After reading the article “I Can’t Think” by Sharon Begley, I began researching the issue at hand, are we doing too much? After reading plenty of articles and watching numerous videos on a somewhat similar topic, I stumbled upon a video discussing how schooling actually effects creativity in a negative way. School was put in place to help people learn, but how much do we learn from school compared to actual life experiences and thinking outside the box?
Before people think that I don’t think education and schooling is necessary I want to say that I absolutely do think its necessary, I just think that the way it is being taught and carried out is way too structured and linear. What I mean by this is that for most of our schooling life we are literally taking classes that we are forced to take. As a communication major I understand that it is important to learn about things to do with communication, however i fully believe that 90% of my communication skills have come from simply interacting with my environment and people socially.
In college we are obviously allowed to pick our classes and choose what we want to take or what we want to do with our lives, but for the majority of our lives those decisions are made for us. Sure some would say that we are too young to decide in middle school that we want to take more art classes or music classes, but that doesn’t mean that we have to cut those classes down to a bare minimum. Our future depends on our youth and their ability to think outside the box to solve larger issues and evolve as a whole, and the current educational system completely shuts that down for most students.
To summarize things, I think that school and education is necessary and that it should be forced amongst kids, however there needs to be more room for kids to be creative and really use their potential without being strictly forced into classes that they are not interested in.