In the last week I have heard the horror stories of at least ten different children whose creativity and spirit were threatened by cumpolsory schooling. After each story, I found myself completely saddened and every time I asked myself what has the world come to when “trained” professionals are ripping the genius and blowing out the creative spark from our children. For the past two weeks, all I could hear were echoes of one third grader telling his parents not to worry because he wouldn’t stop thinking. I actually had the opportunity to teach and work with this child for two years and found that he could look at any material, manipulate it, and transform it into a work of art- His mind was filled with endless possibilities of innovation and creativity. I was always enamored by his beautiful ways of thinking but, after three days of compulsory education he noticed that his new teacher was out to ‘kill’ his creativity and thought. After all, he told his dad not to worry because he wouldn’t stop thinking. He said he realized that as long as he shuts up, and does what the teacher tells him to do he would survive the school day.
Can you believe that an eight year old has completely figured out the matrix of fear, control and self-doubt in seventy-two hours of operating in it and our politicians cannot. Stories like this are rampant across the country yet they are often silenced and swept under the carpet. Think about it, imagine yourself being eight years old sitting in the classroom eager and ready to learn and then you realize that your teacher doesn’t actually want you to “think” or participate in the learning experience she just wants to tell you what to do. The sad part is most teachers believe that they are doing amazing things in their classroom if children are quite and being “good” by thinking just like they want them to. Very few realize that learning happens when children construct meaning for themselves. Because of this miseducation of teachers, the imagination, creativity and innovation of our children are being shred to pieces by predetermined ways of thinking set forth by the teacher. In this system a child learns all to soon that he must abandon his innate genius, talents and ways of thinking in order to survive. Instead they learn how to please the teacher, compete against their peers, depend on the teachers intellectually, and loose their self-esteem all instead of thinking about ways to use their innate talents to think about concepts and ideas and how to use their gifts to change the world.
As an educator, I must admit there are times when you might ask a child to think in a particular way, however this is always a means to an end, its never the end itself. In the end, children must be given the opportunity to accept or reject a teachers ways of thinking by generating and demonstrating their own ways of thinking that support the learning that is going on in the classroom environment. Simply stated, the end is creativity and innovation not learning the state mandated standards and passing standardized test. Psst. Here is a little secret, creative minds pass standardized test and learn state standards not the other way around.