Jordan Peterson - Why Creative People Fail At School

Creative people don't fail at school. School fails creative people.

The education system wants you to be smart enough to follow orders but not enough to question them

I was at an art school in Munich. I had a different style of drawing compared to others in cladd. I was praised by my fellow students but my teacher was insisting that I'm not doing it the orthodox way. I was punished for being creative and having my own style. She actually managed to make me leave art and turn my creativity into media. Today I'm a successful filmmaker, photographer and Digital artist. I hate school

As someone who is considered creative, I struggled a lot in school. I think it was probably because I was always thinking of new ideas and stories. I used to draw quick sketches in class and once I got caught and was told to throw away my drawings. I literally cried because of that so during recess I said I had to use the bathroom but I snuck over to the trash can and pulled the still undamaged sketches out and took them home that afternoon. I still have them today 6 years later.

Thank you! I am an artist and I struggled in school immensley. My father is a doctor, my brother a lawyer. My former husband a computer scientist. I always felt from another planet. I always was incredibly creative since childhood. But in my former jobs it was not welcome at all. Now I am 55 years old. I quitt my job, because I couldn`t take it anymore! Now I just paint, because I am an artist. And finally I am happy!!!

If a creative person shuts down or suppresses his creativity, he becomes destructive. If he cant destroy anything in the outside world, he turns on himself and become self-destructive. Creativity is like a severe itch, if you don't scratch it, you go crazy.

To be creative you often have to have a very analytical mind. Sometimes it’s easy to overthink a simple question in an exam for example whereas in art you have so many considerations to observe before you produce a successful painting. You are thinking outside the box all the time.

My god, I have never heard myself summed up so perfectly. It brought tears to my eyes that for 80 years, I thought I was the odd one, the outlier, the one that just didn’t fit. How many times in elementary school I got sent home because I wasn’t listening. Then they gave me an IQ test and it was so high they didn’t tell my mother the results until I had graduated—barely.

My fellow creatives, always remember the golden rule: be prolific, not perfect. Keep producing, and you'll make it.

I struggled in school. Sensory overload. I loved drawing and writing stories. I could manage and predict the worlds I created in my mind.

Im a creative person too. I had some trouble in high school because i didnt see any relevance to 90 percent of what was being taught. You are expected to cram useless knowledge into your head for years and i hated that. Also it was so boring and there was no individual approach to students because we are all different and we cant all learn the same way and the same subjects,especially not if they are boring to us.

This is why me and my 3 closest friends in school were at the top of the class in drafting. We almost never paid attention. We were in the back of the class making up things while the other kids were doing "exactly" what they were told. I also graduated at the bottom 7% of my high school class, and now make well over 100k per year consistently. I hated school and school hated me.

“It’s like you put an extrovert into an isolated jail.” As an aspiring filmmaker studying software engineering, I’ve never felt more identified. At times I compare Engineering University to a jail because I can’t do my Stop Motion short films because of all the stupid stuff I have to do for university. I’m ridiculed for that, but I can’t do my creative stuff and that feels like a jail. It feels so liberating to actually sit down and create stories, and actually animate them. Hopefully one day I’ll become that filmmaker I aspire to be.

It really depends on the discipline. You can use your creativity to feign intelligence. I studied Physics in college, I'm not that intelligent but I'm extremely creative. Turns out my creativity gave me the ability to solve very difficult physics problems that my fellow classmates that undoubtably had a higher IQ than me were incapable of solving.

Absolutely everything he said! I found school boring so I ignored it. The teachers were so boring that I couldn't keep track of what they were say even if I tried. Homework? Nope! Classwork? Sort of! I did not care to solve the math problems in order to figure out the "secret" message. I got very used to passing time in school and no one knew how to motivate me. Shame wouldn't do it. My dad raging out at me didn't either. I had a few teachers that managed to engage my attention. A social studies teacher would bring a story every class and invite us to discuss it. A math teacher just said to me "You seem to manage yourself well so just keep doing what works". I actually learned in his class but was sabotaged later by a grand standing ego maniac math teacher. I could go on but there is a lot of pain and frustration back there.

Its amazing there's so many people speaking out about being creative. Ive had my own struggles as creative person and honestly it was hard and frustrating. I got diagnosed with depression in 2022 and currently im planning to practice self compassion for my depression, confidence, and trust in myself for me. Don't give up everyone and don't let people's words affect your mental state they don't understand what you're going through. You matter.

Art is my very makeup. I sleep, dream, and breathe art. 24/7. No one fostered this in me a kid. It was just there. Always there. School stifled this so much. Now I have a grandson who doodles, draws, creates and gets in trouble for it. His mind is a constant idea. I am so sad to see it being diminished.

I always struggled in school from the very beginning. It wasn't until my adult years that I recognized that I wasn't stupid, but that my brain worked differently than the average person. That coupled with virtually non-existent parents and little discipline made for a crazy, painful childhood and school experience. My husband and I decided to home school our children and, along with them, I was permitted to have the school experience all over again. It was most marvelous and I enjoyed it immensely. My daughter-in-law recently told me that I was very creative, but I never saw myself that way. So, hey, maybe I really am!

I'm now 80 yrs old, totally happy with decisions I made in my life, but the best advice I got from my guidence councilor, back in the 60s was get out of school,

My problem is that I'm very creative while also having a proclivity to break rules. I've had many jobs in my life and my chief enjoyment in all of them was finding and exploiting the loopholes in their various rule structures, meaning that I'm really good at appearing to do everything that's asked of me while hardly doing anything at all. Creative people need an outlet. Mine just happens to be of the devious sort. I'm kind of a bastard really.