A rant on education, knowledge, and creativity

Knowledge is not something that belongs to any one person. Even experts on a certain subject simply cannot know all there is to know about it. Learning is continuous- you never stop learning, nor should you. But since our pool of knowledge is continuously growing, how should people be expected to accept all of that knowledge as-is?
This is where collaboration comes in. Collaborative works (read-write works) are often the most interesting to me because of how different people approach a problem or situation. Allowing others to change or add to existing work or knowledge only strengthens the body of knowledge at large.
Encouraging children to learn what they are interested in may be viewed as being dangerous or frivolous because it is not directly geared towards eventually readying children for jobs. In that same vein, the arts are squandered because self expression is not always profitable. Sir Ken Robinson's speech really resounded with me, especially his anecdote about Gillian Lynne. Today, she probably would have just been put on Adderall and encouraged to study subjects she didn't enjoy.
I have always had a keen interest in personality theory, especially Jung's theories and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. By this personality test, people with my personality type (INFP) are often inaccurately diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Explaining the entire personality theory here would be incredibly time consuming, so I will explain briefly. Basically, people with the "NF" (intuition and feeling) combination in their personality type often display behaviors that would be branded as attention deficiency. Furthermore, NF people are highly creative, intuitive, imaginative, and innovative people. Many of the same behaviors that describe NF people also describe ADD or ADHD. Instead of embracing what the child is skilled at, many times NF children are simply seen as being easily distracted, inattentive daydreamers. A normal brain is deemed "disordered".
I have a fundamental beef with the way education is run in this country because it expects all students to be successful in the same way. Art and classes are viewed as inherently non-academic in most schools, but many students are successful in these subjects and not successful in traditional academics. Letter and number grades rule how school performance is viewed.
Learning is probably one of my favorite things in the world. I love hearing interesting new ideas and accounts of others' experiences. The idea of college excites me- the notion of taking classes in subjects I am interested in is kind of interestingly foreign to me. After spending my pre-college years in a traditional public school, I expected to have to learn things I was not interested in. However, college gives a broad range of interesting subjects to explore. I find that when I am interested in something, I can learn more easily. Why not apply this to grade school students?
There seems to be a link between our current form of education and copyright to me. Both unintentionally prevent creativity in the interest of monetary gain. Education's purpose is to ready students for jobs. And copyright laws keep a person's work "safe" from the influence of others. But without the ideas of other people, ideas cannot grow. An educational system that allowed free learning and collaboration would expand and strengthen knowledge for everyone.