School sucks and you know it

School sucks. 

You know it does. I mean I grew up hating school. It was most often boring, uneventful and lacked relevance.

I'm willing to bet that you might agree with me. I wanted to find out if people had similar school experiences to mine so I went to one of the most reputable sources I could find: Reddit. Here is what I found:

Reddit was clear. People do not like school. But I couldn't stop there, so I decided to further my research. On my way through a Google search, I stumbled across something striking. People didn’t just find school boring, pointless, and tedious. It actually made them feel bad, depressed and sad. 

As an educator with more than 10 years of experience in the field, I’ve interacted with thousands of students. I can tell you that many students today feel similar to what you just saw [and are about to see]. 

I think I know why so many people, especially students, feel this way. They are attending school as a part of a system that was never built for them. 

Now most of us attended school in what’s called the industrial school system. The Industrial school system moves kids through it like an assembly line. You go from elementary school to middle school to high school then on to college and after that hopefully, you get a good job making enough money to pay Sally Mae back all that money you borrowed. And you know she ALWAYS comes to collect. Kids today still go to school in industrial model schools. 

Let’s just be real here. We know that school isn’t working. We know that the system is unfair. We know that students of color and low-income students don’t have the same outcomes from the school system as white and wealthy students. We know that the one-size-fits-all, assembly-line, cookie-cutter approach to education does not work. We know that the education system is old, tired and played out. Yet, we’ve been doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You know what they call that? Insanity. 

I think the original intent of the American public school system was to provide a standard set of knowledge to all students. The bet that it made was that this set of knowledge would lead to a job which helped students become effective contributors to society.

The system cannot even deliver on that promise. Check out a tad of this argument here:

So it's about time we do something different in schools. A fresh look and a new mindset is the only way for us to get off of the assembly line and create schools that serve students well. If we keep thinking and doing the same thing about school, we will continue to build schools that...well...suck. 

What's something you think we should be doing differently with schools?

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This edition of Schoolish: The Newsletter was adapted from my TEDx Talk called "School Sucks" that was done at TEDxSouthCongress (Austin, TX) in February of 2019.

Watch the full talk here: