SURPRISE! After all this time when our parents, teachers, and other adults told us that school is the most fantastic institution ever created (although us youth have differing opinions…), turns out, the traditional school setting could be killing creativity!
To begin, why don’t we examine the most basic principle of school. It’s my belief that school is to prepare the youth for the future. No one can anticipate what will happen to the economy next week, yet school is supposed to be educating us (the youth) for it. Children starting school this year will retire in 2071 — that’s nearly 60 years that we need to guess how our world will turn. Just the simple unpredictability of it is extraordinary.
If we examine the youth of our society, they are creative. Well at least, were creative. Pablo Picasso once said that all children were born artists. The problem is to remain an artist growing up. We all have our own creative aspects, whether it is designing a massive project in Minecraft, or simply deciding what to wear to school or work the next day. Yet school squanders that creativity, pretty ruthlessly in my opinion.
In his TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson examines the loss of creativity in schools. When we look at literature, whether it be “To Kill a Mockingbird”, or “MacBeth”, our teachers usually demand that we analyze and think deeper about the text and how it relates to the human condition. But our teachers are also fixated on their lesson plan, and less on the creativity and ideas brought forward by the students. This happens in social classes, or even in art.  Robinson shares a story of a six year old girl who hardly ever paid attention during class. During art, the teacher saw that she actually seemed interested and was fascinated. She went over and asked the girl what she was drawing. The girl replied, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher scoffed, and said, “But nobody knows what God looks like.” “They will in a minute,” the girl replies. And such acts by those who are supposed to be educating us is stifling our level of creativity. Just because our perspective, our view, or our understanding of something does not conform with the beliefs of society and its expectations, doesn’t mean that we’re wrong. But our society has can squash such thinking.
Our society makes mistakes seem like the worst thing that could happen. This happens in school and workplaces for adults. Youth are willing to try if they don’t know, but because of such pressure placed by society, we grow scared of taking chances. 
Now, being wrong is not the same thing as being creative, but if we are not prepared to be wrong, we’ll never come up with anything original. Since something so close to our society like school stifles or desire to take chances, youth may lose the capacity to be creative. We’ve become frightened of being wrong.
So I’m not saying that you should ditch school (although it is winter break!), but rather don’t be afraid of it. Because we are the future – the youth. You are the future, and if we’re scared to take risks, we won’t have the next Albert Einstein. We won’t have the next Steve Jobs. We’ll just have more university professors who stigmatize creativity.
Take a look at Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on this issue
Never give, never surrender.
~Ian
