Creativity

Creativity is one of those things they claim to be teaching you in school. The problem is they do so by crushing all your creative thoughts. (Or at least attempting to.) I have only come across a handful of teachers who actually appreciate it when you are creative. That is outside of the restrictive coloring lines type.

Teachers have this habit of telling you to be creative on projects and in essays. A lot of these teachers are straight up lying. Either that, or their definition of creative is about as interesting as a museum on pocket lint. (Thank God, that's a type of museum my dad hasn't drug me to.)

They have very specific guidelines they'd like you to follow when writing an essay. I'm not even talking about the necessary format and grammar related ones. All teachers usually ban the over used topics that really can't get more interesting because they've been done so many times. I can get that. (By the 8,000th time I've read an essay on the death penalty, I'd secretly be praying that I'd recieve it.)

What I don't get is teachers that ban the fun topics. I understand, it's hard to right a factual essay on werewolves (mostly because they don't exist), but you can write a factual essay on the myths, legends, and media that surround them and why people still give a crap.

While I've got nothing against the fellow who wants to write his essay on the health effects  of paint fumes, I personally don't want to do a whole lot of research into it. (Apart from, its bad for you, so don't huff it.) I would like to do an essay on an interesting and fun to research topic. This however proves difficult when the teacher shoots down everyone of your ideas like clay pidgeons, then yells "pull!" as he prepares for the next one.

I get that they want to avoid students just BSing an essay at the last minute off of stuff they "know", made up, and read off Wikipedia, (admittedly, I do this, but mostly when the topic is boring to me) but come on. If they put in as much effort as all the other students and it's clear that they know their shit, why does it matter what the topic was. (If nothing else, you'll have an amusing break from the paint fume papers.)

Midway through kindergarten, I started listening to my teachers and doing what they said. Sometime around fourth and fifth grade, I stopped because coloring a pilgram was not actually a useful learning tool. (I mastered that back in kindergarten before I started paying attention.)

After a year of straight detention, I decided to pay attention to the teachers who weren't sucking my soul out. (When I was in sixth grade, there was a total of one.) As for the other teachers, I was to busy daydreaming, sleeping, passing notes, launching pencils across the room, or getting sent to the office for writing on both sides of my piece of paper. (That is not a joke. One crazy, anal retentive, sixth grade social studies teacher did exactly that.)

I was interested in the classes  and what was being learned, but could never see the point of not writing on both sides of my paper. (It should be noted, I was taking notes; not doing an assignment for turning in.)

Since I am a stubborn person, I only do things if I can't see the point in it. For years, I only did homework if it was interesting or fun. In high school that had to change (at least enough so that I actually passed the class), so I did a bit more, but only the assignments I liked or just enough to get by. By my transcripts, it is very easy to tell which classes interested me and which didn't. Often it was the teachers that actually encouraged creativity that I did better in. (Not counting geography; I just really couldn't stand that subject, no matter how cool the teacher was.)

If teachers were actually serious about wanting you to be creative they'd let you. Actually, a large part of it's not even the teachers, but the school board. At my high school, most of the teachers that actually encouraged creativity have been fired, are on probation, or straight up left. (There are the occasional ones that are coaches or married to coaches that are surviving though.)

My senior year, a new English teacher got fired at the end of it because of plagiarism. A lot of kids in my graduating class were, well, douche bags. I was in two different classes of his that year.

First semester, I was in the one with every single douche in my grade. I kid you not. The administration (in some sick joke) packed them all into one class room at the same time. They barely payed attention and treated the teacher like an evil baby sitter. As such, they hated it when he called them on their crap.

Once when he left the room for a minute, they went out the door and were assing around outside. He came back and shut the door on them. The poor babies had to walk around to the front of the school, which was pretty darn nearby.

Every class, kids made dickish comments. If people wouldn't shut up enough for him to teach, he'd kick them out of the class. The teacher was awesome, but I wouldn't have been terribly surprised if he had to pull a shot gun out to get the class to shut up.

Then second semester came and I was switched to a different class. This class was a nice one. People respected the teacher and the only kid that ever got kicked out was the angry one who would blow up and just storm out over stupid things ( see UWA). It was a mellow and fun class.

Since he was the only teacher for English 4, everyone had the same assignment on Macbeth. We had a topic list and had to write one measly 2-3 page paper on it. It was damn easy essay to write. He actually taught you the info you needed. (What a concept?) My grade, being dumbasses, decided that was too much effort and plagerized their essays. Litteraly a third of my grade did this. The problem was they all turned in the same damn essay so they were caught pretty quick. The Fish (as me and my friends dubbed him) turned them in. Instead of the school chewing out all the douchey jocks for being jackasses, the Fish was bitched out.

For months, all anyone was doing was complaining about getting caught and calling the teacher a jerk. I even heard my art teacher join in (thus loosing even more respect for the woman who called me Penis Drawer for three years).

As a result of all the complaining, the Fish made a test to shut people up. It was only one quiz for The Heart of Darkness which wasn't worth many points, but it was hard. I barely passed and I did the reading (unlike most everyone else). It was on tiny details. It was his way of saying, "shut up or I'll make it a hell of a lot more difficult." This of course only causing more bitching, but points for effort.

If they'd bothered to pay attention, they'd have liked the teacher. He was actually quite easy going, but if you were an ass, he didn't put up with it. He let you be creative with just about every assignment. (There was still some of that wretched busy work, though.) He got fired at the end of the year because of all these jackasses who were eager to get out of high school, but only if it required no effort.

Not only does the school not even teach you creativity like it claims, it straight up chews it up and spits it back at your face like spit talkers eating crackers. I've seen more punishment for creativity than reward for it. They are just producing carbon copies to sit on the couch and eat cheetos while watching reality TV ('cause chances are that was what was more important than writing the damn essay.)