I got sent this really awesome video from a friend, it is one of the talks from TED; Ideas worth spreading. And it truly is an inspiring video which brings up many points on sociology, education, ecology and psychology. Here's the video;
I feel that yes, the current education system is definitely not endorsing creativity but actually killing it off. This is probably the thing all those "non-conformist" and unpopular children and teens were going on about during your youth. Not the ones that were in it for the look, but the ones that had a head on their shoulder who were not afraid to think in a different direction than that of mainstream society, the same kind of children that were constantly told they had potential, which would be very well true, but that they weren't applying themselves. The kicker is that they were applying themselves, but not where they were supposed to. Hell, I know that academic subjects are crucial yet on the other hand so is creativity. In fact, I know someone (and I know him very well) who was adequate with academic subjects like Mathematics but when it came down to it, he didn't enjoy it.
What he really enjoyed was art, and if he didn't have teachers that were competent enough to actually understand a student, to actually understand that intelligence isn't measured in academic subjects, he would have never had enough motivation to work on in his favoured direction. I have yet to find out how the young man's story ends.
I'm closing off now, and will simply leave a charming little quote.
People who think keep the world going; people who think creatively keep the world going forward.
