Study Finally Tells Adults The Damage Schools Have Been Doing To Creativity

(First things first, sorry for the long title. I try to be concise, I really do. Whether I succeed in that respect is another, less likely, matter entirely.)

Well, this new study has been getting some attention in the blogging field. Findings suggest that modern society has been reducing children's creativity, with schools as the primary suspect.

My response when I read that?

What, now  you realize that?


How can people be surprised by this?

With preschools and earlier grades cutting recess and free time, how can this come as a surprise?

With music and art programs being cut and removed entirely from schools, how can this come as a surprise?

With focus being directed more and more only at math and science - where there is no room for actual thought and individuality, there is only one correct answer - how can this come as a surprise?

With school boards deeming drama and theatre classes "unnecessary", how can this come as a surprise?

With growing class sizes and crowded schools, where no attention can be paid to a child as an individual, and they are seen simply as a monolith to be lectured, and punished for failing, not helped, how can this come as a surprise?

And, most of all, with the focus of everything being on testing - making your school the top in standardized tests, and judging a students intelligence by how well they do on tests - how the bloody hell can this surprise people?!


Students, in the past decade, have been feeling the effects of these awful changes every single day. The testing approach, especially, is one of the worst culprits for limiting our thinking. For example, in Algebra class at the school I attended last year, every single day, the routine was the same: We would be ushered into our seats and do practice on whatever subject we learned yesterday. As soon as all the answers for that were correct, we would immediately switch to a completely new subject and furiously take notes on that. It was just a lecture, there was no proper interaction with the students. How could there be, when schools are cramming people into classes of 40?

If you had a question, there was no time for it to be properly addressed. Because that would take too long - the teacher had to cram in one new concept every day of the week, to lead up to the test on Friday. The lecture would take up the whole class - and as the bell rung, we were assigned about two hours worth of homework from our textbook.

This is a good model of what a high school class in a public school looks like today, in America. My contact with other public high school students across the states gives me pretty much the same results - there's no room to be creative when it's all about grades.

So, school leaders cry, what the heck are we supposed to do?

It's not that complicated. Perhaps it may be difficult in your eyes, but it is really quite simple. Look, I can even give a few helpful suggestions:

*Treat art, music, drama, and other creative classes like they should be - just as important as math, science, and other "important" classes. There are so many students, me being one of them, who don't have natural talents for things like math and science, but have an aptitude - and more importantly, a passion  - for creative subjects. What do you think you're doing when you cut out all opportunities for us to improve on our skills? You're lowering our chances of getting a career in out desired field. Adults complain about how "kids these days" are lazy, with no motivation to do anything. But here's the thing - we are motivated. But not to the subjects you want us to be. Having skills in a particular area =/= laziness.

*Stop treating all students like they're the same. We are not a monolith. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. Schools, right now, are focused on punishing a student if they get a bad grade, instead of actually helping them when they clearly don't understand something. More individualized attention would not only be better for students' mental health, but guess what - those stupid test scores you care so much about? It would raise those up. I know, shocking, right?

*Cut it out with the "Shut up and listen to the teacher, now here's your homework" model of teaching classes. It is helping absolutely no one.


*Reduce class sizes. This is attached to the individualization thing - how on earth do you expect us to learn when we're invisible in a sea of other people? Where we know we're worth nothing in the long run?

And those are only a few.

And another thing about this study: Creativity isn't the only thing that the modern public school system has been crushing. Let me go back to that "motivation" point for a minute. I certainly had no desire to go out and do things when I got home from a schoolday. What, with hours of homework and a day that exhausted me, mentally and physically? Hell no. And when schools cut the only classes we like or are talented at - the ones we have motivation to do - what does that tell us? It tells us that motivation doesn't matter in the long run.

So how in the hell do schools expect to help a generation of young people go out and live productive lives, when all they teach us is that test scores are the only things that matter, our individual talents mean nothing, and that we're worthless in the long run?

Secret: Vegetarianism Really Isn't A Big Deal. At All.

No, seriously, it isn't.

Why such a simple statement from me? Well, it seems every time I talk to someone about being vegetarian, if they're not being assholes about it, then I usually get a response similar to "I would  go vegetarian, but it's so hard.  I mean, NO meat? No way, I love hamburgers/chicken/steak/etc. And how do you get protein  and blah blah etc."

Now I seem like I'm making fun of people who say these things, and I'll admit that I pretty much am. Because now I find that ridiculous. And I'll talk more about that later. But now, I feel like I need to confess: I used to think that way too.

There seems to be this perception that simply stopping eating meat is this monumental hurdle to scale - some massive life event where it's survival of the fittest...or something. In general, going vegetarian is seen as both difficult and a BIG DEAL.

But really...it's not. At all. Oh sure, it'll seem like it the first few months. You're so used to eating meat that all you think about when eating is trying to avoid  meat. I was a little paranoid - I started to fear eating out, because a little nagging voice at the back of my head was saying "But what if they used chicken stock in the sauce?!?" for pretty much everything I ate. At that point, vegetarianism seems like it's about what you can't  eat.

But the truth is, vegetarianism quickly becomes about what you can  eat. The amount of diversity in my diet multiplied exponentially when I stopped looking at meat and seafood as default meals. I gained appreciations for unique and interesting foods. I tried things that, before, I wouldn't have even looked at, because then I would have simply eaten a simple meat/fish dish.

And here's the thing: Eventually, you easily forget that you're a vegetarian. I have gone through weeks where I don't even think about what I'm eating, and the only time that my mind registers the fact that "Oh yeah, I don't eat meat or fish" was when I started absentmindedly skimming the steak section of a menu.

And you don't worry about what you're eating. What people just need to recognize is that there's nothing difficult intrinsically about going vegetarian - the difficulty comes from other people. People thinking they can insult you for your choice, "helpful" people insisting that "you'll never get enough protein blah blah", school cafeterias that seem to think meat, not grain, is at the bottom of the food pyramid. And if, like me, you're a child who decides to be the only vegetarian in a meat-eating family, you'll most likely have to deal with some initially unsupportive parents. (Don't worry, they get better. Because soon they, too, realize that your diet is not a BIG DEAL.)

But really, there is the simple truth: Unless you have economic circumstances which inhibit access to good foods (and I know that many people do), vegetarianism is really a very simple, and small, deal.