I recently had dinner with the Head of the American School in London who was an extremely interesting woman. We talked about many different topics but what was so impressive was her ability to support her arguments with the most up to date research. It seems that the American education system, despite some of its failings, is beginning to rate creativity as a very important tool for student progress This is a fantastic article which underpins the academic importance of creativity in the curriculum:

http://education.jhu.edu/newhorizons/Journals/Fall2010/Grigorenko-Tan