No Child Left Creative

St. Andrew's School, Indianapolis, Indiana, circa 1960. After a week of dreary, repetitive study of math, English, social studies and science, the clasroom suddenly became an engaging place for me. Every Friday afternoon was devoted to Art. Out came the scissors, paste, crayons, paints, and construction paper. I no longer had to hide the little drawings I'd been secretly doodling in my notebook during English or geography. As rigid and unimaginative as the lesson plans might have been (usually, to recrerate a drawing the teacher put up in the front of the room), I still sailed out of the doors of that school on Friday afternooon with a jolt of creativity that made my segue into the weekend a delight.

Now, the mo-fos who've taken control of everything else have made sure their impact is felt in the most important sphere of all, education. Bowing to the yoke of Bu$hco's "No Child Left Behind" folderol, school districts are abandoning those pesky subjects like art and music in favor of doubling up on math and reading instruction. It's just one more example of how what really should happen gets twisted into some kind of bumfuck alternate reality where the elite of the world congratulate themselves that they're doing something meaningful for the po' folk by getting them on the right track. In reality, those po' folk being screwed.

You know, if we're going to work ourselves out of the mess(es) we currently find ourselves in (oh, you know, those pesky issues like war, poverty, environmental meltdown, social disintegration—that sort of thing) the one bright shining star offering hope to humanity is e-d-u-c-a-t-i-o-n. We're going to have to devise creative solutions for problems now facing us. We need to teach more creativity, not less.

I don't know if you've noticed: the same idiots who've mired our asses down in Iraq, the ones who couldn't figure out people in New Orleans were in danger, have also been in charge of education "reform." You see how well they've succeeded in their other endeavors. How do you like what they've done to your child's school with their punitive one-size-fits-all kind of thinking?

Is it possible our masters don't really want creative people in their world? There might be too much independent thinking as an outcome. Too many might walk away from the mindless consumer treadmill we're on and go throw some pots. A society comprised of math whizzes can do important things for us like devise new ways to cook the books for Enron or arrange no-bid contracts for Halliburton.

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