School: Where Creativity Goes to Die
Reflections On My Education
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I’ve been reflecting a lot on my education of late, realising that I took for granted the quality of my mainstream state primary and secondary schools and the lack thereof of my prestigious and highly ranked university (the second one; my undergraduate alma mater was excellent and is a much underrated institution).
I have a multitude of interests and passions which I pursue for their own sake. I learn for the joy of doing so. I care passionately and deeply about the why of a matter. According to Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn (which I am currently about 100 pages in to), this makes me a survivor of mainstream schooling, not the result of it. Schools, he argues, are set up by design to extinguish the spark of curiosity in children and their desire to learn.
I’ve certainly had my eyes opened to the ways in which my schooling has affected me negatively. I’m far more competitive than collaborative, for instance, which Gray argues is fostered through a system of standardised testing. I’ve looked down on those who haven’t achieved good grades, failing to recognise how narrow of a scope I was looking through to judge intelligence. I was also blind to the fact that I had been conditioned to value a very particular academic form of intelligence by the institution in which I was raised (and the culture upholding it). Other forms had their place, but academic intelligence was at the top of the hierarchy. How did I even develop the belief that there was a hierarchy? Despite these scars, I have held on to the curiosity, playfulness, and motivation to learn that is inherent in all children. It is this, says Gray, that is quashed by a system that prevents the free exploration of interests and steals from children their time for unstructured play – the time in which children learn best.
I probably would have had some sympathy with this argument prior to undertaking my graduate degree. It certainly wouldn’t take much to persuade me of the benefits of free play for children (or for adults for that matter). I am infinitely grateful for the time I was granted after school and over the school holidays to “do nothing”, time which was spent pursuing anything that caught my interest or fancy. All of the things that I have pursued formally in either higher education or work evolved from things that I encountered and developed a joy for in childhood. None of those things were sparked in school, though some were kindled. Before, that is, rapidly moving on to the next thing on the curriculum. (I still recall the excitement and eagerness to delve deeper into a given topic and the crushing frustration of having to move on to something else entirely the following day.)
One such passion is photography, which I have practiced since being old enough to have the dexterity to hold a camera and press the shutter. Lockdown provided a type of long-childhood-summer in adulthood whereby I was once again granted the chance to be bored. My play during this period was with cameras, film, chemicals, and creative software. I happened to develop my skills (alongside a newfound interest in the specific field of documentary photography) enough to be accepted on to a graduate course on the subject. I had hoped that this route would give me the depth and breadth of understanding that I craved in the way that my undergrad had, informing my practice and seeing it develop from strength to strength. The reality is that I have not picked up a camera in the two years since graduating.
And they said this would happen. We were told that “You probably won’t want to touch a camera for months after this course.” That this was normal and to be expected should have been a red flag. Creativity can’t burn you out, it’s impossible. It does the opposite. In invigorates the spirit, bringing calm and joy. I can’t count the number of times that we, students at this prestigious arts university, were told to “Be creative!” and “Just play!”. We might have been told this, but I don’t recall any of my cohort seemingly being able to do this, myself included. How is it possible to play when the fruits of that are criticised (“constructively”) and judged (usually positively, but judged nonetheless) for hours on end each week? How is it possible to play when one is being conditioned to anticipate the judgement of others? When the ‘product’ of that play is created for others and with their ideas in mind, imposing onto your own before you’ve even had a chance to conceive them?
There was no discussion of ideas, there was only the description of them. We sat through hours of lectures whereby artists described their projects and practices, followed by polite questions on this or that trivial detail. Never a why. I, and perhaps my fellow students, got the sense that ‘Why?’ was received as a critical question, not the inquisitive one that it was. Yet we were tasked in answering ‘Why?’ – asked not out of curiosity but as a demand for justification – for every creative choice that we made. “Because it’s beautiful” was seen as a cop-out, so we learnt to make up reasons after the fact. “Why can it not just be beautiful?” someone asked, to which the response was a shaming “You’re here to go a bit deeper.” Certainly, but the pursuit of depth requires curiosity and inquisitiveness – an intellectual form of play – characterised by the asking of questions, not by providing justifications. If this were embedded in the culture of this institution then it would have been natural to respond to the question with an inquiry into what place beauty might have in the field of documentary photography? What beauty might communicate, and in what form? Whether beauty is a creative decision.
I always thought that those who say “Art school kills creativity” were just lazy drop-outs. I didn’t drop out. I did quite well, in fact (though in retrospect it’s interesting how my assignment grades dropped from straight As when the course began to those which were more mediocre as my ‘education’ progressed). Despite my expensive qualification, art school killed my creativity. I’m fighting now to revive it.
It is through this experience that I recognise the veracity of Gray’s claims. Somehow – likely thanks to the amount of time I was afforded outside of school hours to play and freely explore my interests – my creativity, inquisitiveness, and motivation to learn survived my schooling. Art school restricted this freedom, gradually reducing my creative scope through criticism, judgement, and nudging towards the field’s current paradigm. I slowly ceased to make images because I was no longer making them for the joy of doing so. It’s hard to create when you’ve been conditioned to anticipate what others will say about it, even if that feedback is positive (research in developmental psychology supports this, finding that outcome-based praise actually dampens children’s intrinsic motivation). I had been lucky up until then. And if I was lucky – if I was a creative, inquisitive, and motivated person not because of my schooling but despite it – then what of all other children who are put through this system? What is our society (and every society with similar compulsory education systems) doing to human beings, and at what civilisational cost?
Current mood: ☹️ worried