Education and Creativity

I’ve been reading and talking about education a lot lately. The Next Great Generation, a site which I’m an editor for, is having a whole week about the topic, so for some in depth thoughts on it from some bright young minds, I think you should take a look. I also have a long-winded piece coming up on that site about the topic, but I wanted to give a quick look into how western education systems affect creativity.

I went through a very normal public school education. I feel like I have a good picture of what a decent public school education looks like, and all I can say is that as far as fostering creativity goes, it sucks. How do I know this? Because I was great at school. Seriously, I was really, really good at school. I was the kid you hate because he doesn’t even try and still gets A’s. Where’d it get me? Into an academic advisor’s office that kept pushing me to do pre-med even though I hated all physical sciences. Once I finally decided to ignore that advice, where did my good grades get me? Law school. Fat lot of good that did me.

Do you see the problem here? Our best students are getting pushed towards careers that are completely empirical, and leave no room for creativity. We don’t need more lawyers and accountants. Yes, we need more doctors, but maybe if there were people coming up with creative solutions to the underlying causes of illness, we wouldn’t.

I’m not suggesting that our society will improve dramatically if we have more dance instructors or sculptors. I’m suggesting that every single function in society could be well-served with an injection of creativity. Let’s stop teaching people how to do things, and let’s encourage them to figure out their own way of doing things.

And one last thing, a $40,000+ piece of paper doesn’t prove anything other than that you can memorize information and regurgitate it onto a page. So, I beg you, if you’re one of those people who tries to impress others with his degrees, stop. Just stop. Please.