the school system sucks: killing creativity

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, an 18 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

this publication is a place for me to reflect on a new topic daily, and send it to your inbox. if you’re new here, sign up to tune in! you reading this is keeping me accountable, so thank you for that. as a treat, i drop cool resources/opportunities at the end. 💌 

btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: the school system sucks 🏫

there’s a lot i can say about this, so i’m just going to stick to one sub-topic: how school kills creativity. i’ll probably write a few more posts on different sub-topics later on, so stay tuned.

in kindergarten and pre-school, we were never graded on “correctness." in fact, we weren’t really graded at all. it was in those years where i would draw things straight from my imagination and build unrealistic towers out of blocks, whipping up detailed backstories for each creation. 🌈

my creativity wasn’t confined to a criteria or any expectations, i was free to come up with ideas and share them enthusiastically.

as i got older and entered elementary, middle, and high school, the expectations and rubric word counts increased.

there is no time or structure to explore personal interests, and creativity becomes a criteria. it’s funny how teachers introduce “creative projects” but then hand out a rubric. in reality, that creativity is just a grade of how well you can meet a teacher’s personal tastes. but, what can the teachers do? they have their own set of expectations to meet.

the current schooling system kills creativity and churns out brainwashed students that follow the same thought process, approach to problems, and interests. once we’re unleashed into the real world, it almost feels like an existential crisis.

what the hell am i doing?

i want to live by my own ideas.

i want to have meaningful conversations.

i want to travel and do something impactful in the world. 🌎

all of these desires require creativity, and it feels too late to nurture it back once school has snuffed it out.

school, grades and rubrics are so linear.

creativity isn’t, and neither is life.

if anything, nurturing creativity and innovation will sets us up better to take on the world rather than remembering that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

truly, i can’t remember a single time i was genuinely creative without restriction in high school. fortunately, i’ve continued to exercise that muscle by exploring new project, content and (pretty bad) craft ideas. 😋

how do your teachers approach “creative projects?”

cool finds of the day 🔍️