Education is not a simple substance delivered in larger or smaller doses. Good and bad teachers are engaged in opposite activities. At its worst, it distorts imagination and leaves learners damaged rather than enriched.
We oftentimes think of education as if it were water poured into a cup. A bad teacher poured too little, a good teacher poured plenty. This picture is misleading.
Bad teachers don't simply give less. They actively destroy talent. Good and bad teachers are engaged in opposite activities.
In the book:
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more ‘respectful’ teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children. Many ‘well adjusted’ adults are bitter, uncreative frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that’s what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing.
Education is not a neutral substance. It can be destructive. It's especially dangerous to our creativity.
E. Paul Torrance, the psychologist known for creativity research, has a theory that "many children with impoverished imaginations have been subjected to rather vigorous and stern efforts to eliminate fantasy too early. They are afraid to think." Once we eliminate fantasy, then we have no artists.
Torrance's observations also explain why intelligence is proportional to population, but creativity appears not to be related to population numbers.
Shakespeare's London produced great artists despite having limited education. Today's well-schooled societies, despite larger populations, struggle to do the same, let alone scale that creative output proportionally.