Schools Stepping On Creativity

         There is a famous quote by Pablo Picasso that goes “Everyone is born an artist, the problem is staying an artist as you grow up”. This is true more than ever now, from age 5-18 sitting in classes for 8 hours a day. Told to sit still and listen, to fill out worksheets and retain information the same as every other student in the school. We are bread to be the same as the next person, bread as a clone. The world has changed and it needs creative minds more than ever, with companies like Google and Apple leading the way. If our current day industry is being run by creativity, why do our schools teach the same information to every student, and teach them the same way. For someone who is creative or in pursuit of an artistic career, weather it be Graphic Design, Painting or Dance; It is extremely difficult to sit still and receive this cookie cutter information that does not pertain to our interests. We then get diagnosed with having ADHD, we say that its a disorder to not be able to sit still for 8 hours a day. I feel that it should be a disorder to be able to sit blindly retaining information day in and day out without having any creative freedom. The story of Gillian Lynne is one of my favorites, for it clearly points out the fault in our current education system. When she was in school she was not able to sit still and concentrate on the school assignments, and so the teacher contacted her parents and told her that she may have  a learning disability. She was taken to a doctor to be examined, and so she sat there while her mom told the doctor all the problems she was having in school. Once she finished the doctor stood up and went over to Gillian, and exclaimed he needed to talk to her mom in private. So the doctor and her mom walked out of the room, but before leaving the doctor turned on the radio. Outside the room the doctor told Gillian’s mom to watch her daughter through the window, and the second they had left the room, Gillian was up on her feet and dancing around the room. She was not sick, she did not have a disability, she was a dancer. She then was moved to a dance school and became one of the greatest dancers in history. Another doctor might have said she had ADHD and put her on medication, all that talent wasted. Our current education system is to breed a narrow view of careers, in which most student wont even enter, so if we want to stop wasting so much talent and creativity we need to re think the way we teach our children. We need to realize there is more to life than being a doctor or a lawyer.

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