School Habits Of School

As both the standards of school work and stress levels of student’s rise, the American school system remains unaltered, unchanged, and unaffected for over a hundred years. School is an institution that can serve as a massive gate in life granting you access to a job, stability, and a future or it can become a giant pillar in the way of everything you wish to achieve. While we recognize that a student’s own motivation, study habits, and will to learn, are cardinal in any schooling system, we must also understand the issues with an institution that is fundamentally unsound from the ground up. In today’s world, students are shoved with the hands of docility, and amenability as they render themselves in a system that has inadvertently failed them, by neglecting to celebrate their differences, and varying learning patterns. Conformity in the education system has shown to damage the personalization and

Botstein starts his argument by stating the various parts of the high school experience that are harmful and pointless to students. The first is the “untouchable” category which consists of coaches and high school athletes whose exclusive ranking is based off of the team’s success rather than their own educational achievements. Secondly, Botstein addresses teachers and curriculum that “hold so little sway” over the minds and attitudes of students, since the average student is constantly worried about growing up, popularity, and their friend groups. Next, Botstein claims that the “primary reason” high schools are flawed and broken is that the teens in the twentieth century era are maturing “substantially earlier” than in the past decades. Lastly, Botstein develops a new method for teenager’s education experience by eliminating the 10th through 12th grades, permanently making high school obsolete. If Botstein’s plan is achieved, teenagers will have many different options to choose after their secondary schooling. Students would be able

According to one study, over 7,000 American students drop out of high school each day; that equals about 1.2 million students every year! (“11 Facts,” n.d., p. 1). Mike Rose, the author of “I Just Wanna Be Average” was almost included in this statistic. Luckily, Rose was “saved” by one of his teachers, who stoked his love for learning. In his story, Mike Rose effectively addresses the issues with public education by sharing his anecdote about taking vocational classes and providing “several reasons for the ‘failure’ of students who go through high school belligerent, fearful, stoned, frustrated, or just plain bored” (1989, p. 1). Rose’s purpose for writing “I Just Wanna Be Average” is to inform the general public of the current education system and how it needs to change. Through a relaxed, yet passionate tone, Rose showed that teachers need to be more energetic and engaging with their students. Because schools are unengaging and boring, student dropouts are occurring-- and for the same reasons today as they were thirty years ago. A study that was released in 2005

Students are not allowed to make their own decisions. In the article, “Constant Frustration and Occasional Violence: The Legacy of American High School”, Alfie Kohn asks, “How logical is it to expect that teenagers who have been coerced into following directions will develop into responsible decision-makers” (3)? The ability to make decisions is part of the process amid alternative possibilities to make a choice, in terms of action or belief. Students in the American educational system, cannot make their own decisions because they are not given choices. Their opinions are not asked, therefore they cannot express themselves about what they think, instead the only choice given is to follow instructions. Kohn adds, “What could be worse, for kids who

Botstein starts his argument by stating the various parts of the high school experience that are harmful and pointless to students. The first is the “untouchable” category which consists of coaches and high school athletes whose exclusive ranking is based off of the team’s success rather than their own educational achievements. Secondly, Botstein addresses teachers and curriculum that “hold so little sway” over the minds and attitudes of students, since the average student is constantly worried about growing up, popularity, and their friend groups. Next, Botstein claims that the “primary reason” high schools are flawed and broken is that the teens in the twentieth century era are maturing “substantially earlier” than in the past decades. Lastly, Botstein develops a new method for teenager’s education experience by eliminating the 10th through 12th grades, permanently making high school obsolete. If Botstein’s plan is achieved, teenagers will have many different options to choose after their secondary schooling. They can

While in school, children are taught to read, write, and communicate with others. However, some students find themselves disengaged with their education and dropout. “According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice, 56 percent of federal inmates, 67 percent of inmates in state prisons, and 69 percent of inmates in local jails did not complete high school”(“Crime Rates Linked”) Not everyone who drops out of school will automatically become a criminal, but those who do drop out will have a higher chance of incarceration than those who don’t (“Crime

Some say that high school is the best four years of life but, this is not the case for everyone. Leon Botstein certainly would not agree with that statement. In his article “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood,” Botstein talks about all that needs changed with high schools and schooling in general. However, his argument is not powerful. Botstein’s use of syntax, diction, and structure is ineffective.

Building in-class continuity will help prepare young adults for the work world and requiring class attendance will help develop students for a thriving career. Fortunately, in grade school you are required to go to school. If you don’t there will be some form of consequences. However, once students enter college they now have the choice of attending class, thus, teaching inconsistency. Doing so holds back other students in the class

At the start of 2016’s new school year, approximately 60.4 million children will attend public elementary and secondary schools in America (National Centre for Education Statistics, 26 July 2007. Web). With so many children going through compulsory education every year, it is important to ask questions about the purpose, structure and success of the education system, so people can be made aware of areas that may need improvement. John Gatto is a teacher and author in America who argues that the education system here is not designed to educate its students like most people assume, but instead, to keep them in line and maintain the current social hierarchy. He begins his article, ‘Against School’, by recounting his time as a school teacher in Manhattan, explaining that the students and teachers always seem to be bored. He asserts that boredom is a symptom of childishness and that the reason students act this way is because schools are designed to prevent children from maturing and growing up. Schools do this to make sure students grow into predictable and easy to manipulate adults. It is clear from the amount of supporting evidence John Gatto is correct; the school system exists to create a conformist obedient population and it does so by reducing creativity, over medicating children, and dividing students in order to maintain class hierarchy.

Education should not only be looked at as attending college and passing exams to succeed in school. It should be seen more as the complete development of one's personality, intellectual development, and moral evolution. The system tells everyone to learn the same material, even if the students are bored and even if they’re sleeping during class. In the article “Against School”, John Taylor Gatto states, “teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subject and clearly weren’t interested in learning” (Gatto). This shows the teachers and the students disconnect from the context because either it’s irrelevant or not being taught in inspiring ways.

“Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you, ‘School is prison.’ They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, ‘School is prison,’” (Gray). Most students would argue that the idea of more student freedom in highschool sounds great. Things including going to the bathroom freely, being able to leave school for lunch, having a less strict dress code, having more freedom when searching online, and not being penalized for absences by the school but by the teachers individually. Having all of that freedom will make students feel more

When children dread going to school, do you ever question why the child has already lost their eagerness for learning? In Chicago, Illinois, and numerous other places in the US, you can come across kids walking with their heads down and hands behind their backs in a single file line as if they are inmates. You’ll also discover that the cafeteria is dead silent to avoid the “overwhelming noise” of children enjoying their food and friends. With all of this being said, these schools sound more like boot camps than a place of learning. In the article, “Why some schools feel like prisons?” the writer, Samina Hadi-Tabassum, begins with a brilliant introduction, provides outstanding personal stories, and detailed examples to support their claim. The

By the time September rolled around students have forgotten what classes they registered for. My school liked to move past things as quickly as possible. To elaborate, each student would receive a book with every class the high school had to offer, regardless of grade and prerequisites. Then, each student had to return a specific form with all the classes they would take within a week of attaining the book of courses. Knowing which class to take and how it would affect your next four years was a shared mystery to all the incoming freshman. While a flowchart detailing how the mathematics classes lead into each other was provided, all other classes looked as if they would never relate to one another. What the school failed to express to us is that once a student is put into a class, there is no switching out or dropping the class if the class proves too challenging or too easy, the class you take the following year has already been determined, and that if you want to try something new, you had better take the prerequisite early. As Rose wrote, “school can be a tremendously disorienting place” (127), and the absence of communication between students and the rest of the school verifies this disorientation. The illusion that students have a choice in how their education grows is perpetuated by a system that thinks it knows best.

Twenty-five percent of American Teenagers drop out of high school each year. What does this say about America’s education system? Are students not interested or are they tired of memorizing a subject and then having a letter grade represent how much they can remember. Some articles suggest that America should decrease the number of years that teenagers spend in high school because many teenagers already know what they want to study and do not want to be stuck studying something they are not good at or interested in. America needs to redesign the school system so it can help students prepare for their future and have more classes that students are interested in.

“Contemporary American society pulls teenagers away from school toward social and recreational pursuits. There is widespread peer pressure not to succeed academically. One of five students say that their friends make fun of people who try to do well in school. More than one-half of all students say they never discuss their schoolwork with friends.”