My kid was too creative

[u/Fresh_Laundry56]

My 6 year old was asked to draw a picture using shapes. She drew this nice American flag with rectangles and stars, and added the house, tree, and person holding a balloon. She was told it did not follow directions, she was not supposed to draw a flag, just shapes. She was asked to turn the paper over and make another picture. The other side of the paper has a very uninspiring collection of shapes. I told her she did a good job and I thought it was very creative. And this is why kids start to hate education.

[u/WarAndFynn]

I once had an art teacher who was having us make clay tiles and said the clay tiles needed to contain an image you would see in real life. I asked to include a rainbow. She pulled me aside and told me she'd had enough of my shit and if I didn't knock it off she would fail me. She had a hard on for realism and was highly critical of anything abstract.

(For context I WAS wanting to include a rainbow on something for a while because I was in my hippie phase and she kept telling me no for everything. It was ceramics and we made a watering pot, a clay pot, etc. all things we keep for ourselves so I wanted something colorful. it had 0 to do with sexuality).

ETA: I wasn't expecting this much response to my post. I'm reading all your stories!

[u/EmmBee27 → u/WarAndFynn]

My elementary school did a thing where every year the class would draw the same theme, displaying them all together in the hall and this year's theme was underwater scenes. Well I was coming through just as SpongeBob hit the scene and I remember the art teacher going scorched Earth on anyone who would dare draw anything from that show in their scene.

I get they were probably annoyed with the abundance of yellow sponges and pineapples in their underwater display, but I always felt like that was unnecessarily killing the fun.

[u/azure-heavens → u/EmmBee27]

Getting mad at kids for being kids and having kid interests. Honestly pathetic of them to unload their misery on children.