Education was once imagined as a space where curiosity was protected, where asking “why” mattered more than answering “what,” and where learning was meant to shape human beings, not just employable bodies. Somewhere along the way, that idea quietly slipped out of the classroom. Today, education increasingly resembles a marketplace, and students are no longer learners but products in the making. The commercialization of education hasn’t arrived with a loud announcement; it crept in through brochures, rankings, coaching packages, and promises of “success,” slowly standardizing minds and shrinking the space for creativity.
At the heart of this crisis lies the trap of credentialism. Learning has been reduced to a transaction where knowledge is exchanged for grades, certificates, and ranks. Schools no longer ask what a student understands or how deeply they think; they ask how well they perform under pressure in a limited time frame. Curriculum design now revolves around high-stakes examinations, competitive entrances, and résumé-friendly achievements.
Students are trained to crack patterns rather than question systems. Over time, this produces a strange outcome: students who are academically accomplished but intellectually fragile. They know how to reproduce information, but struggle when asked to apply it outside textbooks. They wait for instructions instead of initiating ideas, because initiative was never rewarded, only correctness was.
This process slowly turns students into passive consumers of information. Learning becomes something that is delivered, not discovered. Notes are downloaded, formulas memorized, and answers rehearsed. The joy of confusion, trial, and exploration is replaced by anxiety and performance metrics. When mistakes are punished instead of explored, creativity becomes risky. And when creativity is risky, conformity feels safer. A standardized mind is not created overnight; it is trained through years of being told that there is only one correct answer and one correct path to success.
Parallel to this is the massive rise of coaching factories and ed-tech platforms, which have created a shadow education system that now runs almost more powerfully than schools themselves. Coaching centers promise results, ranks, and shortcuts. Their language is aggressive and transactional: “crack this exam,” “beat the competition,” “guaranteed success.” In many middle-income families, the money spent on private coaching now exceeds school fees. Education, instead of being a public good, becomes a private investment one that not everyone can afford.
This deepens inequality in a way that is subtle but devastating. Even if a child from a low-income background manages to enter a good school, they are instantly at a disadvantage.
Their peers may have access to round-the-clock tutors, AI-based learning tools, exam strategists, and curated study plans. Education becomes a layered school for attendance, coaching for survival, and premium tools for dominance. Talent alone is no longer enough; access decides outcomes. The idea of merit starts to feel hollow when the starting lines are so uneven.
What makes this more troubling is how creativity suffers in such environments. Coaching systems thrive on predictability. They reward speed, repetition, and accuracy, not originality. A student who thinks differently is often told they are “overthinking.” An unconventional answer is marked wrong, even if it shows deeper understanding. Slowly, students learn to suppress their own thinking to match expected formats. Over time, they stop trusting their instincts altogether.
Adding to this crisis is the managerial shift in school leadership. Principals and administrators are increasingly functioning like corporate managers rather than educational mentors. Schools speak the language of branding market reputation, enrollment numbers, placement statistics, social media presence. Success is measured in charts and profits, not in how curious, empathetic, or thoughtful students become. Decisions about subjects, faculty, and teaching methods are often driven by market demand rather than educational value.
Subjects that do not promise immediate economic returns arts, philosophy, ethics, sociology are quietly pushed to the margins. They are labeled “non-essential,” “extra,” or “optional.” But these are precisely the subjects that teach students how to think, feel, question, and imagine. When education prioritizes market ROI over human development, it produces skilled workers but shallow thinkers.
People who can code but cannot critique, who can analyze data but not power, who can communicate efficiently but not meaningfully.
The loss of creativity is not accidental; it is structural. Creativity thrives in spaces where there is time, freedom, and safety to fail. Commercialized education offers none of these. Time is rushed, freedom is restricted by syllabi, and failure is stigmatized. Students are constantly told to optimize scores, optimize time, optimize outcomes. But creativity does not emerge from optimization; it emerges from exploration.
Perhaps the most painful part of this crisis is how normal it has become. Students blame themselves for burnout, anxiety, and loss of motivation, unaware that the system is designed this way. Teachers are overworked and underpaid, reduced to deliverers of content rather than facilitators of thought. Parents are pressured into believing that more money and more coaching equals better futures. Everyone participates in the system, even when it quietly harms them.
Standardized minds are easier to manage, easier to measure, and easier to market. But they are dangerous in the long run. Societies do not progress through conformity; they progress through questioning. Innovation does not come from those who memorized the rules best, but from those who dared to imagine alternatives. When education stops nurturing imagination, it stops serving its most essential purpose.
If education continues to be treated as a commodity rather than a public responsibility, we risk raising generations who know how to succeed within systems but not how to change them. And in a world facing complex social, ethical, and environmental crises, that may be the greatest failure of all.
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