Let’s start from day one when you first leave your parents to enter the world that is kindergarten. You finally learn some social concepts of sharing, inside voices and submission to larger figures of power.
Slowly but surely we began to learn lesson plan routines of Math and Reading were on Mondays and Wednesdays while Science and Social studies were Tuesday and Thursday. Throughout that first year of schooling, you began to notice any classmate that acts or does anything different than the rest of the class is punished. We get taught what is right and what is wrong at an early age based on other peoples judgments than our own maybe it’s because you are like 5 to 6 years old. Moving on through school you start to see controlled creativity is celebrated. By which I mean as long as you color inside the set lines your art is beautiful but as soon as the red bleeds over an into another your screwed.
Schools encourage students to conform socially, intellectually and so on. Even when you’re allowed to be creative, they put a lot of restrictions on it for example in every English class your story has to include something specific you were recently taught also can’t be longer than 2 pages, or say anything that contradicts what you’ve been taught in class. I believe that as students, don’t get enough opportunities to show our creativity in our early years which stretches an agonizing 12 years of school. It’s obvious that a structured environment tends to stunt creativity. Students are expected to follow old methods instead of creating their own through personal trial and error.
Through teacher’s age-old lesson plans limit opportunities to expand creativity, talented students are given few opportunities to expand their creative abilities. Part of it is the psychological effects of school as well. In today’s learning environment, being wrong is one of the worst things that can happen.
Students are taught that there is only one correct answer, and anything else means that you’re wrong. This leads to an “I’m just not good at it” mindset, which is common for many students. For example, When a Math Teacher asks you to be creative and do something out of the ordinary it’s super hard because you’re not used to having to be creative even in the slightest because you’re always shoved some type of guideline.
