I heard a story, I forgot when and where I heard it. An art teacher divided his pottery class in half. He told one half of the class to make as many different pots as the possibly could in one week. Just whatever comes to mind, your goal is quantity. The other half of the class he told to just make sculpt perfect, unusual, creative pot to turn in at the end of the week. According to this allegory, the way I heard it was that the side that was assigned quantity over quality produced more creative pots because they had more practice, more experience, and tried a wider variety of ideas.
If this is true, and I'm not sure that it is, do you think that a decline in creativity could be due to school budget cuts and less time spent actively practing creating stuff in art class? I mean doodling new perspectives comes from "I can already draw it this way, let me turn it around that way, or mix it up with this other thing to make it more interesting.". And that comes from spending time doing it.
