Do schools kill creativity?

Originally posted by umbr45
Schools (At least in England) kill creativity right from the start with school uniforms which provide no use.

The supposed "if you get lost someone can see where you come from" excuse is untrue as everyone I knew could name their infant school when they were in it; it is not needed for any other reason.

I thought the reason they had uniforms was to eliminate jealousy among students... In other words by wearing a uniform you do not own the really expensive clothes etc... Kinda makes everyone equal in a way so nobody is better than anyone else... I don't agree with the uniform because I feel you should be able to dress to express yourself... But none the less I think your excuse is wrong...

I have always had mixed feelings on this issue.

One one hand, I completely agree. A school's ability to carry out its duties depends on subversion and the suppression of creativity. Conformity is a huge cornerstone of schooling and it starts with the stifling of freedom of speech (which is funny, because public schools are part of the federal government).

On the other hand, I don't necessarily sympathize either. We live in a society that requires orthodoxy AS MUCH AS creativity. Like it or not, there are some things a person should know, or would be better off knowing, and creativity is no justification for ignorance.

I also believe that ultimately, we stifle our own creativity. A big part of this is failing to recognize that there is a time to be creative and there's also a time to conform. You simply cannot get through life by always being creative, you have to suck it up and go with the flow every now and then. The whole creativity issue is a big part of the 2006 movie "Accepted" and I really think the movie is completely off the mark on its commentary. School is not the only place to be creative. You want creativity, thenyou have to find a place to do it. Just don't expect everyone else to conform to your standards.

After reading through this thread, and doing some thinking in retrospect, I must say I do believe public schools destroy creativity. I remember in our arts classes(drawing, music, and theater ect.), we were never once asked to really create anything ourselves, we were either instructed to; draw what we saw, read from a script, or sing or play from a sheet of music provided. Never once were we instructed to be creative.

And in thinking about the word 'instructed' it dawned on me. It's because from day one we are 'instructed', and conditioned to expect instructions before acting on ANYTHING, that we had no initiative to be creative on our own(save a few). We truly are molded into 'model citizens.' And those who didn't comply and were particularly disruptive to the process, are sent to reform schools. Kind of another funny word there 'reform.' This discussion has kind of sent me into a frenzy of Google searching for the terms 'social engineering public schools' and into a hunt for print media with information on the subject.

If you can slow down the flow of the new crop of minimum wage workers flowing into the machine, you can slow that machine down. It's operators wouldn't like that very much, would they?

Great thread, we should keep it going.

[edit on 6/9/2008 by ludaChris]