~  For years I have suffered in the school system and for years I have complained about it to my parents, teachers, friends, and anyone else that comes near me after a bad day of "educational activities".  Most people keep telling me that even though I am right I must continue with my work and strive for straight A's.  They tell me that no matter how much bullshit is thrown into our faces, the youth of today and the leaders of tomorrow, we must totally be passive about the whole thing and just try and get through it.  This passive attitude is what's screwing everyone over!  We go to school for years, complain about school for years, suffer school for years, finally we graduate, and then we don't want to remember all those days of torture!  Then we let all of the next generation suffer the same way.  (Obviously there are some students out there that really enjoy the current school system, but the majority of people don’t enjoy school at all.)  So, are we passive because we think that there is no way to change the system and that the system will always be like this?  Without a doubt there is a better system out there, but no one has a solid proposal or has engaged themselves in trying to reform the educational system radically in order to benefit everyone's future.  It's about time that we start creating some new concepts of how people should learn.  We can do this as long as one keeps in mind that we must remember all of the factors that go into a school system such as:  Psychology, Science, Sociology, Technology, Common Sense, Inspiration, Communication, Creativity, etc.

~  With all of these factors that go into education, do you notice that most of them are not implemented into our learning system correctly today?  Do people not realize how amazingly important education is to everyone's lives especially during a person's childhood and teenage years?  Isn’t it obvious that the importance of education should be matched with the way we think and learn?  For example: Our brain is most susceptible to new ideas and developing most rapidly during our younger years, yet those are the years in which are brains are fried by the current school system.  Then after we graduate school, when are brains are done being damaged more than nurtured, we are finally allowed to pick the path of life we want to walk down.  How are we supposed to figure out what careers and lives we want to pursue if we aren't encouraged to pursue our dreams and talents in the first place?  If people were able to mostly pursue their dreams and talents then I'm pretty sure their efficiency, when engaged in a career that they love, would be very high and their life would consist of more happiness than stress and confusion.  If the world was filled with more people working at a professional level in their desired career, then maybe the world wouldn't be in a state of disorder and confusion every single day.  People may disagree with me about the fact that school doesn’t let you pursue your dreams and that it doesn’t contribute to the disorder and confusion of life, but in general, school does limit your ability to do things the way your body was programmed and it does make everyone’s lives more confusing.  

~  Whether you agree or disagree with all of the aforementioned, here's a nice hefty list of many reasons for why our current school system is a failure:

• Ignorance of Individual Abilities and Mental Functions:  It amazes me that the school system likes to completely ignore two major facts about humans:  1.)  The fact that people all have different wild imaginations that grow because of experience.  2.) The fact that each person absorbs or presents information differently.  It definitely ignores these qualities of humans, because our imaginations don't grow with the "sitting in class room for over five hours experience" and all information is given to us in a specific manner and our answers to questions/tests must be presented in a certain way.  This doesn’t always apply but most of the time it does.  Examples:  Quizzes, Tests,  Homework, Classwork, and basically everything that is handed to us and then handed back in. “Which way does your brain work?  Too bad!”  I swear I keep hearing voices when I walk down the halls of my school.  Maybe it’s just my sub-conscience?  Well, it doesn’t matter where those voices are coming from, because I will always be frustrated by the fact that, yes, each individual’s brain is ignored in our current school system.  Each person learns differently and has a different way of viewing the world around them.  People may be good at learning with interactive lessons, visual lessons, verbal lessons, teamwork, or maybe individual work, but the school system doesn’t really care.  Obviously there are points in time where people may encounter lessons that cater to ones mental abilities, but most of the time it’s the opposite and people’s abilities are completely ignored.  Also, there is the fact people need to be good at many numerous areas and test them all out, but the school system literally drowns you in information and lessons that you know you won’t be able to utilize or remember in your future.

• Teacher Bias:  If you don’t encounter the problem of being required to know compulsory facts and whatnot, then you are likely to encounter a teacher’s personal concept of how things should be done.  This bias becomes very unfair to many people who would think otherwise.  On top of personal preferences in a classroom setting I have noticed that a lot of teachers are not even that great at mind molding but are great at being boring.

• The Three R's Are Ineffective:  The school system doesn't allow people to be creative, to communicate, or to evaluate one subject and learn about it's affect on people's everyday lives (critical thinking).  Wait a minute...  Aren't those three things the most important parts of being able to educate and learn?  According to school systems the answer is "NO!" and the real way to learn is with the "three R's":  reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.  Pathetic.  Although the "three R's" are essential tools that we need to survive in this world, we need to start helping people figure out their inner potential, their talents, and the way their brain works.

• Wasting Our Life Away:  For over six hours we are mostly just wasting time.  Examples of time wasted  (if you think you know more examples please tell me):
1. Taking the time to go to and from school.
2. Fumbling around with books, sheets, lockers, and supplies.
3. Walking from classroom to classroom.
4. Walking from classroom to classroom while waiting for the slow people in the hall to get a move on.
5. Sitting down waiting for the teacher to finally arrive, get the material together, or to take attendance.
6. Announcements that are irrelevant to your life.
7. The pledge that most people barely even realize they are doing because they become used to doing every single damn day without having much respect or understanding for why they are standing with their hand over their left tit reciting random sentences that are pouring out of their mouths absent-mindedly.  (Sorry for the run-on and sorry to those of you who do love bowing down to our motherland every single day.)
8. Waiting for other students to finally understand something.
9. Waiting for a teacher to finally shutup when the class understands what they are saying.
10. Waiting for the lesson to be over because you either will never understand what the teacher is talking about or can’t get help from students.
11. Waiting for worksheets to be slowly handed out.
12. Waiting for the day to be over because you know “you can’t learn anything out of one bloodshot eye”  (Lewis Black).
13. Waiting in the cafeteria to finally get some food.
14. Waiting for kids to stop messing around or for the teachers to stop yelling at them or complaining.
15. Waiting for kids to stop complaining.
16. Getting dressed and undressed for gym.

• Numbers Do Not Equal Knowledge:  Here’s something I love to complain about.  Education and the learning process is based on numbers.  I would like to know who the idiot was that decided that intelligence can be measured by numbers and grades, so that I can go back in time and make sure he was never born.  I’m sorry to break the news to everyone out there but intelligence is only measured by understanding, and understanding should not be determined by such a permanent, static, and numerical system.  Don’t think there’s any alternative to numbers and grades?  Think again.

• Everyone Must Learn on the Same Level at the Same Time:  The fact that you are stuck at a certain grade level is just really frustrating.  For example:  I am right on track with classes such as Spanish and US History.  I am “going above and beyond” in my University Program for Information Technology and in English.  I am struggling in Pre-Calculus and Biology.  Now if there wasn’t a grade level system and people were allowed to move up in a level of difficulty in certain classes or down a level of difficulty in other classes then subjects would start to make more sense to people.  Keep in mind, I don’t mean switching classes, I mean changing the level of difficulty to help people understand or excel in specific areas.

• Communication Denied:  What really annoys me is that a lot of teachers don’t allow for you to talk in class.  I know it’s rude to do so and it is especially annoying when kids are just being loud and boisterous, but what about the fact that one of the best ways to learn is by communication and teamwork.  I always get yelled at for trying to help some of my fellow classmates understand material or when a classmate is trying to explain a concept to me.  It’s ridiculous.  In general school would be better if people were to just work together instead of being bored to death by teachers in control of the class.

• Gym?:  Physical Education is the one class for me that could be considered the biggest waste of time and the worst way to introduce health and exercise to students.  For example I always end up playing with people that don’t care about playing competitively or people that are too competitive.  Along with the unmatched teams and crippled group effort that stops gym from being worthwhile is the fact that we only play for less than half the period.  I’m sorry but I would like to spend enough time on sports so that the end result is more then ten calories burned and the memory of a really intense game like I used to have during recess in elementary school.  It’s amazing how at that age without adult supervision our teamwork and team planning skills were ten times better than the teacher’s methods of planning short-lived games with uninspired students in a very small amount of time.

• Notes Are a Waste of Time, Energy, Paper, and Learning Opportunities:  Taking notes is one of the most ineffective ways of learning material when a teacher is teaching a subject.  For me I have the skill of being able to understand what a teacher is trying to teach us, but I can't learn it as well when we have to write it down.  I'm too busy trying to understand the material to take the time to write it down.  Now for some people this isn't much of a problem because one can listen and write at the same time, but for me and many others this is not the case.  I have the worst handwriting in the world for one thing and on top of that I love learning visually.  Since I love being receiving information in a visual/analytical point of view, notes barely get any messages across to me in an effective way.  If teachers want us to "record" material that we are learning we should be allowed to use different methods for recording and have different methods of teaching for certain individuals like me.  I tried using a method where I had a digital recorder so that I could actually listen to the teacher and then I could listen in on parts I didn't completely understand on the recorder, but all digital devices aren't allowed in my school and some teachers don't like their voices being recorded anyways.  Pathetic.

• The Food in the Cafeteria:  Don’t even get me started on this.  Everyone has their own different cafeteria food and opinion on it, but most food is just disgusting meals that are filled with fat, oil, additives, and sugar.  What’s even more revolting is the fact that in our school it is common to find purely raw chicken that is disguised by the breading process, bugs that pop up in our sandwiches, bits of straw wrappers that are floating inside our drinks, and hairs from the lunch-aid hanging around our über-oily pizza.  Those new healthy cafeteria food laws better be taken into action where I live, or I will, without a doubt, die from clogged arteries, cancer, or some other food-related sickness.

• Good Morning and Here's a Nice Aromatic Cup of "Fuck Your Brain Up!":  Whether you’re a morning person or not, it doesn’t matter, your stuck in a world where the morning apparently is the best time to absorb information.  I love waking up in the morning during the summer, because this way I can get up and start a fresh new day of amazing experiences.  I hate waking up in the morning during the school year because I have to learn words, facts, equations, concepts, and methods when I am dying from just being woken up without given much time to enjoy the day first.  School should not be the first thing on my list of things to do during each and every precious day of my childhood and teenage years.  I would much rather start off the day with a nice long walk, a nice hearty breakfast, a little bit of news watching, a little bit of game playing, and a little bit of showering/hygiene.  But noooooo.  We have to get up at a time when I can’t function yet.  For some people this is the same situation and for most others it’s just the fact they can’t get any sleep the night before either because of too much work, slacking, or some type of insomnia.  If you think that slacking is a person’s fault, your half wrong and half right.

• Cram it!  That's the Way to Learn!:  We learn things at a very fast pace and don’t ever receive time to actually fully understand material.  It’s obvious that twenty-five minute intervals on many different subjects throughout one day only breakup are focus on each subject and we are just piling information on top of information that we just forget eventually.  Ever notice that when teacher’s ask if anyone remembers anything from last year that the typical response is “No, that was so long ago.”  Doesn’t that say something about the effectiveness of the current curriculum that we are forced into?  Give me one topic to study with a two hour limit and I promise you I will know every important thing about it that would normally take one full week to learn in school.  On top of learning the topic by heart I would also probably remember it for many years to come.

• Childhood Conditioning Plus the Stripping of Tradition Equals Confusion:  We have always learned to learn a certain way as children.  We learned to interact, communicate, be creative, draw, to take time on one subject, etc.  Once you are used to that system it’s hard to change into a new one.  Of course school is supposed to get harder as you advance into new grade levels, but that doesn’t mean school should have to rip the fun out of learning now that everyone is older.

• Irrelevant to Life?  Yes.  Necessity?  Also, yes?:  Have you ever complained about a class being completely irrelevant to how your future will end up?  Who hasn’t?  Wouldn’t it make sense if people were either allowed to try out the arts a couple of days, then try out computer sciences one day, then medicine along with calculus for about a month?  Because then if you realize you are excellent at calculus and not good at medicine you can say to yourself “Aha!  I can combine my skills with calculus with my skills in computer programming/sciences and I will surely excel.”  In this school system however the choice is not entirely up to you and you are stuck with your curriculum choice for awhile before it is changed to something that benefits you even more than the last curriculum.  Most people like to say at this point, “…well they do have specialized programs at some high schools and what about college?”.  Nope. the point I’m trying to make here is that you learn about yourself much earlier than college and you are usually stuck with whatever curriculum you think will work for you.  And as you implied in your question, only some high schools have specialized programs.

• Do You Hate School?  Do You Suffer From WES (Work Efficiency Syndrome)?  Then You are a Very Intelligent Person:  People think that we have school because it enforces people to not be slackers and to be productive.  Wow.  Do people not realize the fact that even though we have the school system, which “keeps us working”, it is producing more people who grow to hate working and then eventually become even bigger slackers.  Of course there are those people out there that are just naturally careless, but in general people just give up on the system because they can no longer deal with all of the BS that is considered mandatory and “required for success”.  It may be “required for success” in the school system, but it won’t help you towards a successful and inspirational learning experience.  

• Learning Does Not Equal Compulsion.  Compulsion Equals School.:  Inspiration is the key to getting someone to learn, yet only about 10% of all of the information given to us is information that we can utilize or enjoy.  The other 90% of learning experiences are all compulsory learning experiences.  Let me summarize this problem with something that Plato once wrote:  “…compulsory learning never sticks in the mind.”

• Sticking it to The Man:  The fact that learning is controlled by a really pathetic group of government officials, financial status, where you live, how you were raised, and how well your teachers teach.  The only things that should determine how you learn is how your brain works and what you, society, and your family needs.  Of course you can’t avoid these determining factors of life, but these factors shouldn’t directly affect how you learn or how your brain works.  Now what is really ridiculous is the fact that the people who control the learning process are people that don't even know what school is like for the student and what is going through our brains.  If government wants people to be assimilated into society then they need to create a system that inspires people to learn and become motivated to succeed at life.  Instead government likes to categorize everyone by age and then they force information down their throat.  Whoever can endure the pain longer will be admitted into so-called "advanced-placement classes" and better "educational opportunities".  Those are BS terms for even more brain pain.

• To continue with government.  NCLB.:  One of the worst thing’s ever created, ever.  This new law is the pinnacle of all things wrong with school systems and curriculum.  It’s a law that requires all schools and students to be at a certain level of difficulty and intelligence by the end of each year.  Ridiculous.  Here’s a little piece of work that my Mom gave me that criticizes the NCLB law.  (By the way my mom is a school psychologist and she told me that all the teachers within her school district completely detest this law.):  

"No Child Left Behind Meets Football"

The Federal government has announced that all high school football teams must meet "No Child Left Behind" legislation beginning next season.

* No team will be declared a winner, as that will leave 50% of participants behind.

* All high schools will be divided into districts with eight teams per district. Every team must finish at least 3rd place to be proficient.

* All teams must score at least 21 points, but no defense can allow more than 7 points.

* No tournaments will be held as this would result in one champion.

* All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.

* All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions for interest in football, desire in athletics, genetic abilities or disabilities.... ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL.

* Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction, because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes that aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability, and whose parents don't like football.

* Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in 4th, 8th, and 11th weeks.

* This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child will be left behind.


• "How Shall We Determine the Success of These Fine Young Children, Professor?"  "With Mind-Rotting Tests, of Course, President." :  Tests, SAT’s, and other college preparatory tests are just things that you are either really good at or really bad at.  Now if you are bad at these tests, that really sucks for you because they are life-determining and no one is opted to change them around to benefit all of the different kinds of brains that are out there.  If you are good at these tests, you are a minority and I hate you.  Only slightly though.

• Homework.  Mental and Social Torture Mechanism.:  Of course one of the biggest problems of school is the homework.  As if torturing us inside of school isn’t enough?  After a long day of learning lots of stuff completely boring and irrelevant to every-day life how come we can’t just relax and try to make up for the time lost while in school?  We could be using our valuable time trying to do more productive and interesting things, but the law requires us to basically have life revolve around school.  Note,  I said revolve around school not around learning.

• In This World of Mass Information Availability, Let's Hide Knowledge From Those Annoying Kids:  How come it seems like you can't find information on a subject you are learning or on a question you need answered?  Now in general that is a problem derived from the clutter of information and it's placement all of the world and internet in a very unorganized fashion, but I'm talking about how in the classroom you can't get notes ahead of time, get outlines ahead of time, and only you can only stay on the curriculum provided.  If I want to learn I don't want to be confined to one subject area and wait for information to be handed to me.  Information should be right there in front of me open for my brain to collect and utilize data.  School seems to restrict information way to much only to keep a curriculum.  People don't learn this way, curriculum is a man-made thing.  I would much rather be given all the information in the world and get my questions about anything answered immediately.  I don't want to be restricted from material just because I am not part of this or that curriculum.

• It's Easy to Cheat the System:  For quite some time I was absolutely confused as to how a few of the kids that sit in front of me were able to get such amazing grades when they don't do any work in my US History AP class.  I usually work my ass off trying to perfect my understanding of the material given to us and yet some how the kids in front of me got B+'s/A's and I got a D+ on our latest test.  Then when I asked all of the smartest people of the class what grade they received they had gotten F's, D's, and C-'s.  Now I was even more confused because the girl sitting to the left of me does so much work, does all of her homework, and takes so many notes yet she received an F?!  That's when the girl  to the right of me gave me the answer to most of my questions.  Her answer was:  "Lauren gets all of the answers for these tests from her sister and only gives them out to certain people."  The rest of my questions were answered when my teacher told us that she never changes the tests for each year and just uses the same ones over and over again.  


~  I think that I could keep going on and on about this.  And I will keep going on and on until everyone starts to realize how amazingly important learning is and how amazingly pathetic the learning system is.  It’s time for people to start realizing that we can’t just try to get through school and then once we are done with school just forget about it.  We need to start realizing that we could all be exponentially smarter and happier if we were in a system that was based on inspiration and how an individual’s brain works.  So now all we have to do is figure out the best way possible to educate the youth in order to ensure an inspired, intelligent, and less chaotic future.

If you think you have any alternatives to school then please comment!