CCE Graphic Design & Illustration student
"Commended" National Merit Scholar
Senior at Hebron HS
Since the "No Child Left Behind" initiative in 2001, states have modeled their public education around mandated standardized tests. These tests have deviated the educational system from preparing students with the knowledge needed to compete in the economies of tomorrow to teaching the exact principles tested by the state, impairing the American educational system. It deprives students of the ability to intellectually and abstractly evaluate problems and situations. Thus creative programs through art, sports, and advanced studies must be emphasized in the curriculum. Without it, the educational system is alienating the creative enforcement students need in order to succeed in the shifting economic paradigms.
Creativity through the form of art, music, design, etc. allows the students control over their work. Drawing on the right side of the brain, creativity animates into the production of new ideas to solutions that students are otherwise told are stagnant. It allows students to discover how to solve problems rather than how to memorize the answers. Yet, schools take the latter approach and sever the prospective development of ideas. By narrowly judging students solely on their academic attributes, schools alienate the potential genius inside.
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein
Einstein reminds us that everyone has their own strengths. Where school should be based around excelling on one's abilities, it is debasing them for what the state deems necessary in all students. Every student is simply not the same, nor should they be treated as such.
Reinforcement in creatively driven classes must be represented as a priority in modern education. In my school district, I have realized profound effects of a varied arts program. Taking four courses of art, including three in graphic design, have altered my views of the need for academic education. By witnessing the intense variety of students who can all benefit from art classes and by seeing those students who have taken it into higher education, I have realized that to many, traditional academic education is simply not the best educational fit for them. Many of my classmates would have gone into some field their parents would have preferred or something more economic, but they all would have wasted their incredible talents and spent their lives in regret. Taking these creative classes is something students need to do, not by state mandate, but by voluntary discretion.
My reevaluation of the state of education changed how I viewed the people around me: from incapable for not being able to grasp an academic concept, to incredible in their ways of problem solving and artistic expression. Modern education needs to be reformed in the same way. "Everybody is a genius," as Einstein believed, but first we must let students embrace their inner creativity. It is through that genius we will succeed in the modern economies of the world.
