Studies in the United States have shown that roughly 75 percent of students dislike school, which is no surprise to anyone. No matter who you are or what kind of mindset you have, I can promise you that you have at least a few big negative feelings about classrooms, but is this really just a common idea accepted by the public? Or is there a way to fix this issue?
Students are quick to hate on education, and it’s difficult to blame them for it. They have little choice in what they learn about and don’t even get me started on homework. Homework isn’t bad because it’s work, it’s bad because of the little need for it and the unnecessary stress it adds onto the youth. Students are given more than enough work to do in class, they fill out notes, they do assignments, that is plenty of studying. Going home after school and having weekends was made to give students breaks and prevent burnout, giving them homework to do in that time defeats the whole purpose. Completely obliterated homework is an unrealistic goal, but if classes reduced it, I think students would hate school less. In my math class, homework is rarely given out, and when it is, they give very basic questions. I have personally noticed no changes in my grades or educational performance, I have gotten a 100 on almost every math test this year, and I’ve never failed a test this year either, and I did it all with minimal stress. When I speak to my friends, most of them who are failing a class are typically failing due to missing assignments, not because of little understanding to the material, and giving out homework only adds to missing assignments, students are busy finishing other work up to the point where they have no time for homework, and the pile of work to do gets higher and higher as grades get lower and lower.
To continue, reading is yet another commonly hated school activity. What people don’t realize is that reading can be just as entertaining as scrolling through tik tok on your phone, except it is much healthier. Reading can enhance your vocabulary, intelligence, creativity, overall health, and more, but almost all of the benefits of reading are nonexistent when students have it forced onto them. When I was younger, before reading was as heavily forced, I enjoyed reading more than anything, I would save my snacks from school for when I got into the car, so I could eat while reading all kinds of books, comics, novels, everything, but as I continued through school, and they began to enforce reading more and more, I began to read less and less, as the activity just felt like homework. To this day I struggle to keep a love for reading, but I believe an easy solution would be leaving more options during ssr, like drawing or other productive but silent activities. At first, students would be eager to do anything else, but over time, students choosing to read would be more and more common.
Moving on, the school dress codes have been protested and argued against over and over, and although it has been greatly improved, I still think some of it is unreasonable. Is a crop top seriously inappropriate? I’ve heard many reasons for this rule but the main one is “It distracts people.” I don’t think I’m alone when I say it is unfair to completely ban certain articles of clothing just because it shows somebody’s stomach, especially since ive never in my life heard somebody claim that boys and girls in crop tops is distracting for them. Fashion is something that is meant to be diverse and fun, a way for people to express themselves. I fully understand why wearing shirts with inappropriate images or swear words is not okay, but a shirt that is raised a little higher than a normal shirt to be considered “Inappropriate” is a bit of a stretch.
In the end, school will never be a perfect place because nowhere could be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make school live up to its full potential, progress is progress and the improvement of schools is dependent on the students, educators, government, and well, everybody.