The Flaws in America's Compulsory Education

Compulsory Education in America can be disempowering to the American population in many ways. The seven long hours each day that students have to attend school can bore a child and cause them to lose focus. The standardized tests that students have to take every year can cause a lot of stress on students and make them not want to attend school. Embarrassment that teachers can put students through when they call on them for answers and make them present their work to the class can cause some students to loathe school. Also the fact that we can attend thirteen years of school for free but once we graduate we have to come up with our own resources to pay thousands of dollars for college.
If the government didn’t mandate every single thing that a teacher had to teach maybe the classes would be interesting. It is difficult for a child to stay focused for seven hours a day especially if they are learning the names of cooking utensils that most students already know. Family Development is an elective class that is supposed to teach us how to safely use kitchen utensils at home. Instead they teach us what a spatula is and where it came from. I know plenty of intelligent students that got so bored with reiterating the cycle of classes each day. In high school we have to pick elective classes that are supposed to be fun and give us a break, but Child Development, Cooking, and Sewing are just wastes of time. School wouldn’t be as dreadful if we didn’t have to take these types of classes or Physical Education. Yes, I think it’s great that the government wants us all to be a healthy weight, but the 35 minutes of slowly walking the perimeter of the gym doesn’t help shed pounds. After all we don’t have to pass a standardized test on walking.
A huge disempowerment for many students is the standardized tests that we all have to take. Aren’t our grades enough proof that we are learning? These tests are lengthy, strenuous, and not always accurate. Students that have test phobia don’t have a fair chance to prove their intelligence. We can’t even study for these types of tests. Much of the material that students are supposed to know is taken from material that they covered from up to three years before. Students are expected to remember and master the material from so long before. Many teenagers have so many other problems to worry about, and these tests just add to them. For example, one of my friend’s grandparents passed away two days before the TAKS test, and she had to try and take it anyway. The test was the last thing on her mind, but if she wouldn’t have taken it then she would have had to go to school on the weekend or during the summer. Actually three of my friends weren’t able to graduate because they failed the test. They all made good grades but they just couldn’t tackle the test. The test doesn’t give an accurate measure of any student’s knowledge. The law preventing students from graduating if they don’t pass the test is unfair.
Since America is such a free country, students are allowed to drop out once they turn eighteen. I know we are adults, but if the government insists on making us attend school until we are seventeen, why don’t they just make us attend until we graduate high school? They waste a lot of money trying to keep us in school to just let us fail our senior year. Teenagers take education for granted and assume it will always be available. If school wasn’t required, maybe people would realize its importance.
Mandated school is thirteen years long; if you manage to overcome the boredom and pass the tests you graduate. But then it’s still not over: you can’t do much with a high school diploma. It’s not easy getting your dream job with a high school education. So, you have to go to college. Well, college happens to cost thousands of dollars, so many people don’t continue going to school. Scholarships are available, and you can try to win them, but if you are not picked, you’re out of luck. Loans are always available, but students are often reluctant to accept them. These large amounts of money tend to scare students away because they know they will eventually have to pay them back with interest, especially students that come from poor families. In Germany, all education is free. The government really wants their citizens to become productive in their community. As a result, there are a large number of educated people in Germany. Their plan doesn’t seem like a bad idea. What would happen if America paid for everyone’s schooling? We too would have more intelligent citizens.
Many Americans can survive the long hours of boredom and stressful tests, but the economic issue isn’t something that everyone can find a solution to. A potential answer to the problem would consist of our government funding our college education too. The dropout rate would probably decrease because the students would know they still have more opportunity to better themselves. I believe attendance in schools would increase and the number of productive citizens would increase also. Some people might say that the working class is necessary to fill the minimum wage jobs, but high school and college students would do those jobs. There will always be a generation of teenagers willing to work for those wages.
The United States’ compulsory education is disempowering to the American population because the government prepares students for college but then informs us that it is not free. Grumpy teachers, long lectures, unnecessary classes and standardized tests are all disempowering issues that the government could fix. However they are not situations that citizens can’t overcome. Funding our education would be a necessary fix to our education systems disempowerment issues.