Education Kills Our Creativity, Here Is How We Can Regain It

Society stresses the importance of education. Good grades in


school propel a kid to a prestigious institution; and getting into a world-renowed college leads to a bright, successful future. And this generation is lucky, we are mostly well-educated.
Ironically, schools mainly stuff information in our brains. Even though we are more educated, somehow our creativity is suppressed.

Yeah right, I’m not in the creative industry, it doesn’t matter.

No, having creativity is key nowadays. Any industry needs innovation, and it’s the most important component for success. When we step into society, problems and roadblocks are everywhere. And soon, we realize we lack creativity to solve them.
Scholars ^[1] have identified two thinking process: convergent thinking and divergent thinking. Education focuses on convergent thinking — emphasizes on finding definite, absolute answers. But in reality, we actually need divergent thinking more, which is the ability to find more than one way to solve problems, and it is essential to creativity.

How important is divergent thinking?

In a research conducted by neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasen^[2], she discovered IQ is not the factor to a creative genius, but having divergent thinking is. She writes:

Assuming that creativity is a trait everyone has in varying amounts, those with the highest scores (in the skill of divergent thinking) can be classified as exceptionally creative and selected for further study.

School equips us with knowledge we need, and we have more than enough training in convergent thinking, but to be creative once we leave the education system, divergent thinking is what we need to work on, and here’s how