What some would call aspirations, I would call dreams, but I don't suppose even Gideon is deluded enough to tell us we are building a Dream Nation. That's a bit ravey, and these are serious times. Still, he has been up late making the unbearable sound not lovely, but necessary. Sub-prime fantasies and workfare is not a return to the past but a passage to a future where all will have homes, and look out of their bedroom windows and dream of bonuses, not benefits.

But who is to tell him that some of us have the wrong aspirations? Or different aspirations? Those who are the worst offenders are teenagers. Their aspirations are quite screwy. Who do they think they are? Are they in touch with the jobs that will be available to them in the future? Not really. They are teenagers. If you can't have unrealistic aspirations then, when can you?

When the Education and Employers Taskforce surveyed 11,000 of them, there was "no link found between the careers young people want and the jobs experts think will exist for them in the future". You don't say! Not everyone is going to be a famous actor or a pop star, however "hungry" they are. Still, this over-determined fantasy of fame without any recognisable talent was not just made up by daft adolescents. It is a genre of TV shows from reality to constructed reality.

We can tell these kids that, actually, there will be jobs in hospitality, administration and management (hold me back, it's just so exciting), but the truth is the policing of aspiration is exactly what is being replicated by this education system. In the old days you passed your 11-plus and were possibly considered for a profession. If you went to a secondary modern, no one pretended you were anything other than factory fodder. Now there are no more factories. So you may aspire to some low-level service job. No wonder kids fed on X Factor backstories seek escape routes. The disconnect between talent, discipline and fame is not just the fault of the consumer. Cultural producers have happily exploited the myth that some people can just win this fame lottery by the inimitable act of "being themselves".

Why do kids so often want to be TV presenters? Because it looks like you don't really have to do much and your wonderful personality will somehow be enough. The skills of Ant and Dec are fairly unquantifiable.

Yet teenagers, with their great expectations, are at the centre of the culture wars over the Goving, gyring and gimbling of the curriculum. This is all about parental aspiration with a retrogressive insistence on tangible rote learning that can be regurgitated on demand. Even this idea of fixed knowledge is questionable. I don't question the basics of numeracy and literacy – there are undeniable problems at the bottom of the scale here – but, like many, I question whether traditional learning methods are providing what we – or rather, our children – will need in the future.

The ability to connect, to innovate, to think divergently, to react critically, to make cognitive leaps, is something we are learning about. We may not know how it happens but we can see where it happens: in art schools, in design studios, in small companies, in labs, in charities, in the pub afterwards. We cannot teach creativity, but we can nurture it.

For all the banging on about a classical education by the ultimate products of it, I see the opposite of creative thinking. I see dull conformity, awful groupthink as well as a tendency not to experiment. Yes, I am as impressed as the next prole by the ability of someone to remember key historical dates and punctuate like a demon. But my aspirations go further. For these clever, clever people have got things very wrong. Traditional economics has proved as useful as alchemy. Those in the City knew not what they did, so were stupid – or were aware of it and therefore immoral. The coalition keeps getting it wrong and I returned to the education debate because certain kinds of knowledge in the hierarchy are privileged. Drama, music and art are becoming extracurricular subjects for the middle classes. The core curriculum does not encourage creative thinking, and continues to demoralise children and teachers alike.

It amazes me that, 10 years after Iraq, the political class insists it knows best, that in the midst of a recession it is obsessed with house owning not building. But politicians live in a constructed reality show too. Their fantasy of growth is every bit as deluded as that of the 14-year-old girl who cannot sing but wants to be Rihanna.

The Aspiration Nation of which Gideon croaked is a strange country to live in. One must aspire only to what one might realistically achieve. So if you are over 25, even a room of one's own may be too much. Who in their right mind aspires to "work hard and get on"? This kind of language makes you want to inject heroin into your eyeballs. What you are being told you may aspire to is simple: know your place. Teenagers clearly and thankfully don't. They want something better. Dream on.