No More Imagination?

My weekly opinion this week is on the fact that we no longer are allowed any imagination in subject that is about reading, books and writing!

You sit in English class, hoping to write a story to help that burning desire to pick up a pen and write until the bell goes for next lesson, but we can't. We work from text books, where is the imagination? Isn't English all about writing, reading and poetry? It used to be my favourite lesson but we are told what to do with specific instructions. We do things like Reality T.V. in English, having to read a text and answer some questions about it. I'm not learning anything. English should be the place we are free, we need to have a subject where we can just write what we feel. English shouldn't be about levels, or about having to follow a text book. We should be allowed to use our imaginations. Last time I wrote a short story was a year ago. Why should the government be allowed to take away the freedom of being able to write for textbooks? Why should you have to answer questions about what a website says? Or read an extract from an extremely old book where, nobody talks the way we talk now and then have to go through it predicting and summarising it? I agree it is important that we know how to spell but when asked to spell words you don't even know the meanings too and that will never come in usual coversations, how are they teaching us? Isn't school all about teaching us things for the future? 

English is about being creative and reading. It's about books and stories, other worlds. Where have the works of art like The Hunger Games, Harry Potter and the other books we all love so much come from? English, Imagination! The government, the teachers need to understand that we need to write: stories, poetry, even articles! In Year 7 and Year 8 I got the chance to do Harry Potter in English. That is exactly what English should be about-reading a book that has so much creativity(Even though I've only read two) and doing all the voice techniques. They only took a half term though, the other two and a half were textbooks. We need to be imaginative. We need to be able to escape into another world in English. It should no longer be about keeping our levels high by doing assessment followed by assessment and continuous levels. It's time that we were given a chance decide what we write. That text books were no longer what we base our work on. 

I'll leave you with a quote I found in my school planner(Oh, the irony!) 'Reading is the place where you can escape, when you are stuck where you are'

What do you think?
Has English lost it's imagination?