I don’t understand how people can defend the public school system. Sure, it has benefits like providing education and childcare for the children of parents who work during the day, but to me, it also treats kids in a very unfair way.
I myself am homeschooled and always have been, but I’ve read up on education over the years, so I think I do have some right to criticize the school system. My good friend also goes to public school as well, so I get to see the system from the perspective of a student.
My friend and I both agree that the homework load is totally ridiculous. Basically, if you want to get good grades, you have to do most or all of the homework assigned to you, and homework often takes my friend at least several hours to complete. So, he spends seven hours a day at school in classes, then comes home and has to spend two or three more hours on homework. Overall, this amounts to a nine or ten hour day. If kids want to get good grades, they have to work ten hours a day at their education. Ten! That’s more than a regular 9-5 office job.
How is that fair? How it is fair to take children and stuff them into a building for twelve years of their lives to be educated? How is it fair to take up so much of their time? I am not advocating for a complete abolishment of education or even of the school system. I think it needs to be changed. The structure needs to be changed so that students can have free time. So that they aren’t totally stressed out working on homework for hours and hours each day.
I just don’t think it’s fair to treat kids the way that the public school system so often treats them. There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of respect for students and their time, at least not at my friend’s school. Homework takes away so much time from students’ lives. From their passions. From their friends. Their families. Their hobbies. Their jobs. How is that okay?
And I mean, the system just doesn’t work for everyone. My friend is really smart, but he feels like homework is mostly a waste of time. He often says he’s not learning useful things or things he really wants to know. . .or even things he doesn’t already know.
This system is not a good one anymore. It isn’t individualized. It’s meant to teach a lot of kids the things that they “need to know” and are “supposed to know.” It’s mass education. It tends to enforce the status quo. Yet what I think we actually need in the world is creative people, people who can come up with fresh new, alternative solutions to societal problems. And I really don’t think that the school system as it currently is structured is going to educate kids in the right way for that need.
I think that school could be less unpleasant and more useful and worthwhile if some reforms were to take place. I think that the public school system needs to become smaller and more individualized. Smaller class sizes will help teachers to cover material more effectively and efficiently so that homework loads can become a bit more reasonable and manageable. Once school is more individualized, each student can hopefully get more of what they want and need. Hopefully they can feel more valued and respected as individuals with plans and dreams and lives outside of school.