As a parent, I have been disappointed again and again by the U.S. public school system. This is not a criticism of teachers, but of the system itself. My disappointment has given way to inspiration at times, when I hear a talk, such as Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk about how our schools are killing creativity, or read an article by someone who recognizes where our system fails and proposes a reasonable way to fix it. And then that inspiration sinks back into frustration when I realize that we still seem to be stuck in place, doomed to repeat our mistakes, despite the fact that everyone agrees they aren’t working.

Creativity, for instance, is an integral skill promoted by the NETS and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and experts predict that creative thinking will be even more important in the future. And yet, U.S. public schools continue to discourage children’s natural creativity and emphasize only what can be measured by a standardized test.  

For me, the desire to end education’s foibles has some urgency. My son is 17, so there’s not much time left to salvage his love for learning. The system may have worked fine for the kids who excel at memorizing facts and sitting still. But for those like my son, whose talents lie more to the right of the brain, not so much.

This disconnect between my son’s creative gifts and the system that doesn’t value them began to become clear when he was 3, on his first day at a new preschool. He sat down at a table with the other toddlers, grabbed a black and white drawing of a nursery rhyme scene, and did exactly what he had always done in his coloring books at home: He drew his own drawings in the margins of the paper rather than shading in the picture provided. He simply found making up his own art more entertaining than shading in pictures someone else had drawn. But that’s when all the trouble started. The little boy next to him leaned over and gasped, “You’re going to get in trouble for scribbling outside the lines!” as he eyed the teacher floating around the tables, monitoring everyone’s work. The children around them leaned in to see, giggling and shaking their heads. Obviously, this had come up before.

I wish that were the last time he was reprimanded for being creative during his schooling career, but I’m sure you know it was not. He was never disrespectful or disruptive; he just chose to do things differently. Whether it was figuring out his math problems his own way, going rogue with an essay assignment topic, or even composing his own songs rather than practicing one someone else had made up, he ran into biases against his creativity again and again. And he is not alone.

In fact, it’s one of education research’s most consistent findings that teachers generally don’t like creative students. I am not a teacher, but I think I can sympathize with them. When you are overworked and stressed out, tasked with keeping the peace in a classroom of 30+ kids, the student who challenges the rules is probably a major pain. I imagine that, when you’re still grading papers after the workday is over, you don’t have the energy to consider 30 unique and creative answers to every question. You just want to compare them quickly to the answer key and be done with it. But did you know that those kids who won’t get with the program are usually the ones who are highest in creativity? And those star students who follow all the rules and memorize all the right answers? They actually tend to be “significantly below average on measures of creativity and mental flexibility.”

According to Staw (1995), the business world also discourages creative suggestions from employees, despite insisting otherwise. In their case, the avoidance of creativity has more to do with fear of the unknown. Jennifer Mueller and colleagues completed a study last year showing that when people feel uncertain, they are more likely to have negative thoughts about creativity and find it more difficult to even recognize creative ideas. What’s more, there’s a disconnect between what they say (claiming to encourage creativity) and what they do (actively discouraging it). According to the post “Why People Secretly Fear Creative Ideas” on PsyBlog, the thinking goes like this:
    We know how to do things we’ve done before, but new things are mysterious. How will we achieve it? Is it practical? What could go wrong? 
    People don’t like to feel uncertain; it’s an aversive state that generally we try to escape from. Unfortunately, creativity requires uncertainty by definition, because we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before.

I’d add that fear of uncertainty is why educational reforms across the board aren’t happening, despite the fact that we all agree that they should. Like the participants in Mueller et al.’s study, we deal with our unconscious biases against making changes by saying one thing but continuing to do another.

So what can we do?  If you are a teacher, you can try to be aware of your own biases against creative kids. Notice when you’re getting annoyed because some outspoken kid challenges your facts or questions your rules. And, as often as you can, choose to fan that spark rather than snuffing it out. If you’re an administrator, advocate for standards, such as the NETS, that emphasize the importance of creativity and critical thinking skills. If you’re a parent, be aware that schools have this bias and give your creative child other outlets, as well as reassurance that, despite what their teachers might say, they are not failures because their gifts are more right brained than left brained. In fact, they are just what the world needs. 

Andra Brichacek is the associate editor of Learning & Leading with Technology (L&L), ISTE's member magazine, as well as the Journal for Research on Technology in Education (JRTE)  and the Journal for Digital Learning in Teacher Education (JDLTE).