As we’ve all been told, the school system is meant to get students to interact with each other and prepare them for the real world. However, since the pandemic we have undoubtedly asked ourselves more and more, should we still be learning this way? It’s common knowledge at this point that the U.S. school system became mandatory in the industrial age as a way to get kids prepared for working in factories. Many critiques today accuse the education system of failing to prepare students for their future lives, forcing them to act a certain way to their liking. While this is true for the most part, there are now many more branches school connects to that nothing else can. K-12 education is undeniably an extremely important ticket to getting a student into a good college, and eventually a high-paying job. School is also one of the few ways left that kids have to interact with each other if not involved in any sort of sport or community.
While school is an incredible thing offered in most well-adjusted countries, like anything else in the world, it has flaws. School forces kids to learn about topics that they aren’t interested in, and most of the time completely shuts out any signs of creativity and entrepreneurship. If a student is interested in learning about engineering or computers, they may not even get a chance to learn anything about it before college if their school doesn’t offer it. Instead, these students, who already have a good idea of what they want to do in life, have their brains jammed with useless information not even closely related to their interests. The school system doesn’t, and likely will never teach students entrepreneurship or life lessons in general, it’s something that you have to learn yourself.
According to the World Economic Forum, about one in every three U.S high school students believe that their school is failing to prepare them for a job in the real world. This contradicts a modern school’s original purpose, preparation. If a student isn’t involved in any sort of financial or business-related academy during their high school years, there is a good chance that they’re going to be a step behind others.
In order for the U.S. education system to overcome outdatedness, it must adjust to all types of learning styles and interests different people have. Education is a huge foundation for building our society, it should be thought of as the key to discovering brilliance, optimism, and new thinking; Not as a system that takes away 12-16 years of a child’s youth for a piece of paper. But it’s not, at least for the vast majority of public schools, where most kids get their education. The main reason this issue has yet to change is likely because it’s just thought of as another issue being piled up into a mountain of broken and complicated systems in our country.
To put the cherry on top, there has been a huge decline in safety since 1970, when shooters started getting more time and privacy to plan their attacks in advance. No one should be forced to go anywhere that puts their safety at risk. Out of the 130,930 k-12 schools in the U.S., 1,316 schools have experienced gun violence, which is about one in 100. Even if the numbers were one in 5000, in comparison to countries that don’t have school safety issues, that is still extremely high. Most kids in countries like South Korea, New Zealand, and Switzerland have never had to worry about gun violence, and are likely terrified by the fact that something like that could happen at all.
In terms of education, the U.S. is one of, if not the best place to go, since it contains the most dominant economic and military power. It is also greatly led by its popular cultural expression and expansion in terms of music, movies, and television. In reality, if you are willing to take the risk to learn in the country with the most gun violence, you will be given a wide variety of things to learn and opportunities to seize for a better future.
