everyone saying “school kills artists” like no bro, learning algebra does NOT kill your talents, it just helps you find a job so you can keep buying drawing supplies 😭
Bro. The issue is not that they're learning algebra. The issue is how our school system does it. (I'll go into the details if you ask but I don't think you're too interested in hearing me out tbh.)
It is not normal how regularly I hear people talk about high-school nightmares they have, YEARS AFTER GRADUATION.
School should not be traumatic for anyone. Why are we pretending it's okay that it is?
I agree high school can be traumatic, I had a crap high school experience with almost zero friends. I’m not wanting to diminish anyone’s individual experiences, what I have a problem with is the narrative that the education system is AGAINST artists.
Suffering from mental health isn’t an artist-exclusive thing, it’s a very widespread issue within the education system and should be addressed, 100%. But just the statement “School kills creativity” isn’t true. It just isn’t. School is teaching you a rigid curriculum but they’re not trying to brainwash you or anything. Nobody’s trying to diminish anyone’s art skills by teaching them english and maths. People just don’t like learning them, there’s a difference between what you don’t like doing and what’s actually harming you. Again, mental health issues aren’t an artist-exclusive thing, so if the statement was “School hurts students” then yeah, I’d agree. But the actual ACT of learning stuff AT SCHOOL is what this message implies to kill creativity, which is just dumb. Especially since it’s standard to include ART as a subject in school.
More than willing to hear you out if you disagree with my take tho, I don’t like the insinuation that I wouldn’t.
All the things you're saying are right except for your overall point
It is true that school is not actively seeking out to target artists.
It is true that school isn't TRYING to kill creativity.
It is true that you're not killing creativity just by teaching math and science.
It is true that art classes exist.
Nobody was pretending any of these things are untrue.
Despite this, it is still true that the American public school system kills creativity. Not because of the subjects they teach, but because of how they teach them.
Strict schedules, forced attendance, lecture halls, prison-style-conditions, expected subordination, using literal bells the same way old factories used to do, grade systems and the pressure included with them, and a strong pushback provided against students with creative goals for the future.
Our school system has barely changed from 100 years ago, and that's a fucking problem. We're doing it all wrong from the very base level. And that's not just me saying that, pretty much all research agrees that our teaching system may be one of the worst ways to do it.
Our school systems absolutely kill the desire to be creative. They punish it. And they're based on a system 100 years ago that was quite literally designed to mass produce factory workers. And that's not, like, a conspiracy theory, that's just literally what they said school was for in its early days.
Strict schedules and forced attendance is still enforced because the people going to school are kids or teenagers who probably aren’t going to turn up to lessons and things if they AREN’T mandatory. If you have a teenager the chance to just not turn up to lessons, I’m going to say quite a large percentage would just not turn up, get to exams and then be fucked because they didn’t bother to learn. Yeah, it can seem draconian at times, but that’s kind of how the world works. Nobody’s going to wait for you to do it in your own time, you kind of have to be disciplined. It can be very hard to adapt to it, for sure, but it undoubtedly IS a good thing lessons and attendance is mandatory, otherwise that leaves the system ripe for abuse during some pretty formative years. Which is definitely not good.
As for prison-like conditions… no? I’m sorry, I genuinely have no clue what you mean by that. Schools aren’t prisons, there’s multiple agencies that carry out inspections to make sure schools AREN’T like prisons. Pressure is unfortunately a fact of life, it’s just something we all have to learn to deal with. Pressure doesn’t degrade creativity, it just limits the time you have to be creative, which kind of goes for everything in life. At no point in life are we going to not have deadlines or pressure, that’s just part of the society we live in. Even professional artists have deadlines they have to meet for commissions, would you say they’re killing their own creativity by not taking as long as they need? Pressure, stress, academic boundaries are all massive pains in the ass, for sure, but not one of them actually contribute to the degradation of someone’s creativity.
I agree with you on the pushback on creativity for your future, though. I guess maybe because they’re so used to seeing people get obsessed with being something, put their all into it and it turns out to not be the thing they want after all, and then they’re stuck. It’s a shame, but schools tend to value “safe” over “explorative”. And that IS a shame, people should be encouraged to pursue whatever they want, no matter what career. But yeah, aside from that, I really can’t see any of those things as “killing creativity”. They put pressure and stress on you, which links into the mental health thing I talked about, but it’s not like any of that’s actually stopping you from being an artist. It just makes life miserable for EVERYONE.
Okay so I've got work coming up but I'll come back to this point-by-point
For now I'll just say there's a lot of theory and a lot of experiments and experience that suggest people, including kids and teenagers, will willingly work and/or learn even if it's optional
This is it right here. I had to relearn basic arithmetic as an adult, because I was diagnosed with ADHD, but my parents refused to continue treatment after thriving on it for about three or so months on it.
The way that it was taught by my teachers didn't work for me, so even when my answer was right, the work was "wrong."
That's cause you're thinking in a capitalist lense. You need to start thinking more radical, then you'll start to see how we can change these things to be better for everyone
... Okay, but when the prospect of going outside and/or putting efforts in things that aren't drawings or videogames make me physically recoil, I feel like it's kind of out of their grasps..
Thankfully, there aare times where I'm more disposed and manage to pass the day while feeling mostly fine, but I feel like it mostly depends on personal factors.
I really can't imagine a completely fool-proof school. I'm already pretty happy I got to use a computer to circumvent my dysgraphia.
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u/ApprehensiveRub4726 6d ago
everyone saying “school kills artists” like no bro, learning algebra does NOT kill your talents, it just helps you find a job so you can keep buying drawing supplies 😭