Chrissy Paras
1B
Recent studies show that our creativity level has been declining since the ‘90s. I do find this an
important issue but, unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. While it would be great to have
a class just for creativity, (even I myself feel like I need it at times) it would be pointless. You can’t teach
creativity. You can’t teach someone to “think outside the box.” If you could, we would all be geniuses
and the world wouldn’t have as many problems as it does now.
During my sophomore year, I took a pretty rigorous English class. While I enjoyed my teacher
with his witty jokes and high enthusiasm, I always felt like I just couldn’t think the way he wanted me to.
We would read many pieces of fictional literature including several classics and take quizzes and write
essays on them shortly after reading. For some reason, I always got the questions wrong. They weren’t
your average multiple choice, “Did you really read or use Sparknotes?” type of questions. They were so
much more complex. They’d ask what I thought characters meant when they said a certain thing, why I
thought they took a certain action, what Shakespeare’s purpose was in writing this line and so on. I
always did my best to answer the questions and gave my honest opinion (which I genuinely thought
would be the correct answer.) But, when I got to class the next day, ready and excited to get into a
discussion over the questions, I would always get shut down and told my answers were wrong and I
wasn’t thinking the right way. The only thing I wanted to know was how the heck I’m supposed to make
my brain take someone’s writing in a certain way that I wouldn’t even think of. The reality is that I can’t
and when I finally realized that, I gave up on the class. (Probably not the best decision for my GPA but
that’s for a whole different conversation.) Everyone is different and therefore, just because one person
is smart enough to understand the underlying, subliminal meanings of William Shakespeare doesn’t
mean another person (especially a sophomore in high school) is.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that it’s not important to have creativity and be able to
think “outside the box” at times, especially in sticky situations that require it. But, like I’ve previously
stated, not everyone can. And if this is going to be a big problem for us, we as a country need to find
certain people who can and utilize their skills to solve our problems. That’s why we have politicians who
say they’re going to do this and that for us and although they may really stink at times, they’re all we
have at the moment. Hopefully, one day we’ll have another JFK or Woodrow Wilson with his New Deal
that brought us out of the Great Depression. Anyone would agree that he had to be pretty creative for
that one. And, if we’re patient, just like everyone else in the ‘30s, someone like that will come along and
fix things. We just have to give it time.
In conclusion, making a specific class for creativity isn’t necessary. You can’t take someone who
doesn’t have that kind of talent and force them to have it. It’s no different than trying to turn a 20-yearold woman, who’s never done an athletic thing in her life, into a ballerina. Not everyone is made that
way and the sooner we learn to accept that, the sooner we can find someone who is.