an important educational goal. When leafing through pedagogical periodicals since the 1960s, one notices that the concept of creativity – and especially the claim that schools need more of it – was (and is) pivotal in discussions about educational reform. Claiming the need for creativity in schools has become a part of the discourse of pedagogues and educators, from reformers to conservatives. This evolution is embedded in a larger trend that has made creativity into a core value for western societies. It is seen as a human capacity that fosters mental growth and psychological health, economic prosperity, societal reform and technological innovation.

Historically speaking, the grouping of these benefits under one and the same banner is a relatively new phenomenon. The noun creativity was not commonly used in English before the 1940s; it gradually found its way into other European languages from the 1950s on. As we will try to show, the word creativity was not simply an extension of earlier, related concepts like 'expression', 'invention', 'self-actualization' or even the 'creative imagination'. While all these terms were limited to specific domains of human experience, creativity evolved into a broader category, a cluster concept encompassing and uniting areas of experience that were not seen as being connected before.

Psychologists tend to explain the adoption of the word creativity by the general public as the result of the 'discovery' of creativity as a psychological category in the 1950s. Alternatively, some philosophers have denounced creativity as being a fashionable term without real content or meaning. We will try to show that the emergence of the word creativity was neither of the two: it was an answer to the specific challenges and anxieties of postwar western societies. 

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