The Abortion of Creativity

Let me just get this point out of the way right now: I’m not here to endorse or condemn abortion.

But have you ever heard a person say something like, “That fetus could have been the next Mozart, or the next Van Gogh!” as an argument against abortion?

I think this is a powerful argument, and a valid one, but I’d like to point out one thing: The way our society works today, most children who are born don’t get the chance to nurture their artistic talents. I’d argue that strictly in terms of creative potential, our educational system may just be the leading cause of death.

I attended parochial school from preschool through 10^th grade, at which point I briefly attended a public high school before deciding to drop out entirely. I didn’t drop out for any of those “typical” reasons that usually spring to mind when one imagines a high-school drop-out. I never got pregnant, I didn’t do drugs or drink alcohol, and I achieved average or above average grades in all of my classes…at least while I was actually attending them. Aside from notable truancy, I wasn’t deviant in any way.

So why did I drop out? Well, it’s not exactly clear. The cool reason I usually spew at people who ask this question is, “Pshh, I was just over that bullshit!” Gotta maintain my street cred…and by that I mean, gotta make people think I’ve got street cred to maintain in the first place.

Ok, no, but really. I mean, in a sense I was just “over it.” But what does that mean exactly? Well, I was over all the monotony. The conventions. The hum-drumitude. The drab-ass classes, and ridiculous standards, and really the general attitude of school. Now, these reasons may seem to some like cop-outs, or excuses, or lame reasons to be lazy, but I’m writing this to explain precisely why this isn't so.

Some people do very well in a traditional school environment. Some people are academically-minded, and are easily motivated by the standard grading system, a teacher’s comments, or that warm-fuzzy feeling they get after a job well done. And that is awesome. That is super-stellar, and I don’t want to change anything about those people. Some of my closest friends have thrived within this ideological framework. Another large chunk of our population is fairing averagely in it. That is to say that they are capable of doing just enough work, just well enough to get by. Their natural learning-style preferences may not fit perfectly into the typical mold, but by and large, they are surviving, unscathed. Others fail to do well in school because of environmental factors; they may have an unstable family life or living environment. These people may have done just fine under the right circumstances, but for reasons beyond their control, they have difficulty keeping up.

And then there are people like me. People who just don’t effing belong in school. We don’t take in or process information in the way most schools teach, and we have an enormous amount of trouble adhering to routines and schedules. Most of us are artists, in one way or another. Even if we all don’t paint, sing, or dance, we are artists in the sense that we think nontraditionally, and nonlinearly. And we are falling through the cracks of our incredibly flawed and closed-minded schools.

Personally, I loved my arts and humanities classes, and (no surprise) I got mostly ‘A’s in those classes. It’s great that I was able to take music or art classes in the first place in elementary or high school, but I never got to explore those areas in the same way that students are encouraged to delve deeper into, say, math or science. In grade school we learned extremely basic music theory and got to “mess around” with a few different instruments, but that was about it. And in art class we learned some drawing techniques and made collages out of magazine cutouts. Let’s be honest; everybody knew that music and art were essentially throw-away classes. Kids like me and some of my friends did whatever we could to get the most out of our experiences in those classes because we enjoyed them, but even kids who totally sucked at art and music didn’t much have to worry about their grades, because teachers scored them on an extremely individualized basis. If a child showed less potential to begin with, he or she was scored not according to an arbitrary standard or in comparison to classmates, but based on personal improvement. So if you sucked a lot in the beginning of the class and only sucked a little by the end, you passed with no problem.

In high school, art and music classes were electives. If a student showed affinity or aptitude for art or music, they could enroll in choir, band, photography, fine arts, etc. Cool, right? WRONG. First of all, I can’t speak for every student in every school, but in my experience, these classes were kind of a joke. Don’t get me wrong, I loved being able to sing and develop photos in school, but these classes weren’t exactly challenging, and they only barely encouraged me to spread my creative wings, so to speak.

The second problem with this whole art-as-electives deal is that is doesn’t work the other way around. Kids who excelled at math and science and who were linear-thinkers only had to endure their less-favored subjects for 8-10 years, depending on the elementary and middle schools they attended. Then in high school, when grades really started to matter? Phew! All over! They didn’t have to deal with that pointless fluffery anymore. And why should they? They weren’t good at it. They didn’t like it. And they’d probably never use it again in life. It was nice that they learned the basics like how many notes are in the musical scale and the difference between primary and secondary colors, but that’s about all they’d ever need to know to get through life. No need to bother themselves with the more complicated, in-depth stuff. Cool.

Good thing everybody gets treated equally in the world of academi—HEY! Obviously there’s some discrepancy here, right? Linear thinkers get to focus on their strengths, harvest their talents, and obtain only superficial knowledge of everything else. But people like me? Not only are we cheated out of the opportunity to delve deeply into our areas of interest, but we’re required to develop substantial skills in areas we’ve never been able to understand properly. We have to take math and science classes in elementary and middle school, and then we have to take even more math in high school. And it’s more complicated and less practical than ever before. Yes, a simple understanding of these subjects is necessary for the development of well-rounded human beings. I wouldn’t argue against that. But what most people really need to understand to get by in life is basically covered in elementary and middle school. Nobody needs to know more than that unless it’s required for their specific vocation. So why do we all have to learn it?

Think of all the time kids like me had to spend learning skills we’d never use, or facts we’d never remember. If we had spent all of that time honing in on our specific strengths, who knows where we’d be by now? Sure, not every creative or artistic child could be a major virtuoso. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I would have. But I do think I’d have far better developed artistic and musical abilities than I have now, and probably I’d have a better idea now of what sort of career I’d like to pursue. And other children like me, who had more natural talent than I had? Think about all the potential they’ve had to squander because they were forced to follow the “expected” path, rather than one that might have allowed their talents to blossom. This is the abortion of creativity. And I feel it’s an epidemic.

I can’t say that I have any solution to offer to correct this problem. I think the traditionalist mentality is so ingrained in the fabric of our modern society (ironic much?), that it would be difficult and perhaps even painful to make any substantial changes. I don’t even know what the absolute ideal scenario would be for people like me, because I can think of several options, all of which are drastically different from the way things are now, but none of which would be easy to implement given our country’s current resources and economic standing. All I know is that in order for things to even begin to change, we need to start in our own minds. We need to re-learn to accept new and original ways of thinking, and not to marginalize those who at first seem strange to us. These are the people who could become the great thinkers and innovators of our time, and do great things for us as a people.

This question has oft been proposed by pro-life activists: What if Beethoven had been aborted?

I ask this question: What if Beethoven had gone to school in 21^st-century America?

Tough Questions, No Answers

“What do you want to do with your life?”

This is a question people my age get a lot. Well, at least I do. It’s like everyone over 30 has a special radar, able to detect even minute lapses in the self-certainty of college-age individuals. Like they just know somehow that I don’t know the answer to this question, but they have to ask anyway. Perhaps they really do care very deeply about my future, but I think it’s far likelier that they simply don’t know what else to talk to me about.

Maybe it’s because I have a freakish knack for pattern-recognition, but from the time I was very young, I noticed the development of an unsettling conversational archetype. Adults, when obliged to engage in discourse with a young person with whom they do not regularly interact, seem to jump to their mental rolodex of “acceptable kid topics.” Unfortunately, this does not exactly spur a wellspring of brilliant ideas, because inevitably, when met with the apparently agonizing task of conversing with a child, adults ask some variation of the following question: “How’s school?”

When I was a kid, this question generally triggered a deep internal groan. But I was a fairly timid child (at least, in the company of authority figures) so outwardly I’d smile sweetly and spew out the clever response I kept at-the-ready for just such circumstances-- the dazzling, enchanting, always-appropriate, satisfying yet surreptitiously non-committal, “Fine.”

I could almost hear adults think, “Oh, shit” as they squirmed and glanced desperately around the room, searching for someone their own age to make bigger small-talk with. And that was fine with me because I never felt like divulging much else anyway. But it always made me wonder what it was about children that made most adults so uncomfortable. It seemed that for grown-ups, kids were like the conversational Bermuda Triangle. Once in a while a half-inspired idea would seep out of their web of panicked cranial chaos, giving rise to inquiries like, “What’s your favorite color?” (The word “color” here can be substituted by other kid-friendly nouns like “animal,” or “TV show,”) but not much else escaped.

And you’d think that as we got older, and the gap of intellectual capacity began to decrease, adults would gradually introduce new topics to us, right? After all, we knew more and experienced more every single day. Surely, some substantial common ground could be found. But peculiarly, as I made transitions through elementary, middle, and high school (even dropping out of high school; boy was THAT a show-stopper), the question about school evolved very little. And questions about my favorite color and the like disappeared entirely, so in fact the scope of conversation grew considerably more narrow, not less.

So I guess it makes sense that now, when I’m in college, a brand new question like, “What do you want to do with your life?” would seem like a stroke of goddamn genius to those who, throughout my coming of age, asked the same tired-ass question over and over and over. But this seemingly innocuous new inquisition carries some troubling connotations.

This query, all wrapped up in one tight little bundle of feigned concern, is actually revealed to be rather probing, and even inappropriate, upon further examination. “What do you want to do with your life?” implies several things:

1. That this really means “What sort of career are you pursuing?”

a. Life = career

2. That I should know by now

a. And if I don’t there’s probably something wrong with me

Not that I can really fault anyone for thinking these things. If I were normal, I’d have no difficulty answering these questions, or at least side-stepping them with more fluency. But the problem is that I’m not normal. I don’t fit into the normative mold, and so far I haven’t done such a good job of pretending to.

The significance of this inexorable fact has recently made a cacophonous uprising in my psyche. Suddenly, the bounds of conventionalism, and everything that has long been expected of me simply because I am alive in the 21^st century, seem surmountable, and even wholly avoidable. Finally, I’m thinking about what I really want to do with my life, and it has nothing at all to do with how I’ll make money.

Greetings

This first post will be brief, as the hour is late and the mind is drifting. I've come to say hello.