Education's Silent War Against Creative Genius
How schooling limits human potential.
Disclaimer
I personally do not advocate any process or procedure contained in any of my publications. Information presented here is not intended to provide legal or lawful advice, nor medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease. Views expressed are for educational purposes only.
I surround, protect, purify and make harmless the following in-formation.
Become an innovator by being curious about everything
Amanda Stern
Sep 11, 2024
The baffling thing about the system of educating children and teens is its whole-cloth misapprehension of what children and teens need. This is why our system excels at diminishing our creative capacity. By the time we’re fully grown, our school system has eradicated our innate inventiveness by nearly 100%. This is not hyperbole, nor conjecture. This, dear readers, is a fact.
1968 Study
In 1968, NASA wanted to assign its most innovative engineers and scientists to tackle the most challenging problems. However, they lacked the tools to identify their team’s most creative and imaginative members. They commissioned Dr. George Land, author and general systems scientist who discovered Transformation Theory, and business leader Dr. Beth Jarman, to create an instrument to pinpoint creativity.
While the method was successful, it didn’t answer a fundamental question: Where does creativity come from?
Children
Land replicated the study to answer this question, using 1600 children aged 4-5. The test presented children with problems and asked the kids to come up with new or different ideas to solve them.
What they discovered stunned them—98% of those 1600 children scored at the “creative genius” level for imaginative thinking.
That’s right.
You heard me.
They decided to follow these children and turned it into a longitudinal study.
Longitudinal study
Testing them again at 10 years old, the children’s creativity and imaginative thinking had plummeted to 30%. By age 15, the number had dropped to 12%.
The longitudinal study on kids ended there (apparently, the teachers running the studies got too depressed by the results), so they decided to test adults.
People, buckle up.
We scored a measly 2% for creativity.
These findings led Land to a profound conclusion: Non-creative behavior is learned. 02:07 mins
The implication is clear - our education system and societal norms inadvertently stifle the natural creative abilities we all possess as children.
Intelligence is not fixed, it is diverse, dynamic, and distinct
To dig deeper, I turned to the work of the late and fantastic Sir Ken Robinson, a renowned educationalist and creativity expert.
In his celebrated TED talk, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?“, Robinson reveals the sundry ways education squanders imagination, creativity and talent. Instead of elevating our innate sense of wonder, schools are the most significant contributor to the decline in creative thinking.
As children, we are not afraid to be wrong. We take risks. We don’t consider falling off a balance beam a failure; we view it as part of the learning process. Only when we begin school are we shamed for our mistakes, improvising, guessing, and taking risks.
Curiosity
Creativity is the cornerstone of innovation, problem-solving and adaptability. By encouraging risk-taking, embracing mistakes as learning opportunities, and valuing imagination, we can cultivate an environment where creativity thrives.
Because here’s the best thing—our divergent brain doesn’t disappear. It never goes away. We are all capable of being the creative geniuses we were as children. Creativity is innate, waiting to be re-awakened. Continues at https://www.thehowtolivenewsletter.org/p/nasastudy
The next generation
Over to you.
Without prejudice and without recourse
Doreen Agostino
Our Greater Destiny Blog
educare
I read several substacks on mind control and psychological warfare by Joshua Stylman, David Hughes and Thorsten Pattberg. I discovered my own daughter went through a behaviour-control program that is offered to all autistic children and funded by Canadian healthcare, and wrote a substack about that.
I'm currently reading 'Rape of the mind' by Joost Meerloo and recognize many of the tactics described in this book are also used in public schools. I'm so happy I took my kids out of these horrible places in 2020. We recognize biological warfare, traditional physical warfare (with bombs and guns) but not psychological warfare. That is their greatest weapon!
Schools are institutions where children are conditioned and indoctrinated with totalitarian ideologies. I dare say, it is a form of torture.
This is how Pattberg puts it: "We have “laws” meant to prevent the common people from gouging out eyes, puncturing kidneys, breaking bones, or looting cities; however, no such laws exist to protect our psyches from psychological violence: the stabbing, piercing, breaking, and looting of the mind.
If someone tries to destroy your mind—to annihilate common sense and reason—you must never give in. Don’t apologize, don’t confess, and don’t throw yourself into the quantum shredder. You must fight back with all your might! Fight for your life; if not for yourself, then do it for your people.
This is psychological warfare being waged against us. It should be fought globally, but it isn’t. The people are caged and divided. We live on a Human Farm."
Dumb down the children, and you get no critical thinking or common sense. Schools are useless these days.