Freedom?

As a student in America, I’m forced to step back and wonder, just how free are we? 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, nearly 10 months a year, for 12 years straight, I’ve been kept behind bland walls with generic posters and bombarded by 4 different subjects with one goal in common: pass the standardized test. That’s it. Pass it and you’re deemed smart enough to become a productive member of society. Grades, essays, and a number of state tests and the scores I get on each of those are the determining factors of what my future will be like. They stomp out all individuality with worksheets and multiple choice quizzes and consider color-by-number worksheets creative and artistic. All of this being said, HOW CAN THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE CONDITIONED TO BE AVERAGE AND STANDARD FROM THE TIME THEY’RE OLD ENOUGH TO THINK TO THE TIME THEY’RE ADULTS BE FREE? We’ve been stripped of individuality. Creativity. Original thought. So. How free are we?