HOW SCHOOL HAS RUINED OUR LIVES BY AINSLEY COOK

My whole life I have been taught there is one right answer, there is a certain way you should solve a problem, and you always need to be right. In school, I would solve math problems in a different way than all the other kids. I would be told my way was wrong and that I needed to do just as the teacher did even though my way still brought the same result. School in America has taught us to be robots, classes that were supposed to bring out creativity were put on the back burner. It was not until I entered college that I learned that one of the most desired traits for an employer was creativity and innovation. I thought to myself, easy enough, that is just fun stuff, but after all of these years being programmed to avoid any type of ambiguity it is harder to bring back than I thought. In a Ted Talk that I watched by Sir Ken Robinson, he explains “What we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original”. The fear of being wrong has been instilled in our brains for the past 12 years. So how am I suddenly supposed to be innovative? What has helped me the most is to realize you can have fun while you learn, you can be playful, imaginative, and come up with the best ideas. My takeaway from these thoughts is to stop taking life so seriously, get out of your box of thinking, and learn to have a little fun while you learn.