Compulsory Education Standards Hold Children to a Higher Standard Than Adults

Growing up I was forced to be an overachiever, even made to abuse prescription medication such as Adderall so that I could stay up all night and study. There were children around me who were made to do the same and sometimes received the beatings that I did when they failed to adhere to an unfair standard set forth by competitive schooling. During the time us children were forced to endure the symptoms of abusive parents sending us to competitive schools, we all would discuss with one another how adults seemed to be held to a lower standard than we were. I'd like to explore that topic today, as it caused many of us long term trauma.

Where once only privileged children of well-to-do families had a chance for higher-education, while the underprivileged would see themselves working for meager wages in dangerous occupations to help support their families; we now find schooling through high school to be commonplace and even mandatory. I have no complaints with this, but I do have a problem with the workload that most children find themselves struggling with.

When an adult goes to work they usually have multiple bosses and a set workload to be completed within the day, mind you I am talking about the average adult not special cases who work from home or stay at the office for more than twenty-four hours on the clock as these are a minority and marginal statistic. Upon completion of the day, sometimes not even completing the workload, these adults get off work and get to do whatever it is they would like to do and their bosses cannot follow them the rest of the day nor force their workers to stay longer without a mutual agreement in most cases. Usually bi-weekly, the adult can expect to receive pay that will then provide for necessities and luxury based on how much they worked.

An average child goes to school for the same amount of time as the average adult attends work. Their teachers act as bosses ensuring they receive and complete their assigned workload, and at the end of the day send the child home with more work. Sometimes the child is held after school as a punishment against their will, and often times they are not allowed to do any of that extra work they were assigned for home. When they get home their parents act as the bosses in lieu of the teachers, and the workload doesn't end, until the workload eases up, which can mean weeks without a real break. All the while these children do not get paid, but get a letter mark best equated to a biased binary system of pass/fail, or good/bad regardless of actual intelligence and capability. Even when a child gets sick and does not go into school they are expected to do homework, and make up any and everything they miss with no real help from any other student lest they seek to cheat and get in trouble.

These standards are unrealistic, and hold children to a higher standard than the majority of adults.

I'm not one to look down on competitive schooling, but I do look down upon the lack of equity as it concerns forcing children to work harder for no pay than most adults would for pay. Excluding their egregious lack of choice and pay in the matter for the sake of being more concise, I want to focus on the grueling hours many children must work to achieve goals set forth by competitive schools. I'd like to use myself as an example, as I feel like a good point to touch on due to my rank of 16th in my class of 300+ upon graduation.

A class of over three-hundred students isn't much compared to a lot of schools, but when a 3.4 GPA would drop you to around number two-ninety-nine you can see why my pitiful rank of sixteenth is actually quite favorable. I had to, literally, destroy my body to maintain that rank and take college courses on top of my regular high school courses to get there. This would see me staying awake for days on end, mind you I would've slept a few hours but I also wanted time for leisure between my studying. The craziest part is that this sort of behavior was tacitly encouraged despite no real reward for students such as myself.

Where an adult would most often be awarded more pay for doing so much work, the only thing us students received was a number percentage, a letter grade, and either a pat on the back or a verbal lashing; no matter what, however, the amount of work would only increase as we moved to higher grades and more advanced courses. All of this just so our school could boast being number one in the district and get more funding.

The craziest part about all this to me, most disgusting and illogical, would be that we students killed ourselves (some literally committing suicide) just so we could test in a higher bracket. Every time they brought out those stupid standardized tests we would all have the highest testing bracket packets, minus the few underachievers who would be humiliatingly sent to their own special classes to test together. It is pretty easy to be number one in the district when no one else can test in your bracket, and any student who can't keep up either offs themselves or is sent to our "flunky school."

Out of respect for the victims and their families I will not be going into specific details about suicides that occurred in my area, nor at my school, and I would like to ask that you respect my decision to respect the aforementioned individuals and not ask me to expand on this any further than I already am. It is an unfortunate aspect of education within competitive schools that I must discuss, however, because many of you parents need to lighten the heck up. Bad enough is the fact that these children need to go to school and learn compulsory trash they're never going to use again in life, but even worse is you destroying them so they can temporarily excel at them.

Being honest with ourselves we no longer actively use a minimum of fifty percent of the education we received in high school and below. Anyone who is able to argue to the contrary is the marginal outlier whom is not being taken into account for the sake of the majority here, but there you go you have been acknowledged for your self-proclaimed superiority. Yet, we will see kids worked half-to-death or further for the sake of what is deemed "education."

During my time in school I attempted suicide by ingestion of pills, along with two other individuals, due to the push for us to overachieve in our grades and sports. We got a large bag of Xanax bars, agreed this was the last time we'd put up with the nonsense, then saw ourselves arrested a few hours later. The other two were put in the hospital, while I was immediately suspended for five days. One of us three was beaten after he got out of the hospital for the behavior by his step-father, and later tried to kill themselves with an extra load of pills they stashed away in case they failed the first time.

Stop forcing children to excel at what you could barely pass yourself today, it is ignorant, regressive, and damaging to society as a whole.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you the solution to this is realizing that education is mostly pointless, for many it is a crucial and integral part of their lives that sees them shot to the highest rungs of success. I will say, however, that education is just one drop in the vast sea of life and there's already enough struggle without you sitting on the back of our children while they try to stay afloat. You wouldn't want to be swimming the oft-stormy seas of life, all the while having weights placed on your shoulders, so why do it to your child?

Ease the heck up and stop having such high standards. The marginal amount of children that go on to receive scholarships, special grants, and become super-geniuses are often the type to self-discipline and be shown love and respect by their parents at home. Rather than push your child to succeed by someone else's standards, teach them the value of pushing yourself and being rewarded for such pushes. There are plenty of people living happy lives while putting the minimal amount of effort, and isn't that the point of life; I would hope that is what you want for your child, to be happy?

What does it matter what your child's grades are if they are both happy and passing? If your child is not, well, more often than not we can look at the teachers and parents and see why this is the case. Teachers should strive to make their compulsory topics interesting, coming with a high-energy and unique lessons, all the while parents encourage strong independent behaviors and reward the child for success and comfort them in their time of temporary failure.

Maybe one day we can see compulsory schooling actually teaching life tools, like how to do your taxes, change a tire, buy a home, apply for a loan, create a business plan, and all the other stuff we actually do within the day; until then make sure you are considering what a child is facing while in school and just how unfair it can be.