There are seven types of art: sculpture, architecture, literature, theater, cinema, painting, and music. We are fortunate that Mount Greylock offers the majority of these fields, yet looking back at my time in high school I would not describe my encounters with literature as an artistic experience.

In my experience English class has often felt like a class preparing you to write correctly rather than a class that encourages you to write intellectually and creatively. I believe that it all boils down to grammar rules. I understand the necessity of grammar rules, spelling and proper punctuation are especially integral to understanding the writer’s ideas, yet some rules should be allowed to be broken. When we grade student’s writing on grammar we are quickly forced into a grading template that kills creativity; it forces teachers to grade the art of writing in the clinical viewpoint of grammatical correctness.

This entire lament boils down to the fact that I feel as though creative writing is rarely found in high school English class nowadays. One of my favorite classes in high school has been my semester creative writing course because it has taught me to love writing again. For so long I hated writing because I felt as though my ideas didn’t matter and I had to focus on achieving the “grammatically flawless essay.” My creative writing class was so impactful to me because I didn’t feel the pressure to be flawless grammatically and I could explore the artistic and creative side of writing. 

Language should be first and foremost about what you communicate, not how correctly you do so. 

Take modern art for instance. Art used to be commissioned: painters would be hired to paint a specific piece of art for their patron. The creative boundaries in this process were broad, but they were not broad enough. Until artists freed themselves from creating art for somebody else, certain artistic genres did not exist. We have all been to Mass MoCa: it would not exist if creative boundaries were not pushed when artists were given the power of creation. Some of your favorite artists or types of art would not exist if the boundaries were not pushed. 

I am not arguing the dismissal of grammar rules (that would be pandemonium), I only argue that emphasizing creativity and intellectual thought should replace grammatical correctness as the main grading point in school.