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The American Schooling System Failing Students

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The American Schooling System is failing students. Between a poor learning environment, and teachers focusing on getting us to pass standardized tests and not on actually helping us learn, the Schooling System is effectively holding us back from achieving our full potential. The System causes us to prioritize grades over things such as morals, creativity, and health. Because of this, we not only fail to learn how to manage things such as taxes and money, but we are inadvertently being taught that we are not important enough to be our own first priority.
In order for students to be able to do their best, they need to be happy, healthy, and surrounded in a positive environment that benefits them. From both research and personal experiences and …show more content…

We are taught only the necessities that are required to be able to pass numberless standardized tests. As a result of this, many students go on to live ignorant of basic life skills. Many adults assume that students know these things, when in reality they have absolutely no clue. They fail to realize that while these capabilities may be second-nature to them, students don't intuitively know these skills. Things such as communication, logic and thought process, money management, home repair, car repair, credit, cooking, gun safety, job-hunting, healthcare, self-defense, first aid, time management, and law should be taught in schools but aren't. "Though high school" . . . "[is] excellent in teaching many valuable skills, our current academic curriculum doesn’t teach many aspects necessary to succeeding and thriving in life in general, such as financial responsibilities and investments, how to think logically–retaining information and not merely temporarily memorizing information, and how to apply such abilities to real-world scenarios which are bound to occur" (20 Life Skills Not Taught In School). Due to this, many college students who are on their own trying to figure out how to manage their money end up penniless, eating Noodles in a Cup for nearly every …show more content…

They’re told that without good grades, they’ll never get into a good college and they’ll never get a good job and they’ll never be happy. This pressure, this stress, causes students to prioritize their grades over their actual education and their health. "...Panelists linked cheating to the social pressure put on students to prize high grades over education and other values, including creativity and imagination," says Barbara Palmer, of Stanford News. "Students "know [cheating] is wrong; they tell me they wish they didn't do it," she said. "But they feel like the most important thing they do is get the grades, by hook or by crook."" The pressure to get these grades and the stress of trying to achieve them not only affects our morals and cause us to cheat, but it affects our health as well. “Pressure by parents and schools to achieve top scores has created stress levels among students—beginning as early as elementary school—that are so high that some educators regard it as a health epidemic, said Denise Clark Pope, a lecturer in the School of Education" . . . ""The number one cause of visits to Vaden Health Center used to be relationships, but now is stress and anxiety," she said" (Palmer). The expectancy that is afflicted upon a student damages their mental health, sometimes severely, and in some cases can cause anxiety and even

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