Killing subjects..how school crushes creativity and passion.

In the New Scientist a couple of months ago, Bill Bryson , talking about his recent forays into the world of science, tells his interlocutor :'There is nothing in science that is not worth being excited about. Unfortunately, the place you are least likely to find excitement, in my view, is in schools, when that is the precise place you should be handing it out to people'.
It's the same for English, I am afraid , Bill. I have had a number of very talented, passionately-committed budding young writers pass through my hands when I taught. Sometimes I bump into these (mainly) girls in Lyme or Axminster or Bridport. 'How are you getting on in English?'. They usually pull a little moue of disappointment. They don't enjoy it anymore. They are thinking of dropping it for 'A' level. They don't write creatively anymore. They are dispirited and downcast.
A long chat with one of the mothers revealed the cause...it's not (just) bad, uninspiring teaching. It's..guess what...the teaching to exams, exams which do not like to assess anything that cannot be put in a box. English Language and Literature now have very little to do with creative writing. It's all box ticking 'analysis' ( regurgitation) of the set texts..that limited, repeated and repeated short list of works which the children will have had force-fed in predigested form. The excitement of language, the magic of words have been crushed out of the curriculum, disenchanting a great raft of talented children. No doubt literary creativity is seen as a pretentious middle class habit. The educational process, far from 'drawing out' ( Latin:educere) and developing ability, just dumbs it down, parcels it up, stamps it and sends it out to join the growing pile of greyness. It's WRONG.