subject: Why Do Public Schools Undermine Creativity Skills? [print this page] This article discusses how the output of our school system is predicated on the assumption that every child should aspire to be a teacher, university professor, engineer, or something that required math or science. Laudable as that goal may be, there simply arent enough teaching jobs for every child, and not every child wants to be a teacher. Yet our public schools place a higher value on math and science that they place on those creative and gifted skills that are unique to each child. If those creative skills were on the same hierarchy as math or science, it would create positive opportunities for all children, but especially for children with problems and children born into poverty.
If a child has a gifted talent for, say, dancing, or singing or training animals, just to name a few, and if the school nurtured those skills with the same degree of importance and value as math or science, imagine how that could help the self-worth of a child born into poverty. I cant help but wonder what educators might have said to a young Cesar Milan if he had told them that he believed he had a special talent with dogs? The public school system would not give him credit for that skill, but the Job Corps would. I know, because I learned everything I needed to know about developing my creative skills from the Job Corps, as a high school dropout.
It didnt dawn on me that my business and personal growth were dependent upon the creative skills I learned during my childhood in poverty until about age 23. Dealing with problem children often means having to understand what is bothering the child in the first place. A child in poverty doesnt have the same support resources as a child born into the middle class. They learn to use their personality to develop coping skills to survive in their unique environment, and while the value of those skills may not fit neatly into the school curriculum, it doesnt mean those skills are not worthy of recognition.
In my case I had to learn how to survive in a diversified neighborhood comprised of children born into impoverished families. My personality, planning abilities and acquired coping skills were critical to survival in those violent neighborhoods. As I learned in the Job Corps, it happens that the same skills are also necessary for managing people. But, those same creative abilities were overlooked during my time in the public school system. I didnt get an A for my survival skills in public school, but when I opened my own business at the age of twenty-six, those skills helped me start a company from scratch and create an enterprise that became a multi-million dollars industry.
As is true with many poverty victims, I grew up under the constant stress of violence. For all my childhood years, family and friends were talking about it, engaged in it, or observing it, but violence and chaos was always present. At age eighteen, I had to make a choice. I could continue fighting, with all the negative outcomes, or I could choose to channel those coping skills into something positive. It was a difficult challenge for me, and it took many years, but I eventually learned how to use the creative talent acquired over a lifetime of poverty, to acquire wealth beyond my dreams. Imagine what it could have done for my sense of self-worth and dignity if the public school system honored these skills on the same level as math and science.
As with most young people in my neighborhood, personal security was a major concern, a driving force for everything I did. I needed to know that my future would not resemble the past; in fact, the past terrified me. Planning for the future meant delaying gratification to an uncertain date. At the same time, I could see first-hand how yielding to immediate satisfaction was destroying the lives of others around me. It seems to me that the public school system could play a major role in helping these children channel those acquired survival skills in a positive way. Instead, impoverished children must deal with put-downs by classmates and receive little or no recognition for skills that, if properly directed, could turn them into successful individuals.
