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Comment by Aeolos | Hacker News Reader

I recall reading a study about how school destroys creativity. IIRC, they found that 70% of children entering school exhibited some form of creativity. By the time they finished 6 years of primary school, that number had fallen to 1%.

We train ourselves to become mindless drones, and then put anyone who doesn't on medication.

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I still remember the shock of entering first grade, how structured everything was, how the teacher used a false high-pitched voice with exaggerated expressions to sound friendlier, how everyone thought that was normal and how she used that rapport to teach us to stand in lines for everything, agree with the group. When we were asked to work on the simplest math problems in a group, it was hard to reason with anyone because they would always go with the majority opinion instead of listening to arguments. I did end up getting a lot of respect when the teacher validated me.

We definitely infantilize our children in schools, teach them to act stupidly in order to get them to behave. Then we wonder why we have problems like youth gang violence.

I volunteered quite a bit in my child's school. I hear and acknowledge you. I would only point out that group activities and socialization in the capable hands of a talented teacher are a wonder to behold. Some of my happiest memories are watching my child and his classmates lock in, help each other, having fun learning. Empowering.

Alas, those talents aren't common.

I think you have hit an important point: forced infantilization as a result of the group-based teaching environment in modern schools.

Whenever I hear about studies like that, I wonder what the control group was. As in, how many children that did not enter school exhibited creativity 6 years later?

I'd have to dig up a reference to the study, but I won't be able to do that for the next few days. Google scholar returns various results for "school and creativity decline" if you have access to the relevant journals.

So you have no clue? I suggest to you that part of not being a mindless drone is recognizing that correlation is not causation. And part of helping others not be mindless drones is not quoting small parts of studies and then making wild claims that the study may or may not have shown, counting on the fact that the vast majority of "mindless drones" are going to take your statement at face value.

Self-replying because I cannot edit: see [1] for a link.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11360290

They might use home-school or other programs (small class sizes, private schools, tutors, etc) as controls.

If their assertion is that the current form of primary school is causing creativity to decline, they only need to demonstrate that it causes more decline than alternatives.

Entering a new-entrant class is like coming across a recently bombed $2 shop. The colour, noise and tat cause some sort of visceral reaction. I can't understand how anyone can learn in that environment. This special snowflake went to a Steiner school which was like authoritarian east European orphanage in comparison. I liked it.

I remember how much I detested being told to be "creative" in school, and how many of my peers seemed to have no problem with it. I enjoyed learning, even if I was sometimes bored by routine in school, but "creativity" was an unpleasant requirement.

Don't think that it's so easy to find an alternative version of school that won't be a pain for some students.

That's right, and that's why one of the most harmful qualities of current schools is the pervasive uniformity. If all students were valued, all students would be taught in the manner most appropriate to the individual student. Instead we favor those students with the good fortune to fit like keys into the Procrustean lock of this year's ed-school fad.

maybe what you are referring to:

https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U?t=536

which is a delightfully digestible, abridged, version of this talk:

https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/event-videos/2008/06/...

whose transcript you can find here:

https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/videos/2010/10/rsa-...

whose figures are drawn from this book:

    Break Point and Beyond, by George Land

relevant bit:

    So my question to you is what
    percentage of the people tested of the 1,500
    scored at genius level for divergent thinking.
    Now you need to know one more thing about
    them - these were kindergarten children. So
    what do you think? What percentage at genius
    level? 80? 98%. Now the thing about this was
    it was a longitudinal study, so they retested the
    same children five years later aged 8 to 10.
    What do you think? 50? They retested them
    again five years later, ages 13 to 15. You can
    see a trend here can't you?

Thanks, this was what I was referring to!

As avian points out, this is seriously confounded by the age of the children. How many of them, after six years of primary school, were the same age they had been when they started?

Is that caused by schooling itself or by being exposed to other people [living in a society]?

Can we expect societies with low school enrollment to have greater percentages of people exhibiting creativity? Or do we also we a decline in this creativity despite not going to school?

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