Learning in America ---- What's Wrong with the Education System?

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by Cody Shuster

Although we need education for everything in our lives, it has many negative aspects to it. A major cause of stress among students, not being taught what we will use when we are adults, and Common Core are just a few of the problems we face on a daily basis in high school. Education is meant to be a wonderful aspect of life, but what happens when the system is more wrong than it is right?

 

How does school cause stress? To start, most students cannot get a proper nine and a half hours of sleep due to the massive amount of homework and studying that is required each night. Some students have problems with their lives at home. Some students are in sports, where they do not get home until late at night. Other students are in clubs and other activities funded by their high school and they don’t have the time to do everything assigned by their teachers.

 

When we become adults, we are expected to know how to pay taxes, buy a house, rent a car, and so many other things that we just do not get taught when we are in high school. Instead, we get taught to solve some difficult math problem that we most likely will never see again. We are taught that passing a test is more important to an employer than filling out a proper resumé.

Is it because all we are to our school is money? In case you did not know this, when a school does their student count, it’s so they can report to the state how many students they have and can get money for each of them. After we graduate, when we are no longer making money for them, why should they care about us?

Common Core is a new system of education that is supposed to teach all students to do an assigned item the same way. Throughout our lives, especially when we are teenagers, we are told to be ourselves. We are told that we are unique and that we shouldn’t try to be like anyone else. We are told that we can learn however we want, as long as it works for us. What honestly makes the government think that every single student can learn the exact same way? Some students have ADHD/ADD, some learn concepts more quickly than others, and others just don’t have a clue of what they are being taught. No one learns the same. Who told the government they could control how I learn?
 

I think it’s safe to say that in order for our education system to return to a higher quality, the government must stay out of it. After all, it’s our education, our schools, our lives. Not the government’s.

As an aspiring journalist and teacher, Cody Shuster has been part of the high school journalism program for four years.