Declaration for the Rights of the Creative Mind

For the past 100 years, the educational system for America’s youth has refused to change their ways and accept the new philosophy of the twenty-first century. The model of modern-day schools came from the Industrial Revolution, way back in the 1800s. While this seems inconsequential at first glance, it really does have an impact on how our youth are educated.

Modern schools were designed to prepare children to work in factories back in the day. Here in the year 2020 we no longer have a high demand for factory workers, as such jobs have been replaced by a more automated process. In our world today we need creative minds. We have the tools necessary for our future to be amazing but in order to have those amazing things, we need creative minds to problem-solve and do what we think to be impossible. We don’t need people who can walk in a straight line, complete their work by a certain time, raise their hand to speak, and ask questions that people want to answer. Our world needs people that can defy all odds and speak out of turn. We need those people that can make a difference and change society forever. We can’t predict what the world will look like in five years and yet we still feed children information that we think they will need to know when we ourselves don’t know. Our youth are our future, and if we give them an education where they can’t harness the use of their skills and just give them lecture after lecture, are we really preparing them for what happens in the real world? Would that education really have mattered? America’s youth needs much more than teachers feeding them information to memorize when they can’t practice it themselves. They need experience more than they need the theory. If we let them test their strengths in real-world situations through integrated projects, we would not only be giving them an education, but we would be giving them a future.

All of these grievances are what is holding our country’s education system back. We are not even ranked in the top ten education systems in the world, so what does that say about our country's future? Our country’s traditional schools need to base their models around student’s passions and interests through integrated projects and be flexible when students explore passions. It is these passions and interests that will shape our society and advance our technology in the future. These schools also need to adopt new policies in order to help students learn to the best of their ability. Education should be at the student’s convenience, not the schools. In the name of the future of The United States of America and for the education of the gifted youth of our beautiful country I list the following aspects our education system needs to adapt for our country to thrive.

## List of Articles

**1.** Schools need to incorporate hands-on learning into their curriculum. Our modern-day schools give their students all sorts of facts to memorize instead of giving them real-world experience that they so desperately need in the future. This base for knowledge favors those who are proficient in the field of memorization and makes those who are intelligent but do not retain information as successfully seem unintelligent in society. We are constantly giving students grades to compete for instead of actually helping them prepare for the future, which causes stress and emotional health risks. Students end up despising school because of this memorization aspect of our education system, which leads to students not wanting to work hard and reach their full potential in life. Hands-on learning through integrated projects would greatly help this situation. These projects would be specially designed for students depending on what they need to explore and what they want to explore. Instead of having worksheets and tests and a ton of homework, students would dive into real-world subjects and their “facilitators” would guide them through what they would need to know to meet the goal of the project. Facilitators are teachers; however, they are teachers that don’t just feed our youth information. These facilitators would teach our youth how to apply the knowledge they have gained to accomplish the goal they have for a project, giving them the chance to actually learn without being lectured.

**2.** Schools need to be more flexible with their time when it comes to educating students. Schools currently run on a very strict schedule that cannot be changed. Students have to be at a certain place at a certain time. They have to raise their hand to speak, and they can only do what their teachers tell them to do. While this seems fine at first glance, it is an idea that came from the Industrial Revolution. Back in that time, we needed factory workers that could repeat a process over and over again in a systematic timeframe. This made it possible to create products to the highest quality quickly. In our modern-day world we don’t know what the world is going to look like, and worst of all we don’t know what our children are going to need for the future, so schools should not be teaching our youth with methods from 100 years ago. We are truly at the height of civilization, but somehow our schools have not changed at all over the course of a century. Time management is definitely something America’s youth needs, however forcing them to do the same thing every day for six hours is cruel and uncalled for. Changing up the schedule for these poor kids every once in a while is something that could better improve education as a whole.

**3.** Schools need to start later in order to help our youth learn effectively during the day. According to a study, teenagers and kids generally need ten to eleven hours of sleep per night. Most high schools in the United States currently start at 8:00 in the morning while the average teenager goes to sleep at around 11:00 at night. Many kids need to get up at around 6:00 am just to get to school on time. This leads to teenagers getting four hours less sleep than they should. This may not seem like a lot, but it really does have an impact on how these students learn. If students are tired and struggling to wake up early in the morning, then they most likely won’t be productive during the day. Being tired can affect a student’s ability to focus; it affects their memory, and it causes a lack of motivation. All of these are key in the learning process, so having a tired student isn’t really ideal when it comes to education. Starting school even just a couple hours later would greatly help with this problem.

**4.** A higher investment must be made into school breakfasts/lunches. A student that is hungry really isn’t a student at all. A student that is struggling with food problems is a student that is most likely struggling with their learning. When students go to school hungry it takes away from their education. Students that are constantly hungry while at school are likely to have learning disabilities and are probably underweight and small for their age. If schools provided a free breakfast and lunch program for students, then hunger wouldn’t be a problem for them. Food is a human right, and if we take food away from those who can’t afford it and only give it to those that can pay, we are destroying a creative mind. Destroying a creative mind is as good as destroying our future.

## Conclusion

It is these articles that are what could change the fate of America as a sovereign country forever. The more responsibility we give our students the better they are going to do in the future. The more we treat our youth like adults and give them the experience they need, the more likely they are going to be successful in the real-world. The future of our country is in our youth’s hands, so it is our job and our responsibility to ensure that our children are ready and prepared for what is coming. Failing to do so will leave our future generations in economic ruin and disappointment in their ancestors. It is up to you to decide if America has a future.

-Harrypotterexpert101