School. Think about that word. That place. That feeling you got after reading that word, truly understanding the purpose of it and what you do or don’t like about it. School is about learning and getting an education you should be grateful for. It isn’t about spending money on clothes or electronics or anything you need to be socially accepted. All you need is to know the information that will help you in your adult life but what good is knowing that information when you don’t even remember it? When you feel like you don’t want to go to class, or raise your hand, or sit at a specific table in the lunchroom? When you worry that those blonde girls down the hall will laugh and point and stare at your new haircut or be scared of what the teacher's reaction will be when you don't have your homework done and ready to turn in? I shouldn’t be feeling this way! None of us should! I shouldn’t have cringed at the thought of the word ”school”. When a student comes to a point where they’d rather avoid the confrontation with the teacher by not going to school at all, the school curriculum should be seriously questioned. We are treated like cattle! We have a voice! We can't just let our education be costing us our mental well being so much that you get sick to your stomach at the thought of that prison. Going to class at a specific time, adults supervising you, telling you when to go outside for a designated time and when you go back inside. And this is the funny part: In physical education, we are put in identical uniforms and sent out to the fields to run or the softball field or the soccer field to get exercise then brought back inside for food. Sound similar? You really trust adults to always know best? That they are smarter? Wiser? So then I guess you support slavery or intentions of plantation owners because since they are technically older than you, you assume that they must be smart to enslave innocent black men and women. What people older than you say, you have to listen to them. You have to respect them. You have to do whatever they tell you to, and yet still expected not to stand up for yourself or choose not to do that. Everyone is taught to listen to authority when really, we should be questioning it! The curriculum should be taught in a way where it is both enjoyable and understandable. If done this way then students will go to class. They will participate. They will know and understand the school’s lessons and therefore improve test scores. Higher test scores lead to better grades. Better grades lead to a better future. Everyone can be successful and very smart but it all depends on your education and what you make of it. I am proud of myself and people around me teaching me to question authority because without that advice, in all honesty, I wouldn’t be here today. This is not how the system should work we are told information then expected to regurgitate it over and over again which appears to faculty and staff of the district that you know how to do what they just taught you and that if you aren’t brave enough to ask for help then you don’t get it. It shouldn’t be seen as this every day hassle (as most students see it) of waking up at 6 in the morning and forcing your brain and body to work for 4 hours straight, having a 20 minute break of being fed unhealthy food or standing around and then continuing to work 2 more hours. After the strenuous day, you must then return home to work an additional 2 or 3 hours of homework and assignments not even letting your body get a chance to refresh itself, let alone get a healthy amount of sleep! Then being woken up again at 6 in the morning doing the same routine 179 more times for “just one more year. Deal with this shit just one. more. year.” At this rate, I was hoping to attain an illness like pneumonia or whooping cough just so that I may get a break but even then, I still have an overwhelming amount of worksheets and assignments on things I wasn’t even in class to learn or let alone have the energy to complete.
I shouldn’t be like this. A 15 year old girl shouldn’t have developed an anxiety disorder she has been dealing with for the past 5 years. She shouldn’t have dealt with depression caused by low self worth inflicted upon her by other students or teachers or her parents or anyone! She shouldn’t have to live in fear of what society wants her to be, but start focusing on what she wants to be. This is why so many citizens have an inadequate education. Peer pressure, stress, anxiety, doing everything you can for other people to like you? This is why there are over 1.2 million students every year who drop out of high school in this country alone. Of that half of a million people, 81 percent of students say they would have stayed in school if the subject matter was more relevant to real life. That is exactly my point! I, for example, want to major in neurology. I don’t want to know about the renaissance that has no relevance to what I want my future career to be but instead, learn how to do taxes. To be completely honest, I have no idea how to even do that when it is my responsibility as an adult every first of the month to do bills.
