Who Killed Creativity?: ...And How Do We Get It Back?

Chapter 9: The rescue plan in action

Solving the mystery

On the last day of her final school exams, Zoe crossed the school quad feeling absolutely shattered. Despite having put her best efforts into studying, she felt she had failed the exams she had spent 13 years building up to and preparing for. She had valiantly tackled the five three-hour exams she had sat over three days, but had finally broken down when the overwhelming anxiety and nausea had become too much. She cried through the last two exams and her face was red and puffy as a result, but she didn’t care what anyone thought. She was too exhausted to care about anything anymore.

When Zoe was halfway across the playground she was stopped in her tracks by an all too familiar booming voice behind her. ‘Young lady, where is your proper school uniform!’ It was the school principal, who irregularly ventured out of his lair just to prey on unsuspecting students who had dared to express a modicum of independence, or so it seemed. After being berated and reduced to tears once more, she left the school that day for the last time, incredibly relieved she would never have to go back.

Somehow the school system had depleted Zoe’s confidence over time, reducing her to a mere shadow of her former pre-school self. After she had struggled through school for all those years, the system seemed to have failed her. A creative and obviously intelligent child, she had been placed in the top 5 per cent of children of her age in verbal reasoning, ...