We have a problem in our education system that is hurting our children and severely affecting their ability to be successful later in life. Although some kids are able to adapt to a classroom that encourages rote memorization [1], others are being left behind. Creativity [2] is squashed early on in a child's education, to the detriment of both our children and our society.

Author and education adviser Sir Ken Robinson wants to change that. In his wildly popular TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" he argues that instead of restricting young children's divergent thinking, we should be encouraging their creative outlets. "All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them — pretty ruthlessly," he emphatically states.

Having spent many years working as an educator and growing up as the child of teachers, I can confirm that this is a heartbreaking truth of modern education. Between Common Core and standardized testing beginning at such a young age, children learn early on that their worth is directly attached to their academic ability and that there is no room for creativity. Children are expected to sit, conform, and be sponges to a particular way of thinking. This, Robinson insists, is what is really hurting our children.

"Creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

Education has long been designed to support working, in that the skills you learn in the classroom are meant to facilitate your role in society. Our hierarchy of subjects — math and the humanities at the top with arts at the bottom — Robinson argues, kills creative thinking. Not every child will thrive in every subject, so we have to find a way that encourages and supports creative thinking, otherwise we are leaving a huge part of our population out in the cold.

"We're running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. We are educating people out of their creative capacity."

Children have an amazing capacity and willingness to try, but I had students who were so afraid of looking like fools and of making simple mistakes that they sometimes refused to turn in assignments at all. Mistakes are what we learn from, and making them is how we grow. Although my toddler son often gets frustrated when he makes mistakes, whether he's building blocks or tracing letters, he doesn't have it ingrained in him yet that those mistakes translate to anything having to do with his intelligence. He simply tries a new method until he is successful. It's this kind of resilience, and acceptance of mistakes, that we need to encourage in children.

"Many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at in school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

I hated math, in part because of the aforementioned fear of failure, but also because I always would have rather been focusing on the arts and creative writing. For a long time I felt like I wasn't as smart as other kids because I was unsuccessful at math, and this is one of Robinson's key points. Being told to not give our time to creative fields because they are worthless stunts a child's creative process and tells them that these types of skills are unimportant.

"Our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future."

We cannot fathom the type of careers that our children will get to explore, but encouraging creativity and focusing on the child as a whole is the only way for them to have successful futures. It's our job to help children be prepared for the world we are leaving them with, and our continued resistance of creative thinking is only hurting them. To encourage creativity and the arts is the only way for them to truly thrive.