Great Authors

It often seems like some unspoken rule, that the goal of bettering education is to teach kids valuable skills at a younger age, so that they might have time to learn more while they are in school. Kids skip grades, take advanced classes and have private tutors so that they're always just a few steps ahead of normal.

In a way, it's sort of great. A smart child who wants to be a doctor, can get to college quicker and with more valuable skills and as a result they can graduate and go to med school quicker and become a successful doctor quicker. The kid was able to achieve their goals in little time. Still, I wonder, what- if anything- they had to sacrifice.

Say a school wanted to produce great authors for example. They saw that being a great author required writing skills to capture scenes and emotions, but also a great deal of imagination. The school could see that young children have endless supplies of imagination and as they get older the imagination seems to dwindle away. So, the school decides that the best solution is to try to teach kids writing skills at an earlier age. That way, young children could use their skills to capture their imaginative skills on paper and- voila!- Great authors!

But that's not the only way to go about the situation, which the school may or may not have missed. If it's just a matter of endless imagination and writing skill, then perhaps they could develop writing skills at the normal rate and work on teaching children how to keep their imaginations longer. That way instead of having children how are superb writers, they have adults who are highly imaginative. And voila once again- great authors!

Here's the thing, I was going to try to sound all unbiased right here, but as I was thinking I realized something. Advances in education are excellent and should never be overlooked, but while some children are able to pick up the pace and learn at a faster rate, others wont be able to keep up. Perhaps, introducing writing skills to children at an earlier age would benefit some children, but I can't imagine that it would benefit all. That's why I favor encouraging imagination.

Kids already have a great imagination. They're always making up stories and scenarios. Sometimes it's like they're living in a completely different world. Why not work with something they already have? That way, children aren't stressed by doing something they are just incapable of doing. Instead they are praised for doing something they already love to do.

Then the world is happy and filled with great authors. Voila! Perfect solution.