In my opinion, creativity is the most overlooked ability/skill of the past western generation.
Parents were strictly pushing their kids to be engineers, lawyers, or doctors. To learn everything in this strict - memorization, "one way of doing" fashion.
Due to that, the kids were and even still are losing their inner childish creative explorer. Later many would have regrets and maybe also face a mid-life crisis.
The above is a pessimistic and sad notion. Take it with a grain of salt. Still, I do believe that there is a lot of truth in those words.
We are heading into a feature where automated tools, AI, and robotics will do most of the jobs for us. We will only need to be creative about the matter of execution and the end product design. In essence, this is where creativity will shine.
It's good that more and more parents and people generaly are now becoming aware of this. Not sure if I'm slow, but this epiphany only happened to me in my later twenties.
Now I try to teach my kids creativity by empowering them to explore, give them tools, means, and ideas. I hope that they will remain my little explorers as long as they "can". As a parent, I will be there and support them, even if they decide to paint on the walls of the rented apartment. Walls can be fixed - childhood will not come back.
Continuing, have you ever noticed, or been made aware of the fact, that some of the brightest leaders of today were the ones that went against status-quo? Against these norm "soul-killing" teachings - like Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Paul Allen, Larry Elisson, and many others - all school/college dropouts.
If you look around, the people from your school or college who did not fit, but were somehow different (in a right way), now have reached more, or are at least seemingly enjoying life fullest. - Well, I have noticed this, have you?