Craxis

School. The place where we learn everything we need for the next few decades of our lives. I for one find it absolutely ludicrous that we have to decide the course of our future at the prime age of 16. Not to mention the utter stress that students go through typing to survive through school. Teenagers in our generation are told that we complain too much about school but no one understands the harsh reality. School is draining. There are no mincing words about that. It is a constant cycle of wake up, study, come back home, study, sleep,. Always study. Over time the school system has deteriorated and changed for the worse, it has become so toxic that even if kids speak out, they get shut down. I can guarantee that in every classroom, you can find at least one kid bouncing their foot up and down. The funny part is, there is a very blatant fix for this, but children cannot do it no matter how much we have tried. Make the school systems less toxic, take into account how much a kid can handle everyday, school is not life, don’t just put posters on the wall saying “You are wanted” or “You are needed”, actually help our mental health. We are supposed to learn not follow a system. Throughout this whole process, of trying to get through school and achieve grades that not only your parents would be proud of but your teachers and colleges, children forget to think about themselves. They start prioritizing school over their own mental sanity. From being those special kids who could read in the reading level of highschoolers at the age of 9, to now, being burnt out teenagers who can't wait for the week to end and the weekend to come. The truth is, schools were never really designed to be learning institutions.  It was designed as a factory, to keep producing people who end up ultimately doing things that their family wanted them to do rather than what they wanted to. 

Grades are all our worth is. Everyone commends you for an A yet no one says anything when you get lower. Teenage suicide rates increase because of their stress of school. When they finally finish, they have nothing else because this is the only thing that they have done for the last 12 years of their life. Some are not even tired but exhausted of continuing a never ending cycle. Study, test, forget. What is even the point anymore? Every “turn in” button, every word written down, every bubble filled in is slowly chipping away pieces of teenage minds. Every kid that I have talked to has said, “ I genuinely have not learned anything from school.” We can’t even fully talk about our anxiety or our stress with the school because then we get told, “You are overreacting, everyone else is fine.” No, everyone else is not fine, almost everyone is collapsing within themselves, but are masking it with the perfection of their stellar grades! and impeccable work ethic!