Does School Kill Creativity?

YES! YES! YES!

And I'm not talking today.

When I was in elementary school back in the '50's - - - it was Read - Memorize - Take a test. Just like it is today.

It just wasn't as defined.

Originally posted by CX
As a result they often say they are rubbish at everything.

The bad thing is, just because you're bad at one subject, you aren't allowed to get a higher education.
I also suck at math, i was never good at it. That's the reason why, after grade school i was sent to a lower secondary school. I was great at everything else and i got bored fast because the stuff they "teached" at that school was really low. I got the school certificate without learning one second. After that i finally went to a better school, because then you're "allowed" to go to a business school, no math there and i was in paradise, except for the stupid german teacher i mentioned in a previous post. I got my better certificate (comparable to the british GCSE) and no i study at a college.

I think it's really bad to basically tell a children "you suck at it so you aren't allowed to go to a better school and you know that you will get a bad job because of it".

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
Look at how they have cut art funding for schools. Music programs no longer teach how to play instruments if they even have them at all.

I can tell you things about "art" in german schools. It's the biggest joke you'll ever see. In the business school the art programm was to draw houses and cutting out news paper article and glueing them on another piece of paper. I'm not joking here and we weren't little children but between 15 and 18 years old, we had for three years to draw crap and glue stuff and that was called Art. We never visited art museums (munich has some), we never did something really creative, most of the time, because the # they told us to do was stupid, we played cards or just sat around and nobody cared because nobody took it serious, not even the teacher.
(and that was at a private school!)

And music? Instruments? I mean....do american kids learn to play instruments at school in music? Really?
All we ever did was minimally learning about who Mozart or Beethoven where and sing songs. Nothing else, we never went to musicals, concerts or something, we never did anything usefull.

And that can be said about a lot of things. For example english. I had 13 years of english in school and basically learned nothing. The first three years were spent on simple greeting, smalltalk and easy words. Later in the business school it was about writing business letters. Everything else i learned myself through video games and movies (that's one of the reasons i was always one of the best in english, all the other kids learned nothing) and that's the reason why i know a lot of english swear words, thanks to Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone ( ) but my writing skills aren't that great.

Originally posted by ShadowAngel85

The bad thing is, just because you're bad at one subject, you aren't allowed to get a higher education.

This is so true.

I had a friend who was amazing at art but because she didn't receive a C grade in Maths she couldn't go on to Sixth Form College - meaning university was out of the question.

What the hell has maths got to do with it!?

Luckily for her she was so good that she didn't need higher education in the end, she managed to find a great job based on her portfolio alone. But I'm sure there are many others who aren't so lucky.

I wouldn't say it kills creativity, no.

I just think some people can't sit in a classroom and learn, and that's why they get into trouble and leave without a decent education. I think for some people, the environment is wrong and they can't sit through the maths and science etc, and that's probably why art and woodwork are in the curriculum, they just don't get as much teaching time, and this could then mean that people don't want to stay on through another few years of what they consider, to them, to be worthless.

I don't think my creativity has ever been impeded by school, but then I was perfectly capable of sitting down and listening, and taking things in. I was probably also lucky that I haven't just been taught how to pass an exam, but been taught around the subject too by people who were, in the most part, good to listen to, and helpful.

Just leaving school now, I've decided to learn another language (a difficult one), and while I'm not classically creative - I can't draw or write music - I do play guitar and sing, and like writing which I've never been discouraged from.

So, in my opinion, I think it's entirely down to the person - what works for some, like me, almost definitely won't work for others. And, a completely creative free-for-all with little structure way of education really wouldn't work for me. It would probably just be worthwhile to have a way of devising which works for who, and teaching like that. But since that wouldn't be cost efficient, and take too much time, it probably won't ever happen.

School killing creativity? My thoughts on this are quite varied. It depends on the school itself of course, the person, the teachers and a whole bunch of factors.

My close family friend recently got a scholorship in Eton. He has 1 hour to watch TV (being documentaries on the news) and the rest he has to memorise things...and learn things that aren't suited to his personality and how he prefers to learn. Obviously, in some areas the school does encourage it - extraciricular activities (they go sailing as a club in school hours!?)Yet although his school isn't as "creative" as he hoped...he draws pictures, uses colour to help him revise and I call that creativity. In this it depends on the person.

In my school, they actually do encourage it...well in Geography at least (when I did it)...we played parce the parcel, built land terrains and designed islands/countries of case studies. But that's the only subject.

I do agree that Maths, Sciences are overrated. If I wanted to do Art...my parents wouldn't let me...that's because it's not going to "lead me anywhere" and it's not a "subject that universities like." Universities usually make these subjects compulsary but if I wanted to become an artist...why would I need them?

Some schools that I know off, don't at all teach very well....therefore this makes the child "dumb," not suiting to the styles they learn best from. Schools these days...they are competing with each other. They want to get the highest possible score in the League Tables...they push children who can't cope and eventually they break. Ofsted reports are also a large matter of pride for schools - and they're largely based on teaching.

Schools wish to get the best Ofsted reports and so they teach in a hard, fast method. This is what, in my opinion, causes the "dumbing" down of children....killing the creativity in schools. If children can't learn the way they want, can't learn what they want, don't have the grades they won't...it's going to demolish everything.

(I think I went slightly off topic - sorry.)

Seems like lots of you had pretty poor educational experiences, but got lucky and learned how to think anyway!

The majority of my education was just as conformist and mind-closingly repetitive. However, I had one or two more 'enlightened masters' (joke) over the years who helped me read between the lines, infer and deduce etc etc.

From my more recent experiences in education, I have realised something:

Most people are actually incapable of indpendent action or thought. You could ask whether this is down to the education they received, or down to their inate thought processes and intelligence. I think it is a mixture of both. Some people always find a way to think for themselves, on their own or with a little help. Others never will, not even with all the prompting in the world.

Teachers I have seen recently fall broadly into two categories. Useful idiots, of average, functional intelligence, who cannot think for themselves and are crippled by this. These are the majority and act as functionaries for the state.

The other category are people who can act freely within a system, working WITH the minds of the young people they educate.

Which would you be?

PEACE/LOVE/UNITY

I don't know that school kills creativity. I do think that schools probably don't create an environment that allows creativity to grow.

I'm not sure that this is such a bad thing. Can you convince me that it is?

How would you change the system?

Is it any wonder why teenagers are commiting suicide?

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In school weeks can be spent on one subject... last year it took us 4 weeks to get through 1 chapter in our biology book. I got bored and started reading past the class, and I actually learned something new. In schooling only the truly smart learn, or truly bored actually learn anything. If you spend an entire week on one story,not like hamlet which interesting enough took the Eng III class ALL YEAR to read and answer questions on, then your missing out on a lot. It took my ENG II class 6-7 maybe even 8 weeks to cover romeo and juliet.

I've been to a private school once, but it was such a crazy time, and I was in culture shock so I don't remember much other than it took 1-2 weeks to cover the odyssey in Spanish class. Goes to show you get what you pay for free = NOTHING... unfortunately.

Not only does school kill creativity, but it stresses us and changes our way of being. School kills the spirit. The individual has become rare.

By the way, thanks for sharing that video! A beautiful speech.

[edit on 2-8-2010 by SinkingSun]

And about music, as has been mentioned, we learn notes and theory in schools, and not how to play. That's a big way to kill creativity. I had been playing guitar for years and almost failed guitar class in high school.

“We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.” - Aldous Huxley