When I was little, I was the kind of kid that could be fascinated for hours on end by something as simple as a cardboard box; it could be a spaceship, train car or even a house—the possibilities were endless.
As I grew up, I slowly lost my sense of creativity. What was once a spaceship or a train caboose became simply just a box.
Of course, part of my loss of creativity (and in this metaphorical box example, loss of wonder) was simply due to me becoming more mature. But I think that another part of this loss is due to the influence of my education.
The change was not immediate, by any means—it was a gradual process, as the loss of creativity often is.
In fact, when children are young, their divergent thinking, or ability to come up with various solutions to a single problem, is superb. When a typical kindergartener is asked how many uses of a paperclip he or she can think of, most name 200 or more. By the time our kindergartener finishes school, he or she can name 10 to 15. This question was part of a larger study on divergent thinking, published in the book Breaking Point and Beyond. In the book, researchers tested 1500 kindergarteners on their divergent thinking ability. When the children took the test for the first time, 98 percent were classified geniuses according to the protocol of the test. Tested again five years later, only 50 percent of the same children attained the genius level. The number continued to drop as the children got older, dropping to 2 percent by the time they reached adulthood.
Why does this happen? I think that it is due dually to the fact that our education system does not challenge our creativity, and has adopted a “one size fits all” approach.
The way the education system works now, we place a heavy emphasis on a very standardized way of learning. We take notes about what is deemed to be important, write papers, take scantron tests, regurgitate EK terms, and not much else. We sometimes mumble through the occasional PowerPoint presentation. How anyone could truly be interested in this, and how this could encourage a love of learning in anyone, is beyond my scope of knowledge.
Of course, we need to learn the basics—I am by no means advocating that we simply stop educating children—no one wants a generation of illiterate children who cannot add or subtract. What we should do however, is change the way we educate people, so we can foster both creativity and a love of learning.
Curricula should not be so rigid, and should have practical application. Students should be given more opportunities to learn about what they are interested in. Teachers should assess learning not only through Paper 1s and essays, but through other, more creative measures.
When researching for this article, I came across a quote that really spoke to me, in an article written by Nikhil Goyal: “We aren’t realizing the true purpose of school—becoming lifelong learners and active, engaged citizens in democracy. Conformity and sticking in your shell is no longer the shortcut to success. What separates the best from the average in the world is grit, uniqueness, drive, and resilience.”
What this said to me was that there will always be people who can memorize every history EK or every calculus formula. But this is not preparing them for the real world. In a sea of other kids who have memorized just as many facts or more, they will not stand out. The thing that empowers the great innovators of our time, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerburg, is not necessarily superior technical knowledge, but creativity. The same will hold true for our generation.
Overall, I suppose that no matter what, I would have come to view a box as a box. But perhaps had I been educated differently, I would see an infinite amount of possibilities in a box, instead of the accepted one I have been taught.