We Need An Education System That Fuels Creativity

I love to learn. But, from Elementary School on through Graduate School, I've never liked learning in a classroom (except for Dr. Greg Spencer's classes). Because my four-year-old son is nearing Kindergarten age I'm thinking a lot about education. I think Richard Florida makes a good point about education and creativity in his book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity: 

We need a learning and development system that is in sync with the new creative economy…We need a system of learning and human development that mobilizes and harnesses human creative talent en masse. Bill Gates, among others, says the current school system is “broken.” The system arose during the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy and served the needs of that time, pumping out literate, skilled, docile factory workers. But the development of the educational system has not kept pace with subsequent changes in the society and the economy. In the context of today’s knowledge-based economy, ironically, it feels more than antiquated, as if it had been designed specifically to squelch creative thought. We’ve mythologized the histories of entrepreneurs such as Gates or Steve Jobs or Michael Dell, constantly retelling the stories of those go-getters starting new businesses in their dorm rooms or garages in their spare time. Yet nobody ever asks the obvious questions: Why were they doing these things in their spare time? Why isn’t the education system structured so that this kind of activity is the very goal? Humans have always essentially learned by doing. The idea that school is the only, or even the main, source of education is a relatively recent development. We need to understand that classroom education is merely one phase of a continuous process of learning, discovery, and engagement that can occur anywhere and anytime. We need a learning system that fuels, rather than squelches, our collective creativity.