Thesis statement

Topic sentence
Evidence
Commentary
Counter argument
Conclusion

In 2005, the prestigious educationalist Sir Ken Robinson claimed that “Schools kill creativity” and argued
about how we grow out of creativity, specifically in the school environment. To this day, this topic is still
relevant which can be seen through the number of viewers of this speech on YouTube. It is inarguable
that schools do give students more chances to be more creative compared to the last few decades;
however, it is still undeniable that the school system has been discouraging the potential and imagination
of the young generation by misunderstand creativity, impersonal curriculum and standardized testing.

Most students when given an assignment on “creativity”, they often define creativity as a skill that is only
taught in “creative subjects” like Fine Arts and Music rather than a tool that is used to implement
informations and deal with problems that need to be solved. These kinds of misconceptions occur because
unlike preschool; children can play with dices, blocks, and cubes to develop skills in Math class and ;
middle and high schoolers are apparently too “mature” for such activities and are force to learn in . But
what a lot of teachers have not realized is that creativity needs to be foster at any age, not just from age 1
to 6 – the so-called “golden age” to develop creativity. Students need individuality to build confident and
flexibility. And schools are discouraging students’ ability to be creative by only teaching how to think
differently in “creative classes”; while students actually need this skill in doing their homework, playing
sports, experimenting in Chemistry class, etc. Thus we can undoubtedly say that creativity is way more
useful than schools make it seems. Therefore, If schools taught creativity in every subject then most likely
students will see how much it can help in all fields of life. Imagine if creativity was not seen as a tool,
Steve Jobs will never come up with iPhones, Coco Chanel would not be famous for freeing women from
corsets and big dresses, and Albert Einstein would not be able to discover his life changing theory -
Theory of Relativity.

Besides, schools are too impersonal and do not provide enough programs to match with students’
interests. For instance, Callum Mains, a teenager that was having difficulty at home when his father died
when he was 13, and his school at the time offered no relief, putting him in programs that failed to match
his interests or inspire new ones. Callum found his school was too big and impersonal, so he stopped
attending for awhile. After that, he went to a new school that offered personalized opportunities to
teenagers for whom traditional education simply wasn’t working. For him, the school was a lifeline, a
chance to connect with an institution that was actually paying attention to him and his ambitions. He said:
“Being here is like you’re working with the teachers, not against them!” And this school that we have just
looked at demonstrate two main points: First, all students have great natural abilities. Second, the key to
developing is to personalize to the real abilities of every student. This evidence indicates how impersonal
education can leads students to having low or zero interest in classes that they do not like and cannot
tolerate. Therefore, schools should respect each students’ ambitions and different rates at which they learn
in order for them to learn freely and creative. Moreover, the current obsession of the education system on
STEM subjects is ridiculously outgrowing an amount of students from their natural potential. At most
schools in Vietnam, when students reach grade 10, it is very common to see that teachers will more likely
to guide students into STEM subjects rather than Humanities and Arts subjects. This can distract students
from their own natural ability and passion; thus enabling students to be innovative from lack of curiosity
about the subject.
Lastly, schools are making students afraid of being original by standardization. In most countries,
students are not taught to study or understand the concepts, but they are taught only one thing-'How to get
maximum marks' in exams. It is all about memory power. The one who can remember and recollect the
exact wordings of the textbook gets the most marks. Thus, students starts to memorize things rather than
understanding the concepts. This is clearly not the students’ fault. At school, teachers often say “This is
going to be in the test”, and will only teach topics that are in the test. This narrow teaching method enable
students to think divergently because the marks are given based on the “correct answers” that the teacher
provided and to achieve the highest marks, students need to memorize those answers. Therefore, testing
has become into an assessment of memorization instead of knowledge. This problem can limits critical
thinking as students are not actively searching for the answers themselves, and limits the ability to be
original. Because if the environment punishes mistakes, then students will not tempted to go out of the
box but instead stay inside and keep doing what other people do. Consequently, schools need to allow the
existence of divergent ideas and information into testing and view it as a good sign that the students
actually tried instead of see it as “wrong answers”. Another evidence about how standards kill creativity
would be when students are asked to write an essay, rather than allow students to write freely, teachers
give out really specific outlines and limit the essays into X words. A lot of students cannot express their
opinions in their writing because they afraid of being “wrong”. Imagine if William Shakespeare and
Franz Kafka – the two famous writers follow the same writing structure and style then most likely the
literary field will never be diverse and developed like today. That is why schools need to accept that
intelligence is multifaceted and diverse.

While there are many factors that prove schools do not foster creativity, some may still argue that schools
actually nourish creativity of students. It is worth saying that schools do want to develop students’
creativity by activities such as designing poster, costume on Halloween, and decorating classrooms on
Christmas. But these are just simply not enough. As I stated in the second paragraph, creativity should be
treated more like a tool to apply to every subjects, not just the Arts. Although it is delightful to see that
the system actually cares more about creativity, these changes still cannot outweigh the opposite position.

In conclusion, creativity is often underestimated in the school environment. Whereas without it, most
likely the world we living in would still remains Stone Age.