The Death of Creativity

A little about me. I am a reservist in the USMC.  I work as an IT Security Analyst for my civilian job, and I own part of two small business that I helped start.  I love to program, tinker with electronics and am currently working on some new technologies for a third company I hope to launch later this year.  The thing I am most proud of in my life? I was a victim of ADD all through my public education, and learned almost nothing in school.  Yes, my time in elementary, junior high, and high school was a complete wash.  The mere fact that I graduated surprises me as much as it does everyone I am close to.  However, I firmly believe this is what allowed me to keep my imagination, and acceptance of failure.  If I haven't failed majorly at least a few times a year, I feel I wasted that year.

I don't suppose any one reading this has been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD.  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention ONLY 5.3 million students are diagnosed with it yearly.  Of that 2.7 million are being medicated for this "Problem".  Considering what a high number that really is, I feel the need to ask if you are still with me?  We are after all about 68 words in here.  Without my Adderall and a Monster with it's glorious caffeine, I would be skimming by this point-if I was even still reading that is.  So what's going on with your kids, and why are so many of them being diagnosed with learning disorders?  I think the problem is that they are, and hold on this is a crazy idea, are just being kids.

Let me explain, I am not saying that Adderall, or other medications can't be wonderful tools for helping students in school. What I am saying is why are we bending over backwards to help our children conform to this system of education?  Ken Robinson, a man who has been beating the education reform dead horse for years, suggested that our education system is the party that needs to begin catering.  He explains why in great detail in one of his TED talks. One of the best stories he tells is of a girl who was diagnosed with a learning disability in the 1930's.  Now at the time there was no such thing as ADD/ADHD so they were unable to diagnose her with it, but surely that would have been the result of what her teachers described as "fidgety and disruptive behavior".  Concerned by this her mother took her to a doctor.  After discussing the problem in detail with her mother, the doctor told the girl he needed to have a word with her mother out of the room. Before leaving he turned on music, leaving the girl in the room as it played.  After exiting the room he instructed her mother to look through the window,  and what she saw was her daughter dancing to the music.

"Look," he said "I dont think your daughter has a disease, I think she is a dancer."

  As the doctor prescribed the mother pulled the daughter from her normal school, placed her in a dancing school, and she later went on to be a professional ballerina.  She would also go on to start a successful dance studio, and choreograph many of the most successful musicals in Broadway such as Cats, and Phantom of The Opera.

The current education system serves the purpose of preparing students for college.  A place where they will spend large amounts of money, and time, to earn a piece of paper qualifying them for jobs they may never receive.  The college degree no longer holds the value it used too.  We are more and more in need of creative workers, with creative ideas to solve problems in a world with very LARGE problems.  So why do we allow our children to be pushed through this creativity crushing machine known as public education?  That is something you  must ask yourself.  As homeschooling is not always an option for all parents I highly suggest you take a look into voucher programs, or at the very least take a hand in your children learning during the hours after school.  Place them in dance classes, teach them to draw, let them play instruments, let them be children!

The world is changing, rapidly.  As history has shown technological advances often out pace our social maturity or understanding of how to use these advances appropriately.  This is more true than ever as the internet continues to grow. We now have access to powerful computers that can fit in our pockets.  We are exposed to more information in a single day, than some one in the 15th century saw in their entire lifetime.  As this technological, information super charged society continues to travel into a future more and more like Star Trek, we must be aware of the ramifications it will have.  Jobs are being taken by software and machines at an alarming rate, and contrary to belief on old economists and comparisons to history, these jobs are not coming back.

I see a world in 50 years where the unemployment rate will be above 50%.  How we choose to handle this will make or break this country we love.  Will we raise our children to be creative problem solvers, capable of leading us into a stable way of living in a world so vastly different than the one we know?  Or will we continue to push students through a public school system dedicated to building clones of who we are now.  It is important to remember that you are not raising your children to be like you.  You want your children to be BETTER than you.  If not we have no hope of progressing as a species.  No hope of overcoming the daunting challenges that our species has been without for it's time on this earth.  How will we supply our energy needs, how will we feed everyone, how will we preserve this planet and the other animals, bugs, and creatures we share it with?  I don't have all the answers, but I do know a big step in the right direction is to encourage the natural creativity humans are born with.  I fear living a life that when I some day have children I look at them as adults and realize that they are so afraid of being wrong, they no longer look for new ways to solve problems.  They simply exist like so many of us do, by preforming day to day in the way they were taught would create the smallest percentage of failure.  Failure is beautiful.