Does School Kill Creativity?

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           So here’s my opinion on creative IQ. I believe, to an extent, that there is some driving force out there called a creative IQ. Can creativity really be measured by a grade, though? Is there any way to truly teach somebody how to create something out of nothing? It almost seems counterintuitive. It goes against every bone in any scientist’s body that something can come from thin air. Yet, that’s the imaginative world most authors, painters, musicians, and other artists live in. They create beauty from the thoughts inside their own head.

            There’s no prescribed formula for creative IQ, although many have (and with somewhat amusing results) tried to quantify creativity with a number scale or a grading system. Some people bring up the argument that school establishments teach everybody to be robots in our society and spit back memorized formulas and historical facts based off of rote, non-creative practices. That’s where I’d beg to differ. Although logic is a highly different skill set from creativity, at some point, there is a melding of the minds between school and creativity.

            And that comes with life experiences.

            For better or worse, school allows young students to take in a whole spectrum of life experiences that will allow them opportunities to question things that they might not have been exposed to before. Although the internet is a large database of information, or perhaps one might think that meditating in a forest would be a better use of creative energies and time, school does offer a sort of sanctuary for creative thought, a springboard. Now, aside from offering life experiences which artists of all sorts can use in expressionism (make a movie based on high school social life, or take a satirical spin on a book you read in English class), school also offers a safe haven for kids who might not have had that opportunity beforehand.

            Not all kids are fortunate enough to have certain privileges like the internet or even a decently maintained library. School offers at least a starting point for knowledge. The institution might be flawed (and that’s an understatement what with bullying and rising stress levels in an increasingly competitive educational society), but school is necessary for children to learn. One must, after all, learn to read before they can write, or learn how to hold a pencil before they can draw. School offers the basics for most creative practices, music programs, etc.

It’s what that respective creative person does with that school establishment that will shape their creations forever. They can take those experiences and choose to learn from them, or even reject them completely. But there is that argument, in the very least, that even though there’s no ACT or SAT test for creative IQ, school at least offers a starting place for most students to learn the fundamentals which will one day launch their creative journeys.

Some might argue that humans have been creating things by painting on animal skins or etching symbols into cave walls. The education system, as a whole, attempts to teach people basic skills like how to survive in the society in which we live in. For example, when humans first created fire, somebody had to teach everybody else how to do the same thing so that they might also better survive in that environment.

Teachers are necessary to give us a strong foundation for survival. If some people choose to create, then they have the basics down to be able to create. If teachers didn’t teach them how to write or even to draw, then somebody outside of that institution still taught somebody how to draw. We have teachers all around us in our daily lives, but the institution attempts to give people who might not have a teacher with a chance to have one. The system might be flawed, but creativity is central to a human being. They just need someone to help them with the basics.

            It is what each person chooses to do with that creativity central to his or herself that shapes their futures, and if they so hate school, then who am I to judge them?

            You go for your dreams, and let that creative IQ soar.

1 Comment

  1. mom on April 28, 2016 at 10:49 pm

    well written

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