That's right, school kills creativity. We live in a world that represents the best of human ingenuity. Everything that surrounds us, at one point, was pure fantasy, the dream of someone who never gave up. Our strength, as a species, lies precisely in our incredible diversity, in our variety.
And the more uncertain the future appears on the horizon, the more we must rely on our ability to adapt our knowledge and create. Therefore, education is a fundamental pillar to prepare for that future.
But if we don't even know what the world will be like in five years, how can we prepare today's children for work in 20 years? How does today's school educate children in such a way that they are able to face a future we do not know?
The modern school ensures that the possible becomes impossible
We are all aware of the extraordinary ability of children to innovate. Children have great talents, but we waste them mercilessly. They have incredible ideas and live in the world of the possible, a universe where everything can become reality and nothing is really impossible.
There are no ideas that are so strange that they cannot be realized. Children think that to make these ideas a reality, they just have to wait until they grow up. However, as they grow up, the school takes it upon themselves to make that world of possibility disappear, eliminating their incredible ability to challenge themselves and experiment.
Children are not afraid of making mistakes. Of course, making mistakes doesn't mean being creative. But a person who avoids mistakes will never create anything original, because creativity always includes the exploration of new territories and the possibility of failure.
As children grow up, most of them have already lost the will to experiment and the ability to dream. They are terrified of mistakes. It is not strange, since the education system has stigmatized error from the earliest years. Consequently, he educates himself by excluding creativity.
To educate is not to fill the mind, but to free it from its limits
Picasso said that "all children are artists, the problem is to keep them that way until they grow up". We were born with great creative potential, but little by little we unlearn it. It is not strange, since our educational system is based on the development of academic skills, in the iron frame of an implicit hierarchy. At the top there are the sciences, then the languages ​​and at the bottom the artistic disciplines. There is also a hierarchy in the arts: painting and music are more important than dance and acting. However, dancing has been shown to make you happy.
The fact that the educational system is based on academic skills depends on the fact that it was invented in the XNUMXth century, mainly to meet the industrial needs of that time. Today the world has changed, but the education system remains the same.
UNESCO warns that in the next 20 years, there will be more graduates in the world than there have been since education was institutionalized. Therefore, it is not surprising that educational qualifications are worth less and less.
Before, if you had a college degree, you got a secure job. Today you need a master's degree, a master's degree, and maybe even a doctorate. Schools have stopped educating to become an exam machine, so universities have become academic qualification companies.
At this point, perhaps, we should rethink everything, radically change our conception of intelligence and creativity. Rethinking the objectives of the school and radically changing our idea of ​​education. Perhaps this way, instead of limiting them, we could prepare children to truly develop their full potential.
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