Unfortunately we are taught from a young age to value how our Superiors judge us over how enthusiastic we are about a subject or activity. We do not let students explore enough, so they lose interest in exploring. Instead, a focus on grades stifles creativity and leads to egocentric competition for approval, rather than a valuation of teamwork, learning, and creating. This habituated comparing also results in insecurity, and is augmented by an emphasis on sports competition. Students are judged on how well they assimilate information and given no more reason to do so than the reward of a grade. With Google in our pockets, class time would be more usefully spent encouraging children to explore their curiosities, think critically, and engage with other students. We teach our children that in order to access happiness, they must have money, and to make money, they must compete with their peers. But aren’t the most successful companies the ones with the strong teams, and the happiest people those with close social bonds? If an Earth in which individual human competition is secondary to broader social wellness and collaborative exploration is to be possible, we have to start by taking equalizing steps like Finland (The Atlantic) to encourage children to prioritize exploration and collaboration over destructively selfish competition early on. The desire to do better than others can take you far, but the will to do better for and with others will take us all much farther, and those principles have to start in the classroom alongside other students.
See also: Social bonding through play is extremely significant to creativity and to social well-being (TED Talk by Stuart Brown on creativity and play; TED Talk by Isabel Behncke on some of the evolutionary anthropology of play). Another TED Talk by the founder of Khan Academy demonstrates a way to revise our use of class time, and the three talks by Ken Robinson are very moving and insightful.
AGE OF EQUILIBRIUM 