Dear School Education System...

The minds of students around the world are deteriorating due to the simple yet hidden absurdity of the education system. Right?

When I started with the draft of this blog post, I wanted to write about the unnecessary subjects we learn in schools like history or social science or geography. I even asked my teachers what they thought of the subjects and their necessity in students lives. But then I came to the realisation that there's a bit of 'useless' in every subject. Now don't get me wrong, school is essential, but that's just it.

S-C-H-O-O-L. From when someone starts school to when we finish school, our two goals are: reach school and be marked as present and strive to be a straight-A student like it's going to benefit us. It's just the satisfaction and same practice each day of going to school. It doesn't matter if you didn't understand anything about what's being taught, or if you're going through other problems. Till you graduate, all you need to do is get a 'present' written by your name and a bunch A's on that paper. And this 'paper' a.k.a. a report card is supposed to sum up the next chapter of your life.

Schools are always talking about time management, and how students should have enough time to study, pick up a hobby, finish their homework, deal with real-world problems and do chores if any. It's like saying that students everywhere have 30 hours in a day instead of 24. Wait, hold up. You're telling me that I have to waste 15 years of my life, getting A's and 100's learning about wars and how condensation works and what William Shakespeare meant when he wrote 'Will it be in thunder, lightning, or rain?' in Macbeth. That's time management for you right there. I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful. Still, I really have to wait around 15 years to use only around (from my own inaccurate calculations) 25% of the stuff we learn in school? Even though they tend to brag about how time management is possible, how come it's still an issue then? If I were to tell you a random word like 'xenophobic' without giving you any information on it, would you be able to use it in a sentence? Think about it.

School should provide students with the knowledge they can use in their day to day lives because, to be honest, that's the education and enrichment that will matter. Yes, we have reading and writing and general knowledge. Still, once you get to higher grades, you learn chapters more accurately, and these chapters and subjects don't help with this generation. The only time I've used sciences and geography or history once I'm back home from school is when I'm doing my homework or... playing trivia games so if that's what the school education system is preparing the future generation for, then thank you. Kids should be taught about health issues, mental and physical health, how to react in situations and how to strike creativity and independence like learning how to cook or clean or deal with problems or even survival skills. But NO. 

Instead, we're taught about competitions for A's and how to reflect on paragraphs written in a textbook. And let's get one thing straight, if I needed what I learnt from a textbook, I'd keep the textbook and refer to it when I needed the information, but that's the point. We don't need most of the information we learn at school. We don't need to compete over who has less red marks in their books or the particle theory or the first 20 elements of the periodic table. NO. We need to know things that the future generation will need. I need to know how to cope with issues and how to do household tasks or more essential things like finance and taxes, wellbeing, and doing jobs. I don't mean to sound ungrateful as much as valid, but I'm sorry school. Most of these complicated things you taught me, I could've just googled. By the time our generation graduates, most of the jobs and knowledge that we are being taught in school will be given to robots to do the things we were never meant to. See, we're just taught the topic that we then have to throw on a test never to be seen again. For what? After students leave the examination hall, they tend to forget everything they learnt. So if we're going to forget everything we learnt about the subjects anyway, why would it be needed in the future?

Another point is that students are forced to learn the same thing despite their own exquisiteness. Despite their own creativity and intelligence. Despite their right of speech. They are taught in the same way even though each child has a different mindset. So is the school education system trying to 'manufacture' and get rid of around 130 children each year who have learnt the exact same things for the past 15 years? It has diminished students creativity and independence to think for themselves. This is because each one of them has been given the same exact instructions to do the same exact thing for 15 whole years. All those projects and presentations that we're told to do. Well, we just get it off of Google, don't we? And then put some random lines to try to make it look presentable. That's the kind of creativity that school sparks. Creativity and independence should be brought out from within. Through style and opinion and way of thinking and their own way of doing things. But school depreciates that with rules and typical 'A' stereotypes clashing with visions and missions of schools.

 Even though I've shared my opinion, things won't change. I'll still have to walk into school with the same feeling of stress because the adults around me, don't seem to understand that's it's not their future they have to handle but the young minds they're teaching. So if those young minds don't worry about their future themselves, who will? Besides no government or association or single adult or teacher really seems to bring up a change. Because if they did, our education system would be evolving.

Through all this, don't get me wrong. Don't cut me off as ungrateful. Schools are what have brought some students up to be great titles. Schools flower opportunities for all its pupils and that will always remain true. It gives students an enormous amount of knowledge. In fact, if it weren't for my amount of knowledge right now, I wouldn't be sitting here typing these words fo the world to listen to. From simple alphabets to sentence structure to addition and division. School is amazing! But at the same time, The world has changed and become into bigger things and I think if we just worked together to devise an ultimate education system that produced both happy graduates and advanced minds, our generations and all generations after us, would be nothing more than geniuses in their own uniqueness.

So you tell me. What are the tests for? You're basing your intelligence and intellectualism on a simple grade you're getting, which in the future generation, won't be worth anything. Those tests and exams don't deem your reputation or strength or personality or anything else other than the unethical ways of the education system. You're testing your own purity and quality and how smart you really are, on a grade? No interviewer is going to ask you how much you got on the second history test in grade 9 or when the Boston tea party took place. The future generation demands a new and innovated life, but if we're being taught school like this... I'm sorry, but we'll be to busy solving the problems school never taught us to come up with new and innovative ideas and nourish the generations after us. A simple grade be it an A or F, changes a student and declares their rank on the worldwide dumbness scale, which to be fair is implanted into each and every student who has been in school. And the dumbness scale automatically makes a student know their worth. Grades make students compete and 'literally' declares if they're better or worse than others. It merely takes the point of collaboration and partnership away.

If all this is still not enough, take Finland. According to https://bigthink.com (and the world), ''Finland's education system enjoys a lot of buzz lately. It is considered one of the best education systems in the world. It routinely outperforms the United States in reading, science, and mathematics. And it has been a top performer since the first Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) triennial international survey back in 2000.'' But why? 

* Students in Finland have shorter schooling days; actually, they're the shortest in the world. This is so that children can rest, socialise and spend time with the people around them like friends and family.

* Students in Finland have longer recess hours to allow students to nurture themselves and be one thing that most schools don't let higher grades to be. Kids.

* Finland education system does not include any standardised tests. To be more precise, there is only one standardised test which doesn't have to be given until the end of high school!

* In school, primarily, we don't learn or understand, but we store information to be then taken out on the test, but weforum.org quotes that in the Finland education system, ''The overall system isn't there to ram and cram information to their students, but to create an environment of holistic learning.''

*A teacher from one Finnish school quote that ''school is about finding your happiness and finding a way to learn what makes you happy.'' But instead, schools cater to students to stress and anxiety over grades. Parents don't pay money and send their children away for stress and strain, but for a path to what makes them and will make them happy both in the present and future. And I stand by that.

For all the teachers, principals and even students who don't agree to this, you can't face away from the absurd truth. You might not be able to see it now, but sooner or later, as the generation advances, the school education system will turn into an epidemic.

School is about joy and happiness and learning something new that is both helpful and nurturing. But instead, school makes us feel like prisoners who all have to do and obey the same as everyone else leaving our own quests behind. Most of the essential things, like life lessons or ordinary skills and hobbies, we discover ourselves at home. Or through our own sources because school doesn't teach us what's really important. The kind of education we really need.

So to sum up, dear principals, school owners, teachers, coaches. Dear School education system... Don't do this to the future generation. Don't strain the next generation of things that won't matter. No. Do you think it's okay for the future generation to swim in a pool of their depression, not knowing what if they're doing is right? Why? Because...it wasn't taught in school. Why do you imprison us in the building for 8 hours a day only to realise that we don't really know how to handle our problems and emotions? Because dear school education system, to me, my health is more important than any grade I'll ever get. It is your sole responsibility to take care of each and every student on the premises but doesn't always mean physically. It is only your responsibility to give us the knowledge we require but till now this truthfully hasn't been provided.

Why dear school education system, do you treat every dream and aspiration the same way? Why do you base our distinctiveness on how we perform tests? Why do you talk to us about the bright future we'll have when we've already lost our past to the lack of happiness and continuity of time? Tell us once and for all. Are you preparing us for our future life or just the exams we have to take after a couple of months?

Dear educators. Look at the world around you. It's evolving and innovating. The rules are being bent for good reasons. But even though the world is growing, the minds still aren't. Why? Because of your faulty purpose, dear school education system.

Thanks for reading!

''school is about finding your happiness and finding a way to learn what makes you happy.''