Poetry Project
In this project we delved deep into poetry. We started with learning and analyzing other poems so that we can take what we learn there and apply it to our poems. We also learned about the many poetic devices that are used so that we can implement them to give our poems depth and meaning. We then began to write our first drafts. We then went through a long series of critiques to refine our poems into their final forms which were all very intriguing and broke apart difficult concepts into an emotional and cerebral experience. Then, came the presentation at exhibition. We were given many different options as to how to present our poems at the exhibition which include: spoken word, art + spoken word, and video form.
MUN Project
MUN stand for Model United Nations. In this project we found an issue and were assigned countries. We researched our countries and the various positions that they take on the different points of debate on the issue. In our project the issue was the Afghanistan humanitarian crisis. Many different countries have very different opinions as to how the issue should be answered. It is then the task of the students who represent their different countries to debate, find and create allies, and find an answer to the problem that everyone can agree upon.
Policy Paper
Brayden Harms
Lori Fisher
Model UN
2 February 2022
India Policy Paper
Although the Taliban’s view of women’s rights is inarguably faulted and does need to be addressed and stopped, India believes that the more pressing issue is the people that are dying which needs to be addressed immediately.
In Afghanistan there is an obvious violation of women’s rights. When the US vacated Afghanistan, the Taliban very quickly took over the capital of the country, Kabul. Shortly following the take over, they implemented their own beliefs onto the people which greatly limited what women can do in the country. While the issue of women’s rights is very important to solve, the people of Afghanistan are dying. India believes that this is where the focus of the world should be. The position of the people is dire and far more imminent. What is the point of fighting for the rights of people if the people are dead? India is sending much needed supplies to the people there and believe that the rest of the countries should follow suit. The vast majority of the population is jobless and does not have enough money to support themselves or their family. As if the situation in Afghanistan is not worse enough, there are food shortages that affect nearly everyone there, plunging the citizens of Afghanistan into poverty with no food or shelter. According to an article presented by the UN, “...more than half a million people…have fled their homes due to escalating violence.” (Ahamed). This shows how desperate the situation is and the true need of the people living in Afghanistan. Because of the poverty many Afghanistans have elected to try and leave the country and seek refuge elsewhere. Prior to the rule of the Taliban, the lives of the people living there were as good as in any other country, they had their health, they had rights, and they had education. Then, all of that was stripped from them and they deserve to have it back. To quote an article by the Financial times addressing this, “Despite the patchy overall economic performance, many Afghans’ day-to-day lives notably improved. Healthcare and education became more widespread, mortality rates declined and technology use became common.” (Valentina). Many of these things violate the UN’s articles of human rights which signaled to the world that something had to be done to resolve this looming problem. It is now the role of the nations of the world to step in and act and find a solution to the social and physical problems that this country has caused.
Currently, lives are at risk. A vast amount of people in Afghanistan are facing a level of poverty that many of us could not reasonably understand. Many of those people are the ones that many are emphasizing the rights for. However, if help is withheld in order to put pressure on the Taliban to revert their sexist laws, then it is very likely that the women that it is meant to benefit could already be dead from starvation, which could have been prevented. In the past my country has helped stabilize Afghanistan and it can be done again, however, there is no need to put unnecessary lives at risk. Sanctions are not the solution, in fact it is far from it. The sanctions imposed by the US are inhibiting the amount of help that can be given to the people of Afghanistan. To quote the ORF. “However, setbacks in ties between New Delhi and Tehran over the past few years due to US sanctions will be leveraged by Iran if India intends to work with them on Afghanistan beyond just the basics.” (Taneja). It is important that other countries can present a unified front to help resolve this crisis. India believes that the best course of action is to help the people directly. This avoids giving the Taliban recognition and gives the help that people need. In the long term this will not work but it is necessary that these people are helped now, because it is their lives that are at risk. India has already given a large amount of money to get supplies to the people who need it during this crisis and urge any other countries to do the same, or at the very least not prevent this process. Unfortunately, all of the solutions here are merely temporary solutions, we can not sustainably feed the nation, we can not evacuate the entire country. In the long term we need to reset the economy and reassert proper civil rights, whether or not these terms are agreeable in the eyes of the Taliban.
Lori Fisher
Model UN
2 February 2022
India Policy Paper
Although the Taliban’s view of women’s rights is inarguably faulted and does need to be addressed and stopped, India believes that the more pressing issue is the people that are dying which needs to be addressed immediately.
In Afghanistan there is an obvious violation of women’s rights. When the US vacated Afghanistan, the Taliban very quickly took over the capital of the country, Kabul. Shortly following the take over, they implemented their own beliefs onto the people which greatly limited what women can do in the country. While the issue of women’s rights is very important to solve, the people of Afghanistan are dying. India believes that this is where the focus of the world should be. The position of the people is dire and far more imminent. What is the point of fighting for the rights of people if the people are dead? India is sending much needed supplies to the people there and believe that the rest of the countries should follow suit. The vast majority of the population is jobless and does not have enough money to support themselves or their family. As if the situation in Afghanistan is not worse enough, there are food shortages that affect nearly everyone there, plunging the citizens of Afghanistan into poverty with no food or shelter. According to an article presented by the UN, “...more than half a million people…have fled their homes due to escalating violence.” (Ahamed). This shows how desperate the situation is and the true need of the people living in Afghanistan. Because of the poverty many Afghanistans have elected to try and leave the country and seek refuge elsewhere. Prior to the rule of the Taliban, the lives of the people living there were as good as in any other country, they had their health, they had rights, and they had education. Then, all of that was stripped from them and they deserve to have it back. To quote an article by the Financial times addressing this, “Despite the patchy overall economic performance, many Afghans’ day-to-day lives notably improved. Healthcare and education became more widespread, mortality rates declined and technology use became common.” (Valentina). Many of these things violate the UN’s articles of human rights which signaled to the world that something had to be done to resolve this looming problem. It is now the role of the nations of the world to step in and act and find a solution to the social and physical problems that this country has caused.
Currently, lives are at risk. A vast amount of people in Afghanistan are facing a level of poverty that many of us could not reasonably understand. Many of those people are the ones that many are emphasizing the rights for. However, if help is withheld in order to put pressure on the Taliban to revert their sexist laws, then it is very likely that the women that it is meant to benefit could already be dead from starvation, which could have been prevented. In the past my country has helped stabilize Afghanistan and it can be done again, however, there is no need to put unnecessary lives at risk. Sanctions are not the solution, in fact it is far from it. The sanctions imposed by the US are inhibiting the amount of help that can be given to the people of Afghanistan. To quote the ORF. “However, setbacks in ties between New Delhi and Tehran over the past few years due to US sanctions will be leveraged by Iran if India intends to work with them on Afghanistan beyond just the basics.” (Taneja). It is important that other countries can present a unified front to help resolve this crisis. India believes that the best course of action is to help the people directly. This avoids giving the Taliban recognition and gives the help that people need. In the long term this will not work but it is necessary that these people are helped now, because it is their lives that are at risk. India has already given a large amount of money to get supplies to the people who need it during this crisis and urge any other countries to do the same, or at the very least not prevent this process. Unfortunately, all of the solutions here are merely temporary solutions, we can not sustainably feed the nation, we can not evacuate the entire country. In the long term we need to reset the economy and reassert proper civil rights, whether or not these terms are agreeable in the eyes of the Taliban.
Work cited
Lassoued, Ahmed and VanDeCarr, Paul “Nine Things You Need to Know about the Humanitarian Crisis and Response in Afghanistan in Afghanistan.” United Nations, United Nations, afghanistan.un.org/en/156613-nine-things-you-need-know-about-humanitarian-crisis-and-response-afghanistan.
Taneja, Kabir. “India, Iran, and the Afghanistan Crisis.” ORF, 25 Nov. 2021, www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/india-iran-and-the-afghanistan-crisis/.
Romei, Valentina “Financial Times The Afghanistan Economy in Charts: What Has Changed in Two Decades?” Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/bfdb94a5-654b-4286-8da9-34c0ff3b88aa
Lassoued, Ahmed and VanDeCarr, Paul “Nine Things You Need to Know about the Humanitarian Crisis and Response in Afghanistan in Afghanistan.” United Nations, United Nations, afghanistan.un.org/en/156613-nine-things-you-need-know-about-humanitarian-crisis-and-response-afghanistan.
Taneja, Kabir. “India, Iran, and the Afghanistan Crisis.” ORF, 25 Nov. 2021, www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/india-iran-and-the-afghanistan-crisis/.
Romei, Valentina “Financial Times The Afghanistan Economy in Charts: What Has Changed in Two Decades?” Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/bfdb94a5-654b-4286-8da9-34c0ff3b88aa
Adolescence Project
In this project we explored the various topics of adolescence and their application. Such topics we explored include: Theories of brain development, identity, morality, relationships, reading and reflection of the article brainstorm, and interviews with important adults in our lives. As the pinnacle of this project we wrote essays that addressed a problem or misunderstanding of adolescence and a solution to them, teaching adults more about the position we are in as adolescence and how they can help. Based off of these essays we also created masks which were art pieces that showed the message that we being conveyed in our essays.
In this project I grew greatly as a writer. It is no secret that I am far more analytical than I am one for stories. In this project that was obviously a problem and one that eventually let to great writing on my behalf, despite the troubles. We were required to enter several personal stories or pieces of writing that showed emotion instead of telling. At first my analytical brain went straight for: well this is stupid if I wanted to make a school sound monatinous then why wouldn’t I simply say that school is monotonous. After writing my essay I was begrudgingly forced to retract my broken logic. One example of this in my essay is “ I walk down to my basement, where the printer is kept and see my part is finally real. After months of designing my part is tangible, I take the part of the bed and try to fit it to the rest of the parts. It fits like a glove sliding into place. Finally I put my motors in and there is resistance. The piece is slightly too small and there is no routing for the motors. I drag myself up the stairs and throw myself into my chair and start designing a new Nerf gun without the error.” Most anyone would agree that this is a far better approach than just taking all of the information that it contains and stating it straight up.
Perhaps the most important thing that I gained from this project is the function and importance of adolescence. Despite myself being an adolescent I knew surprisingly little about adolescence, and by extension myself. While a lot of what we were studying was a broad generalization of the age much of it was still highly applicable to my life. It helped me understand my own actions and the effects that they have on other people. Something that we studied that exhibited this were the cliques and groups. In this section of the project we studied the different types of relationships that are common in adolescence. During adolescence cliques become far more to themselves and are more important, taking up a greater amount of and adolescents time. I too found this too in my life and because of it I was able to make more conscious decisions as to what I want to do with my life.
Throughout the entire extent of this project there were constant deadlines. Usually in a class that I do not show a passion for, I would normally just blow assignments off until the last minute and then scramble to do enough just to get what I consider to be a good enough grade. While I did attempt to do this during this project I quickly found that this was not going to be a sustainable option for me. I had to take a greater initiative and find a way to find a passion within a subject that I had generalized to be entirely uninteresting. Eventually, overtime, I did succeed and was able to find something that I was interested in, being engineering, and apply it to my mask. It was important for me to learn this because I will not always be faced with tasks that I can find enjoyment in and to be able to do them anyways, well, is vastly versatile and useful.
In this project I was definitely more of a leader. I saw that my peers were struggling and took the necessary role to have a good exhibition. I worked hard and hoped for them to follow, and for the most part they did. A large problem that I ran into was that I was a main communicator to the other group and that meant that I was asked a lot of questions and didn’t necessarily always have the time to answer them. If I were to do this project again I would likely try to split up the responsibilities so everyone had their own part that they knew the goal for.
Perhaps the most important thing that I gained from this project is the function and importance of adolescence. Despite myself being an adolescent I knew surprisingly little about adolescence, and by extension myself. While a lot of what we were studying was a broad generalization of the age much of it was still highly applicable to my life. It helped me understand my own actions and the effects that they have on other people. Something that we studied that exhibited this were the cliques and groups. In this section of the project we studied the different types of relationships that are common in adolescence. During adolescence cliques become far more to themselves and are more important, taking up a greater amount of and adolescents time. I too found this too in my life and because of it I was able to make more conscious decisions as to what I want to do with my life.
Throughout the entire extent of this project there were constant deadlines. Usually in a class that I do not show a passion for, I would normally just blow assignments off until the last minute and then scramble to do enough just to get what I consider to be a good enough grade. While I did attempt to do this during this project I quickly found that this was not going to be a sustainable option for me. I had to take a greater initiative and find a way to find a passion within a subject that I had generalized to be entirely uninteresting. Eventually, overtime, I did succeed and was able to find something that I was interested in, being engineering, and apply it to my mask. It was important for me to learn this because I will not always be faced with tasks that I can find enjoyment in and to be able to do them anyways, well, is vastly versatile and useful.
In this project I was definitely more of a leader. I saw that my peers were struggling and took the necessary role to have a good exhibition. I worked hard and hoped for them to follow, and for the most part they did. A large problem that I ran into was that I was a main communicator to the other group and that meant that I was asked a lot of questions and didn’t necessarily always have the time to answer them. If I were to do this project again I would likely try to split up the responsibilities so everyone had their own part that they knew the goal for.
Mask
picture of my mask
Essay
Brayden Harms
The Damping of Creativity
A student walks from class to class “learning”. In each class working on monotonous assignments each with as little application to their world as their care for school. Students drag their feet through the halls from class to class having no reason to be there, no want to learn, no initiative for their own education. They are too busy thinking of what they will do after they are out of this prison to actually have enough attention to learn.
This is the average high school experience. Adolescence is a time of growth, new experiences, and learning. In this period of time the mind of adolescents is exposed to a lot of new ideas and concepts, both in and out of school. According to the article The Essence of Adolescents by Dan Siegel on page 9 when talking about creative exploration, “If the mind can hold on to thinking, imagining, and perceiving the world in new ways within consciousness, of creativity exploring the spectrum of experiences that are possible, the sense of being in a rut that can sometimes pervade adult life can be minimized and instead an experience of the “ordinary being extraordinary” can be cultivated. Not a bad strategy for living a full life” (Siegel 9). This shows the common desire of a teen, freedom enough to explore. While the minds of adolescents work differently this is not encouraged to its full potential in society. In adolescence we are given a unique opportunity presented in the way that we think differently. Society, however, puts us in systems that do not encourage the creativity that is possible within adolescents. Both in jobs and in school adolescents learn that with the following of rules and procedures there are rewards. This behavior does have its place; without learning the values of hard work people would become lazy and unreceptive. Creativity should be integrated into the roles presented by society so that we can learn things during adolescence, take advantage of the creativity, and make versions of ourselves that pursue ingenuity.
Rather unfortunately, this rarely is experienced by modern adolescents. During adolescence there is a tendency toward independence. Adolescents become less dependent on their parents and more reliant on their friends. They envy the thought of driving a car because it would mean more independence and they could go places and experience new things. This drive for exploration and independence is shown in the way that they think and interact with the world around them. Adolescents think for themselves and are driven for change. This can have several results based upon the scenario that they are put in. If creative exploration is not represented in the structures created by society, then they will find their own way to get new experiences. This could be through social events, hanging out with friends, or other activities. However, if the structures that are presented to them have aspects of creativity and new experiences integrated into them, then, adolescents will be more invested in those structures and actually care. The heart of the meaning is that if we provide adolescents with new experiences in school or in jobs, they will work harder and try to succeed because they won’t feel the need to fight the system.
I grew up in an environment that encouraged creativity and provided new experiences. In my house we had a wood shop in our garage. I spent so much of my childhood here my dad helping me make wooden cars and planes. Later I got expansive knowledge and better access to tools. Both of my parents were engineers and my brother followed the family trend as well. Inevitably it rubbed off on me. I spent hours on CAD design programs and found a passion in 3D printing and other ways of creation, all at a young age. I learned how to think for myself and how to make my ideas come to life. For the last 4 years of my life I have worked on creating a Nerf gun from scratch, a relatively simple task on the surface. 6 different versions of my Nerf gun later, that all had some small oversight that resulted in them being thrown out, I would argue the opposite. Small problem, after small problem, each leading to a redesign. I walk down to my basement, where the printer is kept and see my part finally real. After months of designing my part is tangible, I take the part of the bed and try to fit it to the rest of the parts. It fits like a glove sliding into place. Finally I put my motors in and there is resistance. The piece is slightly too small and there is no routing for the motors. I drag myself up the stairs and throw myself into my chair and start designing a new Nerf gun without the error. It eventually got easier as I came up with new ideas and new ways to automate and work my way around problems instead of just solving them with brute force. I found the process tedious, painful, and frustrating, but the knowledge I learned from it will make my future designs just a little less painful. I learned creativity and how to think differently in order to work my way around problems. It is these values that I strive for in the other parts of my life. I seek new experiences, new ideas, new problems, and new solutions. All of this was encouraged and it acted as fuel from ambition in my engineering projects and I have had a great amount of access to outlets for my creativity.
I recognize many of these same values in my peers. They all want new experiences and something to do in their life. I often find that this takes the form of going out with friends downtown or just a thirst for freedom. Unfortunately many of them do not exist in environments that encourage their creativity whether it be jobs, schools, or their home life. Without an encouraged way to find new experiences I have found that adolescents would try and obtain these experiences themselves. At times, this leads to, “unruly behavior” that is seen as a defining characteristic of adolescents. This stifling of creativity and the restriction of experiences in which adolescents have full control, impacts our society in a negative way. Let’s look at school. In school the normal way a class works is that you are taught information or a process and then regurgitate the information at a teacher, and then based on how well you did that you are graded. It is rare that schools allow students to decide what they learn and commonly don’t provide an explanation for why they are teaching what they are and why the students should care. I would drag my feet from class to class feeling like I wasn’t learning anything useful, like I was trapped. In a system like this an adolescent has very little room for creativity and little control over their future. How can one expect an adolescent to be passionate about learning if it is mandatory? It turns opportunity into a prison.
This creates somewhat of a stigma against learning because of its correlation to school. School can make many students against learning when its primary objective should be to instill a drive to make students want to learn. This stifling of creativity has long term impacts due to the fact that humans are at their most malleable during adolescence as shown in the following article: “Adolescence is a phase of development characterized by flexible adaptation to a rapidly changing social landscape marked by changes from dependency to autonomy and individuality (Crone and Dahl, 2012). It forms a crucial phase for the development of cognitive abilities assumed to be related to creative cognition such as working memory and cognitive control (e.g., Diamond et al., 2002; Bunge and Wright, 2007; Huizinga and van der Molen, 2007; Crone and Dahl, 2012). Yet, relatively little is known about whether and how malleable divergent thinking is in adolescence.”(Frontiersin.org). Such cognitive abilities are important to develop, this would include creative expression particularly if it is more mentally taxing. Adolescence is a unique period in which we can learn in unique ways, but independence comes too late. By the time someone has enough freedom and initiative to take control of their own creativity, assuming that their drive has not yet been tarnished by the systems of society, the period that it is most helpful and needed in has already been lost.
So, if the result of this process is behavior that is frowned upon by society, and society puts in place systems that are the cause of this, then why does it exist? Why does society smother the creativity of adolescents and then complain when they try and find new experiences in a different way? I believe that it is because when people grow older they can sometimes forget what it's like to be an adolescent and they don’t understand that creativity needs to be encouraged, or at the very least not eliminated. These systems have been in place for a long time and are not inherently evil. Change will not come overnight or maybe never, but, if we can recognize the need for change and the faults that are at play, we will eventually improve. It is necessary that we create an environment that encourages creativity to its fullest potential so that they can have an outlet that they can express themselves in, or at the absolute minimum do not be an obstacle for this creativity.
Work Cited
Stevenson CE, Kleibeuker SW, de Dreu CKW and Crone EA (2014) Training creative cognition: adolescence as a flexible period for improving creativity. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:827. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00827 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00827/full
Siegel, Daniel. Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Jeremy B. Rarcher/ Penguin, 2015, pp. 1-37. m
The Damping of Creativity
A student walks from class to class “learning”. In each class working on monotonous assignments each with as little application to their world as their care for school. Students drag their feet through the halls from class to class having no reason to be there, no want to learn, no initiative for their own education. They are too busy thinking of what they will do after they are out of this prison to actually have enough attention to learn.
This is the average high school experience. Adolescence is a time of growth, new experiences, and learning. In this period of time the mind of adolescents is exposed to a lot of new ideas and concepts, both in and out of school. According to the article The Essence of Adolescents by Dan Siegel on page 9 when talking about creative exploration, “If the mind can hold on to thinking, imagining, and perceiving the world in new ways within consciousness, of creativity exploring the spectrum of experiences that are possible, the sense of being in a rut that can sometimes pervade adult life can be minimized and instead an experience of the “ordinary being extraordinary” can be cultivated. Not a bad strategy for living a full life” (Siegel 9). This shows the common desire of a teen, freedom enough to explore. While the minds of adolescents work differently this is not encouraged to its full potential in society. In adolescence we are given a unique opportunity presented in the way that we think differently. Society, however, puts us in systems that do not encourage the creativity that is possible within adolescents. Both in jobs and in school adolescents learn that with the following of rules and procedures there are rewards. This behavior does have its place; without learning the values of hard work people would become lazy and unreceptive. Creativity should be integrated into the roles presented by society so that we can learn things during adolescence, take advantage of the creativity, and make versions of ourselves that pursue ingenuity.
Rather unfortunately, this rarely is experienced by modern adolescents. During adolescence there is a tendency toward independence. Adolescents become less dependent on their parents and more reliant on their friends. They envy the thought of driving a car because it would mean more independence and they could go places and experience new things. This drive for exploration and independence is shown in the way that they think and interact with the world around them. Adolescents think for themselves and are driven for change. This can have several results based upon the scenario that they are put in. If creative exploration is not represented in the structures created by society, then they will find their own way to get new experiences. This could be through social events, hanging out with friends, or other activities. However, if the structures that are presented to them have aspects of creativity and new experiences integrated into them, then, adolescents will be more invested in those structures and actually care. The heart of the meaning is that if we provide adolescents with new experiences in school or in jobs, they will work harder and try to succeed because they won’t feel the need to fight the system.
I grew up in an environment that encouraged creativity and provided new experiences. In my house we had a wood shop in our garage. I spent so much of my childhood here my dad helping me make wooden cars and planes. Later I got expansive knowledge and better access to tools. Both of my parents were engineers and my brother followed the family trend as well. Inevitably it rubbed off on me. I spent hours on CAD design programs and found a passion in 3D printing and other ways of creation, all at a young age. I learned how to think for myself and how to make my ideas come to life. For the last 4 years of my life I have worked on creating a Nerf gun from scratch, a relatively simple task on the surface. 6 different versions of my Nerf gun later, that all had some small oversight that resulted in them being thrown out, I would argue the opposite. Small problem, after small problem, each leading to a redesign. I walk down to my basement, where the printer is kept and see my part finally real. After months of designing my part is tangible, I take the part of the bed and try to fit it to the rest of the parts. It fits like a glove sliding into place. Finally I put my motors in and there is resistance. The piece is slightly too small and there is no routing for the motors. I drag myself up the stairs and throw myself into my chair and start designing a new Nerf gun without the error. It eventually got easier as I came up with new ideas and new ways to automate and work my way around problems instead of just solving them with brute force. I found the process tedious, painful, and frustrating, but the knowledge I learned from it will make my future designs just a little less painful. I learned creativity and how to think differently in order to work my way around problems. It is these values that I strive for in the other parts of my life. I seek new experiences, new ideas, new problems, and new solutions. All of this was encouraged and it acted as fuel from ambition in my engineering projects and I have had a great amount of access to outlets for my creativity.
I recognize many of these same values in my peers. They all want new experiences and something to do in their life. I often find that this takes the form of going out with friends downtown or just a thirst for freedom. Unfortunately many of them do not exist in environments that encourage their creativity whether it be jobs, schools, or their home life. Without an encouraged way to find new experiences I have found that adolescents would try and obtain these experiences themselves. At times, this leads to, “unruly behavior” that is seen as a defining characteristic of adolescents. This stifling of creativity and the restriction of experiences in which adolescents have full control, impacts our society in a negative way. Let’s look at school. In school the normal way a class works is that you are taught information or a process and then regurgitate the information at a teacher, and then based on how well you did that you are graded. It is rare that schools allow students to decide what they learn and commonly don’t provide an explanation for why they are teaching what they are and why the students should care. I would drag my feet from class to class feeling like I wasn’t learning anything useful, like I was trapped. In a system like this an adolescent has very little room for creativity and little control over their future. How can one expect an adolescent to be passionate about learning if it is mandatory? It turns opportunity into a prison.
This creates somewhat of a stigma against learning because of its correlation to school. School can make many students against learning when its primary objective should be to instill a drive to make students want to learn. This stifling of creativity has long term impacts due to the fact that humans are at their most malleable during adolescence as shown in the following article: “Adolescence is a phase of development characterized by flexible adaptation to a rapidly changing social landscape marked by changes from dependency to autonomy and individuality (Crone and Dahl, 2012). It forms a crucial phase for the development of cognitive abilities assumed to be related to creative cognition such as working memory and cognitive control (e.g., Diamond et al., 2002; Bunge and Wright, 2007; Huizinga and van der Molen, 2007; Crone and Dahl, 2012). Yet, relatively little is known about whether and how malleable divergent thinking is in adolescence.”(Frontiersin.org). Such cognitive abilities are important to develop, this would include creative expression particularly if it is more mentally taxing. Adolescence is a unique period in which we can learn in unique ways, but independence comes too late. By the time someone has enough freedom and initiative to take control of their own creativity, assuming that their drive has not yet been tarnished by the systems of society, the period that it is most helpful and needed in has already been lost.
So, if the result of this process is behavior that is frowned upon by society, and society puts in place systems that are the cause of this, then why does it exist? Why does society smother the creativity of adolescents and then complain when they try and find new experiences in a different way? I believe that it is because when people grow older they can sometimes forget what it's like to be an adolescent and they don’t understand that creativity needs to be encouraged, or at the very least not eliminated. These systems have been in place for a long time and are not inherently evil. Change will not come overnight or maybe never, but, if we can recognize the need for change and the faults that are at play, we will eventually improve. It is necessary that we create an environment that encourages creativity to its fullest potential so that they can have an outlet that they can express themselves in, or at the absolute minimum do not be an obstacle for this creativity.
Work Cited
Stevenson CE, Kleibeuker SW, de Dreu CKW and Crone EA (2014) Training creative cognition: adolescence as a flexible period for improving creativity. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:827. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00827 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00827/full
Siegel, Daniel. Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. Jeremy B. Rarcher/ Penguin, 2015, pp. 1-37. m