Top 10 Reasons Why the Modern School System Sucks

"Oh, so you want to learn how to bake a cake? Well too bad, here's how to factor a polynomial"
Seriously, the structure school follows is so strict and genuinely stupid

Ok, ok. The big problem in our school system is that in the real world, people start to find their own way of success, such as gymnastics, singing, dancing, activism, law, etc. However, in school, states require students to do the exact same assignments, follow the same standards, and go through the same subjects for every single grade: math, science, ELA. Yep.

Here's my personal opinion on this: I hated math with a burning passion. I was never a fan of it, which probably explains why I get bad grades occasionally. I just don't feel motivated to do it. I failed a test once on it. Maybe math isn't my thing. Maybe social studies or science is. But yet, I'm forced to do it anyway. And it's thanks to my stupid government.

Anyway, every child is different. They do not have the same memory or capacity. They should not be expected to get good grades all the time. Instead of making them restart a grade, talk to them about it.

School is supposed to help students prepare for the real world. Instead, it makes you memorize useless facts that you won't use unless you major in them. It makes you wake up super early in the morning and waste 6-8 hours of the day. After that, we get shoved with 2+ hours of homework down our throats!

Some students hate homework and studying so much that they procrastinate a lot and end up staying up late at night to finish it. Sometimes, they don't even finish their homework! Also, grades should be removed because they make school about memorizing, straight A's, and perfect scores. The same goes for standardized tests like the SAT and ACT. It's stupid how grades and test scores determine your future.

Grades even sometimes give parents another reason to annoy and nag you. School just takes up so much time out of your day that you don't get any time to do what you want. It just causes kids to not want to learn, demotivates them, and burns them out. School is just so pointless and literally makes me question the meaning of life.

True, but no teacher will stop me from doing what makes me happy, which is making stuff no matter what they say.

It's like a game where there are a lot of classes in a game, but the game forces everyone to pick the same class.

Schools want all of us to be the same: same grades, good at everything, same passions.

We should teach more useful stuff like how to become a successful YouTuber or how to make your own cartoons for the future. Also, yes, I agree that we learn stuff that doesn't even matter! For example, we learn about the Earth's crust in science - never going to use it! What's so important about 120 x 2 in math? Learning about the history of Donald Trump in social studies - who cares about that? And reading an article about Greek mythology in English - that's boring!

We should teach more useful stuff like paying bills and taxes, affording insurance, buying a car or house, managing a household, investing, and saving for retirement. But we are learning things that most of us will never use in real life. Some people will use them, but if you don't want to go into a path with these subjects, you are just wasting your time. So, make these subjects optional.

So true. School doesn't even care anymore about your likes and dislikes. They force you to learn every lesson, even if some of them are the ones you really hate. For me, I love learning history and biology (mostly about zoology), but I hate math, physics, etc., because I don't find them interesting at all. They still teach me that regardless, and I hate it.

True. We learn things we don't want to learn. The government makes learning bad for us. We get tons of homework which affects our grades and stresses us out. School is harder for me since I have ADHD. I doze off a lot in school and I'm a master procrastinator with homework. The government should make our school a free and fun place. It should be more useful.

Yeah. My dad thinks he stresses more at work than we do at school, but I doubt it.

Sometimes I get a headache just looking at all the darn math problems.

I mostly agree with this but would still use this in an argument.

Homework is a waste of time. You should be able to get free time when you get home. And weekend homework? Don't even get me started on that one!

Memorizing geometry formulas for distance on a graph will never help me. All I need to see on a graph is whether it's on a positive trend or not.

And sometimes I'm up until midnight doing homework. It's why I'm not very active right now.

We literally spend the first nine months of school studying for them and not actually learning. Then we test for a few weeks, and then we review the tests and start studying for the next year's tests in the final months of school.

Yes. Just about dumb stuff. It would be better if it was about paying taxes or something useful.

Those tests actually stress out the students WAY MORE than the teachers.

I feel like I learn more from going to YouTube and watching ASAPScience than from listening to my biology teacher. I mean, I don't find her rude or anything. We used to talk about science a lot, but I just find it hard to remember what she even explains to me and the rest of my classmates. Unlike ASAPScience, where I remember what they talk about in their videos the first time watching. Not to mention there's Wikipedia, a good source to learn random things. Even if some vandals edit their articles, they will be fixed in just a matter of five minutes.

I currently go to school. It's actually a miracle I can go onto this website. The people at my school basically ban anything fun. It feels like I'm just stuck in this stupid place for seven hours a day where we get to eat and then go back to the same prison-like classroom. I'm stuck with people I don't even like in a subject that I hate. School is just a glorified prison that lets you go home for a few hours.

At times it does, especially when bullying comes into play. I mean, mandatory education should be a choice and not a compulsion. As for bullies, they ought to be stamped out for good, especially since they make school miserable for students.

Yeah. The government doesn't even help. They would rather make the kids stupid. They can't even read English. Simple English they can't speak. And they say they are doing well. That's why school really sucks.

Hmmm. Maybe the government really needs fixing. There is a lot of proof school is not good for kids. It's getting kind of dangerous.

The government has no idea how the teenage brain works and is always putting these standards on us and forcing teachers to teach the same way.

Yeah. In my opinion, I think the reason why some students fail tests is because they probably don't remember what they learn. In general, it feels like you are just memorizing information for a test. And even if you get a good grade, you would probably forget something you learned the next day.

I have a bad memory, so you can probably imagine what my grades are like.

Ah yes, this stupid school system and government recommending tests I don't want to do. They are so dumb, not knowing anything. I believe the school system fails to recognize how it was designed to turn creative people into factory workers. They tell me, when I see them on my uncle's phone, that it's not true, and they don't want to listen. But when they find out, they get annoyed. The most annoying government ever!

Also, please read this and spread the word. At my school, we just made a change. Now they see how horrible the education system is. So now, they are trying to fix it, but it's only one school. Who can help?

I go to a public high school. We are not allowed to wear hats or sunglasses for "identification" purposes. We can't go to the bathroom by ourselves. We aren't allowed to go anywhere on breaks (we sit in the gym until our buses arrive and we aren't allowed to get up) and we sit at assigned tables during lunch. We only use clear bags. I think about dropping out almost every day.

Yeah. One Catholic school I went to had no tolerance for cuss words or religious jokes. If you did that, even accidentally swear, you were immediately sent to the principal. Plus, even the slightest disruption could get you sent to the principal. I have autism, so I have interrupted class a few times and almost got sent to the principal.

School is a major cause of depression. Not that schools care about it. Many schools have no support for mental health, and the amount of stress students put into assignments is not helping much.

I just started high school a day ago, and honestly, I've been dealing with suicidal thoughts since I was ten, and I know I have anxiety. Honestly, with all the stress and stupid classes (I only have two I like), I don't think I will survive this year. Sorry to vent…

Yeah. School gets in the way of life and is part of the reason this world is falling apart instead of helping.

I need hands-on things to work on. I am not going to retain information just by listening to someone talk for 90 minutes straight.

We can Google up 99% of the stuff they teach us. I'll only do it for the useful things though.

I never had any kind of homework at my old school, which was an international school (go search that up) in China. We had no homework over the weekends, no homework over any holidays (and we celebrated both Chinese and American ones, among others, and the holidays were not only doubled but very long). Summer homework doesn't even make sense!

Never really had that, but I know lots of schools do that. It makes zero sense because summer is a time to rest, not work!

If teachers and staff get a work-free summer, then we should too.

The "modern" school system was created in the 19th century for the benefit of industrialists who wanted obedient workers for the mines, factories, shipyards, and railways. But due to deindustrialization and technological advances, that world has not existed in developed countries since the 1970s, which has already made the school system redundant.

Due to advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, many jobs in agriculture, industry, and services are expected to be automated by the mid-21st century. The jobs that will survive will require employees to think critically, be creative, and be flexible. Yet the school system still relies on outdated teaching methods, such as rote memorization, which teach children to be rigid, obedient, and uncreative - skills that have no relevancy in the 21st century.

If you want to create a school system for the 21st century, then look to Finland and Estonia.

I may be a fast writer, but I can sometimes be slow. So don't just shout at me like I am a piece of trash, expecting me to get all of that crap down.

Same here. I'm a straight-A student, and yet, two of my teachers were complaining and threatening me and my parents over random things. They were so mad they discussed walking to school with me to see what the teachers were really complaining about. It never happened, but I lost my Xbox for a month.

Never really happened to me, but I have heard of instances of this happening.

After 10th grade, many students drop out of school because of many useless and hard subjects. This makes them end up with low-paying jobs at McDonald's.

Very true. Schools cause pressure and stress that would make school an intolerable place.

I did this, and I regret nothing.

Grades don't even measure your intelligence. They measure how well you conform to the common core education system. It's kind of like being in George Orwell's 1984, where people have to conform to Big Brother in order to live a decent life. You have to conform to our education system to be successful, apparently. Except, that isn't always the case for every job. Colleges should measure students based on their own intelligence, not some grades on some papers.

Honestly, I think the school system relies heavily on grades rather than students actually learning. And that's sad.

School takes ALOT of time,energy,and free will I remember one year I almost turned suicidal because none of the adults stopped kid from the extreme roasting they were doing, this year I'm attempting to ignore everyone who tries to put people down for fun and also I believe that all of this is partly SCHOOL'S FAULT!