By Rice Miller Back in elementary and middle school I had an extremely difficult time because I couldn’t sit still in class. I was always getting detention and being kicked out of class, as a result of this I usually had a lot of time to myself. I really started to hate school. It felt like school was just a place where I would get put into an empty room for one hour every day. During these long amounts of silence, I would create things. It seemed like my pencil had no boundaries. My experiences have lead me to believe that the traditional way that schools are set up does not always work.
First of all, I'm not saying school is bad. School is great. It provides people with the knowledge they sometimes need to live in our complex society. However, I do believe that in some cases giving people rules for specific things or introducing people to the way “things are” makes people less likely to try to innovate when given a complex task, or even just following their dreams. If you ask a child who hasn’t finished grade school the common question “what do you wanna be when you grow up?” they almost always have crazy answers. Some want to be astronauts while others want to be rockstars or doctors. In a “TedTalk,” a man named Sir Ken Robinson speaks about a girl named Gillian Lynne who at a very young age had issues in school. She was extremely energetic and had a difficult time trying to pay attention in class. Eventually her mother became concerned for Gillian because she was unable to perform well in school. Seeking medical help, she took Gillian to the doctor. Once there, the doctor asked if he could have time alone with Gillian and as her mother left he turned on the radio. He too left the room and and upon returning with the mother they observed her through the window. Gillian was dancing. “She's not sick she's a dancer” said the doctor. That was 84 years ago. Gillian now at the age of 92 she has been a successful dancer, and choreographer. As an 18-year-old man, this story really hit home with me. I had many of the same issues growing up. I couldn’t sit still and I had a very hard time in school because of this. I still struggle with some things because I was to much of a spaz during elementary and middle school. However, because I couldn’t pay attention in class, I often ended up drawing, I drew all the time and I got pretty good. Eventually I joined art in 7th grade and I was way ahead of the class because of personal experience alone. I had taught myself a decent amount of different techniques over the years. Once I made it to middle school I also found out I really liked to run. I joined cross country and track and over time I went from running 9 minute miles to 5 minute miles, and in my sophomore year in high school I was running 18 minute 5Ks in cross country. The funny thing is I hated every sport I tried until I started cross country. School is good but it's not for everyone. I do believe that it is beneficial to our society, but I also believe school snuffs out peoples creative spark when it expects so much of some things that aren't really that important. School doesn't care about our hobbies, It cares about grades. There are small things, like clubs, that help fix some of these issues and I think that's what we need more of in schools. We need more reasons for people to get together and create. We don’t need to be told how something is done when we have the power to make our own personal creations.
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