Children carry a knack for originality and each kid possesses a talent. I believe that schools don’t provide enough opportunity for students to be creative. Society classifies mistakes as horrible things. Even schools view mistakes to be an awful thing. Students doubt their creativity because they were guided to believe they couldn’t achieve their dreams. They were told not to pursue arts because they won’t be successful.
As a child, I wanted to be an artist. I was discouraged by my parents as they told me I would never be an artist. According to educator Ken Robinson, children are open to taking chances and are not afraid of being wrong. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original,” said Robinson. Humans in adulthood are often afraid of being wrong because they never took chances as a kid. This determines that the capability for creativity reduces by the time a child is an adult. “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up,” said Pablo Picasso.
Robinson said that there is a hierarchy in the structure of the education system. The upper portion contains the most useful subjects in today’s world that is favored for academic ability, languages and mathematics. At the bottom are the subjects that aren’t viewed to be as important: art. Universities will often train a student on how to think and not what to think. Those that set goals for an A in their course will accept a professor’s ideas even if their professor makes their lecture sound like the only way to think.
Another example includes students finding a different way to solve a problem in math class and their teacher returns an F because they hadn’t solved it the way their teacher taught them in class. Inquisitive minds must be nurtured, not ridiculed. In school students obtain information with little time to be creative, which takes time.
Schools cancel out curiosity due to the frameworks that students must follow. In grade school, students follow the framework in a particular subject they may not presently be interested in. Work for these courses prolongs school hours which impacts the growth of children’s curiosity. Curiosity leads to creativity. These are two traits that cannot be taught. Curiosity and creativity are generated through encouragement as well as a stimulating environment to accelerate off of. Expressing curiosity will stretch knowledge and understanding, thus making it an important aspect to success. Doing this will provide different insights and result in originality.
Schools advise students to be creative and express themselves but do not give the time to do so. Facts are accessible to anyone at any time via Internet and books. I believe that learning how to think to use those facts should be what education is about. Creativity is an acquired skill and learning what to do with facts is the key that builds on originality.