No Creativity Allowed

Beware of Long Post :D

                                      

Effiong  was not made for school all he wanted to do was play football, but his father won't let him play, he was meant to be a doctor in this life and cure his father arthritis.  So while he stared blankly at the huge  textbooks his father had procured from the kind second hand book seller, Effiong dreamt about Kanu, Maradonna and all those great men who chased around a little ball to put in a hole.  One day he skipped school and was playing with his friend on a dusty field where the village people dried clothes on the weekends, one man walked up to him and told him he was a good player and asked to see his father. After much resistance from the parents and a few consultations with the local prophet, he was allowed to go ahead to play football. He finally made it nationally and internationally earning money and happiness he never imagined for himself. His father would have preferred a rich doctor but he made do with a rich footballer after all money is money.

Adia  always knew what she wanted to be, "superstar lawyer" the village people called her as she was always running up and down with books. She was going to be a lawyer. her mother had already told all the people who lived on their street. Even the Agidi woman had started calling he mother  Mama Lawyer.  In her spare time though, Adia loved to draw, she drew pictures of her cousins. If her mother found out she will shout about how  they are distracting Adia who could be preparing for government exams. Her father loved her pictures and drawings they came to her so naturally, but her mother will warn him not to encourage that stupidity in their child. So she went on to write the bar exam twice (as any self respecting person should lol) finally got called to bar. She hated the courts, hated the briefs, the long droning on and on about legal matters, she rolled her eyes when people referred to her as a  learned colleague she didn't care for all that work. So she went on to draw for people, took her time to learn in her spare time fun things like graphic design and all those art related things she truly loved and could finally live her legal job onto her dream job at 37 doing what actually made her happy. 

"schools tend to suppress creativity by trying to make all of us perfect using one method of measurement"

   

I watched an old TEDTalks  video on youtube by a British educator Sir Ken Robinson. He was talking about how schools tend to suppress creativity by trying to make all of us perfect using one method of measurement. That's kind of what happened to some of us in our homes growing up. In the strive to have perfectly adjusted children, who grew up to be doctors and engineers, some of us who were not inclined toward any of that were made to feel like the extras in class and at home drawing back the truly brilliant from getting to their destinations on time. Some parents reminded the slower kid about how fast their brother or sister was.

These are not unique stories of my generation of Nigerian children. Being constantly told there was something wrong with you when you couldn't excel in the holy trinity of subjects English and Maths and Science. We were groomed from very young ages to concentrate on the subjects that mattered. Don't be "too" creative in order not to appear odd, don't ask too many questions,  do as you are told. those were the mantra of the age.

"What new things are we doing now to make sure that our children are better equipped for a future they can envision."

All that has changed, what they ended up doing was creating children who found it hard to cope or adapt as the world changed. Some of us did so well under all these strictures, do this and do that we were superstar kids. Passed all the right subjects and read the right courses, even graduated into the right and acceptable jobs, but we had no other skills  besides those. So when the world changed and maybe due to retrenchment or a lack of job satisfaction we had to move on, we lost what it was that identified us. We were no longer superstar baby because the superstar job we used to identify ourselves no longer existed.

                                        

What new things are we doing now to make sure that our children are better equipped for a future they can envision. Of course not all kid are going to create the next great Nigerian work of Art or literature or be a successful entrepreneurer. Some of us were meant to walk the straight and narrow, climb career  ladders in establishments and retire with a pension and a list of old work colleagues, but life is shifting exponentially away from that kind of structure.  At some point we will need to know how to handle our own shit, pay our own taxes, run our own businesses from our dining tables or be open to paying someone to do it for us, that's what business managers are for.

In Nigeria, we still measure people by their jobs, big man from the oil company or the ministry. Oga with the big pay cheque., madam from the parastatal and that's okay because not all of us will quit our jobs and follow our dreams and we have to understand that wanting to follow a clear career path is an ambition and a dream in itself.

My whole point is let's not kill the dream. Don't tell your writer daughter that she should find something productive to do, don't tell your tailor son that what he loves is for women, don't scone your son who loves to take pictures or cook. Instead train and encourage the things that make our kids individuals and different as long as they are adding value to their society and are good people, there is nothing that you will lose.

While I am of the strong opinion that basic education is of the utmost importance, I also believe that we should foster creativity just like we foster literacy, so that we build individuals who will be able to provide innovative and creative solution to the problems that the regular way has created.

Idea Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY