Something happens to our creativity as we go through the

"Something happens to our creativity as we go through the education process; most of us lose touch with it." Thus spoke Anthony Browne, a master of stories and images, a creator of worlds through children’s books, who looked upon the path of schooling and saw both its light and its shadow. His words are not a dismissal of education, but a warning: that within the walls of classrooms, amid lessons and tests, a sacred flame is often dimmed—the flame of creativity. What is born bright in every child too often grows faint as they advance, until many forget they ever carried such a fire at all.

The meaning of this truth is profound. Creativity is the natural language of the soul. Every child enters the world painting visions in the air, singing songs without words, inventing games where imagination rules. Yet the education process, designed to shape and discipline, too often trims the wild branches of imagination until only straight lines remain. Standardization, repetition, and the relentless pursuit of correctness can stifle the freedom that creativity demands. Thus, though one may emerge from school with knowledge, one may also emerge having lost touch with the spontaneous spark of invention that makes knowledge alive.

History offers us mirrors of this truth. Consider Albert Einstein, who as a boy struggled in rigid schooling, where obedience and memorization were prized. Teachers dismissed him as slow, yet he nurtured his creativity outside the classroom, in daydreams of light and time. It was this untamed vision, preserved against the weight of conventional education, that later gave birth to the theory of relativity and transformed our understanding of the universe. Einstein himself declared that imagination was more important than knowledge, for knowledge defines what is, but imagination reveals what could be.

There is also the tale of the Renaissance, an age when creativity burst forth after centuries of rigid scholasticism. For generations, education in Europe was bound to memorizing texts, copying traditions, obeying dogma. But when artists, inventors, and thinkers began to break free—when Leonardo da Vinci sketched machines, when Michelangelo carved angels from stone, when poets sang of human dignity—the world awakened anew. Their genius was not created by formal education, but by transcending it, by reclaiming the creativity that dwells within every soul.

Browne’s warning is not meant to scorn education but to call us to balance. Knowledge is vital, but without creativity, it becomes lifeless. To learn facts without learning how to imagine is to build walls without windows. To solve problems without creativity is to use tools without vision. The tragedy is not that schools teach, but that they sometimes forget to nurture the imaginative spirit while they teach. And when that spirit is forgotten, the world loses inventors, poets, dreamers—the very ones who would have led us into brighter futures.

The lesson for us is plain: guard your creativity as fiercely as you guard your learning. Do not let the demands of structure and conformity silence the voice of imagination within you. When systems press you into sameness, resist by daring to dream differently. When knowledge is handed to you, ask not only, "What is this?" but also, "What could this become?" For creativity is not a luxury, but a power—it is the force by which humanity has always reshaped the world.

Practical action follows. Keep drawing, keep writing, keep imagining, even if no one asks you to. In your work, seek not only efficiency but beauty. In your studies, play with ideas, not only memorize them. Parents, encourage children not only to answer questions, but to invent them. Teachers, remember that to awaken a student’s creativity is to give them wings, while facts alone are but weights. Every day, create something—even a thought, a sketch, a new way of solving a problem. In doing so, you keep alive the flame that Browne warns so many lose.

So I say to you, children of tomorrow: let education refine your mind, but let creativity free your spirit. Do not let the process steal the gift with which you were born. Protect it, nurture it, share it, for it is the root of invention, the seed of progress, the song of the human heart. When knowledge and creativity walk together, humanity ascends; when they part ways, we stumble into dullness. Hold fast to both, and you will live not only as a student of the world, but as a creator within it.