Kayla Kenny

ENG111

Marisa Enos

4 March 2018

The War on Creativity

It is assumed, here in America, that when a child is sent to school, they are being nurtured

and taught by people who are experts in the field of teaching those children. These educators

have gone to school many years to be teaching those children. Why then should it be worrisome?

There has been a war on creativity for many years, and it has gotten progressively worse. These

teachers have gone through the same broken education system that everybody else does. Perhaps

they do not realize that their methods are, in fact, preventing children from using their creativity

in everyday life. Any bit of imagination that is left after preschool is put aside and those children

are set on an assembly line to ride along until they get their diploma. In this way, children are

taught to go along with what the teacher says to do, and in return graduates without issue. The

problem with this method, is that it oppresses any bit of divergent thinking that child has left. In

divergent thinking, many different solutions to one problem can be found. This takes creativity

though, and in today’s education system in America, creativity is besieged.

America has been known as the “melting pot” from the start. That is, a country where

many different nationalities are accepted, and unity is more important than the color of skin. At

least that’s what it’s supposed to be like. Creativity comes from so many different cultures, so

everybody’s imagination tends to create something unique. In a text written by bell hooks, an

author, professor, and cultural critic, she points out the problem that faces African American
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students, and why they are misunderstood. In “Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words”

hooks explains the background of the black vernacular of the English language. When Africans

were brought over to America as slaves, their own language was taken from them. “Needing the

oppressor’s language to speak with one another they nevertheless also reinvented, remade that

language so that it would speak beyond the boundaries of conquest and domination. In the

mouths of black Africans in the so-called “New World,” English was altered, transformed, and

became a different speech” (hooks 57). They used divergent thinking to find this path to some

form of dignity in their lives. Now, after everything those who were enslaved had to go through,

the black vernacular is often misunderstood and found unacceptable in the American educational

system. As hooks points out in this text, it is difficult for the black vernacular to be integrated

into academic writings (hooks 58), as it is often misunderstood by a primarily white audience. In

today’s American society, we claim to be open-minded and accepting of all cultures. In reality,

because of the way we have been brought up in an oppressive educational environment, we only

have the capacity for convergent thinking. Anything that is not understood, is discounted. We are

taught that there is only one way to write, one way to speak, only one way that is correct. In a

sense, a child’s imagination being taken away at such a young age isn’t so much different than

what hooks’ ancestors went through when their own language was taken away. Both are forced

to use the oppressor’s language to survive; both are enslaved, in a sense.

In our narrow-minded education system, oppression is not just an issue of race,

socioeconomic status also plays a role in the American educational experience. Paulo Freire was

an educator and author who spent most of his time working to influence the educational

community to change the way teachers and learners interact. Freire is popular for his book,

Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In an excerpt titled “The “Banking” Concept of Education”, he

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explains this term more thoroughly. Many times in education, there is a curriculum that is

followed and not strayed from. It is an extremely impersonal experience for both parties

involved. There is no respect, no creativity, and no dialogue involved, just the teacher making

their “knowledge deposit” to the student. In this way, everything is black and white; there is no

gray area. Again, this teaches convergent thinking rather than using dialogue to take in multiple

ideas and realize that there is more than one way to look at an issue.

The current education system is outdated in its methods and children are being given

medications that basically sedate them to force them to be quiet and listen while the teacher

deposits the information. Sir Ken Robinson approaches this problem in a way that could be

considered controversial. Like Freire and hooks, Robinson focuses on the flaws in the

educational system as well as changing the way education is approached. While hooks focuses

on changes in cultural acceptance, Freire pushes for a “problem posing” education (Freire 6).

Robinson goes into detail about the way children are being anesthetized and numbed rather than

being encouraged to have fun with what they’re learning. In his video, “Changing Education

Paradigms”, Robinson points out the over-stimulating world around these children, which makes

them think school subjects are boring and have issues paying attention. This causes a chain

reaction of being diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication that numbs them rather than

nurturing their creativity and showing them the fun side of education. “The arts especially

address the idea of an aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is when your senses are

operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment, when you’re fully alive”

(Robinson). This is the way children should be taught; the conditions in which you learn the best.

Another great thing that Robinson brings to his audience’s attention, is that children are divided
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into groups by the year they were born rather than what discipline they are passionate about,

which they should be focusing on more. This would foster creative thinking.

Much like Robinson’s view on anesthetizing children for the sake of learning, Paulo

Freire addresses the same problem. In a depository education system, creative power is inhibited

and discouraged in the classroom. Freire’s problem-posing education has a “constant unveiling

of reality”, stating that it “strives for the emergence of consciousness” (Freire 8). His problem-

posing idea is, in fact, the exact thought that Robinson puts out in his Changing Educational

Paradigms video. This system is based around creativity and the development of critical

divergent thinking (Freire 10). Another similarity in these two views on education, is that Freire

tells us in his excerpt, that those who experience the banking concept of education are

“necrophilic” or dead, in a sense because they cannot be liberated and live freely in this way

(Freire 5). What Robinson speaks about in his video, is liberation of our children as well as adult

students. Authentic liberation, according to Freire, is the process of humanization (Freire 6).

In America, there is an issue of thinking other cultures’ way of writing or expressing

themselves should be discounted because it isn’t the same the majority of the population’s. If

creativity was nurtured instead of killed, these people could learn a thing or two from these

people’s languages and ways of life. There is rich history behind the way people are taught to

express themselves. In order to foster the growth of our people, and achieve real happiness and

liberation, America could benefit greatly from Paulo Freire’s model of problem-posing

education. It would do away with many issues we see in the world. Mental illness, including

ADHD, would become more of a rarity if people could just be their own creative selves.

Children who present with mental illness are statistically developing them younger than before,

when creativity had a place in the world we live in. It is then, that divergent thinking would have
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a place in society. It could be understood that it is alright to have different viewpoints on politics

and that each job in society has a function, each one being as important as the next. Children

deserve the best educational experience they can receive.

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Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. The "Banking" Concept of Education. 1970.
http://www.umsl.edu/~alexanderjm/The%20Banking%20Concept%20of%20Education.pdf.
2018.

hooks, bell. "Language: Teaching New Worlds/New Words." Various. Exploring Connections: Learning in
the 21st Century. New York: Pearson Education, 2016. 55-60.

Robinson, Sir Ken. Changing Education Paradigms. 2010.

<https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms/details>.