Creativity and Conformity Don't Mix

Is it possible to be socialized and creative at the same time? Unlikely, according to Robert Epstein (The Case against Adolescence) who argues that in order to make people 'civil,' "we need them to learn to conform to a wide variety of rules and practices, a practise scientists call 'socialization.' The process starts at birth and it shifts into high gear when we start school."
I intuitively knew this since before my daughters were born and so I didn't put them in school. I wanted to preserve their creativity and I am delighted to say that it worked. My oldest girl recently complained about how with drawing she was "a terrible artist because she had no guidelines, she had no one to copy from, no one showed me how. I just muddled along." When she started school in grade 8 she says she her work was so different from everyone else's; that now with learning techniques at school she is "actually really good" and is contemplating a career in the arts. I had to point out to her that it is because she was not influenced by rules and how to dos all those years of not going to school that she preserved her creativity and so that now that she is older she is able to make use of technique without compromising creativity.
As Epstein writes,"children are constantly imagining and playing and sculpting and building and drawing, and they seldom 'copy'; copying in fact is a skill they need to be taught...no one needs to teach a young child to think outside boxes. By first grade however, when elementary schools-now competing nationwide to get high 'academic performance indices'-dramatically increase the academic load, the frequency of creative expression declines."
Epstein goes on to ask the question,"with powerful social forces bearing down, how to any of us end up being 'creative?'
"Generally speaking, the children and adults who continue to express creativity at a high rate are the misfits-the risk takers and the authority-defyers who resist socialization."
Which brings us to teens again (remember-this series of posts was supposed to focus on youth). Since teens as a group are made misfits in todays society-"teens should express more creativity on the average than adults do, because the less one conforms to society's rules, the more likely one is to live up to one's creative potential. When we look at teen creativity, that's exactly what we find."