How schools kill creativity

Picasso once said this; all children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. i believe this passionately that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. or rather, we get educated out of it. so why is this? I think everyone is interested in education, because school taught us that its education that’s meant to take us into the future, but that we can’t actually grasp. And it’s a problem because i saw a modern phone, and looked at a phone from 150 years ago and compared how much it changed.

Then i saw our transportation and how much it changed. Now we have cars and when we see a car from 150 years ago we see that it has clearly changed. When we look at a picture of a modern day school and from 150 years ago, it made us realize that it has been going on for literally more than a century, and nothing has changed. More and more years past and the creativity of the students grow immensely and we still try to force them to grave in their minds where they need to go and not where they want to go like if our minds are the same as 150 years ago.

If humans make the effort to evolve technology to be up to date with our generations, why dont we change our school education to make it up to date with our creativity? School education constantly say that school prepares students for the future, but if we teach students the same thing we have been taught many years ago, we are stuck in the past instead of innovating a way to surpass our mental limits. There are 6 specific problems that the school education has. The first one is industrial age values. We educate children by batches and govern their lives by ringing bells. Most of the time that the students are at school they do nothing but follow instructions. “ Sit down”, “ Stop talking”, “ Take out your books”, and you are being rewarded if you do exactly what you’re told.

These are traits that are strictly important for factory workers, their success is based on following instructions and doing exactly what they are told. But in today’s world, how far can you go by simply following instructions? The modern world values people who can be creative, who can communicate their ideas and collaborate with others. But our generation dont have the chance to develop those skills on a system that’s based on industrial age values. The second problem is inauthentic learning. Most of the learning that students get is inauthentic because it relies on memorising.

The stistem is defining a general set of knowledge that all children must know. And then we measure how much they have retains by giving them tests or exams. We know that this kind of learning is not authentic because most of what has been memorize has been forgotten the day after the exam. There are much more progressive and authentic ways to learn than memorizing. The third problem is lack of autonomy. At school students experience an immense lack of autonomy and control. Every minute of a child’s life is strictly controlled by the school system. But in today’s world, if you are doing important work, then you have to manage your own time, you’re making your own decisions regarding on what you do and when to do it. But at school its very different, the school is sending a message to the children that they are not in charge of their own lives. They simply have to follow what is ordered instead of taking charge and making the most of their lives.

Experts think that autonomy is extremely important for children. That’s why students are so unmotivated to go to school or to do their work. The forth problem is that there’s no room for passion. The school is made for that the students have to learn the same thing at the same time as the same way as everyone else. Any scientist can confirm that every single brain is different, even a mom with two children can confirm. Imagine if a doctor would give the exact same prescription to all his patients, then they would get sick. This is what’s happening currently to our newest century, every kid is getting sicker and sicker by being taught that creativity and art and dance isn’t as important as math and science. But yet, we still have a teacher standing in front of 30 students and teaching them the same way to think. Which is outrageous, because 30 students in a class is 30 different dreams, 30 different needs, and 30 different people. Now instead of seeing our body as a way to express ourselves, we see it as a way of transportation for our left side of our heads.