Audio Essay: Schooling & Creativity

This was my first audio assignment for my Radio Production class, Enjoy!



Script:

Ever since I was a little boy I was made to believe that schooling had a single definitive purpose, to get you a good job that will pay well so you can live out a steady and successful life. But 20 years into my own potentially successful life I've come to realize that that is not in fact the purpose of schooling but rather to mold individuals to fit into society's social construct and fulfill their societal roles as respectable dependable individuals.

What I've come to believe is, schooling, in fact, kills an individual's creativity, on the premise that their creative passions will not be enough to keep their living standard a stable one.

Writing was only my third favorite thing to do; my first passion was always my guitar. Made merely of wood and steal, at age 14 this instrument became the first thing I ever wanted to truly get better at.

At around this same age I was asked to think about what I'd want to do for a living, and the answer was really clear to me. My father however didn’t think too highly of me wanting to make music the centre of my life, saying 'where are you going to work?' or 'how do you plan on making a living?'

I didn’t have everything figured out at the time, nor do I have it all figured out now, but I was told to find the one thing that made me happy, that I would enjoy doing and this was it.

This was the first time I asked myself whether we go through all sorts of hardships in life to simply die rich, or die happy.

It is true that only so many musicians, actors or painters ever become famous, or make any real money from doing what they love, but at the same time there are lawyers, engineers and doctors, who've spent countless hours on their degree and wind up exactly as unemployed as those who chose to focus on what they thought was important, rather than what society told them was important.

People tend to excel at jobs they're passionate about, imagine Picasso had been forced into becoming a scientist, or Einstein into a painter, surely they wouldn't have done half as well in their fields as when they followed what they were passionate about.

Not all people are ecstatic at the idea of having their entire life laid out ahead of them, some, in fact, enjoy the mysteriousness of not knowing where their next meal is coming from.

This is not to say that education is entirely useless or harmful to people but rather its faulty in the sense that it forces us to believe that money is all that matters and without it we could never be happy.



For a really interesting lecture on creativity and 'genius', watch Elizabeth Gilbert's video here