Education kills creativity. Two psychologists, Teresa Amabile and Beth Hennessey, devoted decades of work to experiments that explored the connection between creativity and education.
They concluded that there are five ways in which education can kill creativity: having children work for an expected reward, focusing pupils on an expected evaluation, deploying plenty of surveillance, setting up restricted choices, and creating competitive situations. These practices all typify the education systems and policies we currently deploy.8 We say we want motivated, creative students—but we opt for methods and structures known to undermine both.
The students of good teachers succeed because they care about them. They set high standards, and, “see the best in their students.” Their secret isn’t competition—it’s interest. When kids are interested in something and can pursue it without threat of failure, they are far more likely to develop their talents and to experience the joy of expanding their own capacity. But critical to that process is a climate of safety where mistakes don’t matter and are just a normal part of learning.
By contrast, an education system marked, like an obstacle course, with tests and evaluations turns learning into a commodity; permeated with the fear of failure, such a system’s capacity to inspire is profoundly circumscribed
What exams reveal most clearly is not intellectual or creative capacity—they just tell you how good you are at exams.
And this is all which edutech apps like Byju’s offer to do. It makes sense for them to do so , because they profit from this ! What’s our excuse to subjecting our children to this “cruel and unusual” punishment ?
Notes from “A Bigger Prize” by Margaret Heffernan