“Thank you for holding. A Specialist will be with you shortly.”

by Roya Kenny

Think of an airport; numerous groups of people, countless procedures, fumbling for documents, endless wait times, and general discontent. That doesn’t seem so appealing, so why do we go to the airport? Because the airport is the holding place we have to get through before hopping off that plane and doing something new.

For an increasing amount of students, high school has become this same holding place before students can start their lives, and not a very useful one at that.

75% of high school students reported negative feelings towards school, according to a survey conducted by researchers at Yale. Consequently, the average American uses only 37% of what they learn in school, according to a survey done by H&R Block.

High school could be a time of learning, becoming independent, and figuring out the world. Unfortunately, stress looms heavily over most of our time. According to a study by NYU, “Grades, homework, and preparing for college were the greatest sources of stress,” for high schoolers.

When I asked other students why they worked hard in school, many said college. We’re ready to move on, but we need to get the grades for college first.

I asked another fellow student if high school seemed like a joke, like we are not learning practical things. “Yes.” People need to hear this. Students think school is a joke, and not because we all think learning isn’t fun. In fact, high school students generally have high motivation for achievement academically. According to a study done by NYU, high school students have an average of 2.35 out of 3 on a scale of how academically motivated they are. We want to be prepared for the future and learn about subjects that interest us more.

With the pressure of getting into college, getting good grades, and meeting our own standards, students are spending their time learning things with generally limited practical value for what they will do later in life. We sacrifice time studying obscure math formulas, meanwhile, we don’t spend time learning the most practical situations we would use math in our adult lives. We spend our time studying the perfect ways to write an AP essay when in our adult lives an AP essay just isn’t what anyone is looking for.

Don’t forget about homework. Constant homework every day does not help as much as people may think, so much busy work makes us lose sight of the importance of what we are learning. According to a study by Stanford researchers, 56% of students said homework was their primary source of stress. It's time to start figuring out better ways to ensure students learn.

But, what if stress was taken out of the equation? The high school experience could be a time spent still working towards academic success but in an environment where we are capable of exploring areas of interest and applying skills to life. We should be able to get rid of the idea of the seemingly never-ending holding place that is high school and shift it to the idea of something new, an adventure.

Let’s get rid of this nightmarish airport parallel and create a fulfilling school experience that students can remember as something beneficial and important to who they are. To do this we should have more opportunities to enrich interests we may already have, learn things that will be practical in the future, make sure our teachers are doing well, and focus less on constant assignments and grades as a whole. A school could then feel like real life instead of a holding area that assesses you before sending you off into life.

by Suryah Mathurin