By the time students have arrived at high school, they are accustomed to a rigid and sometimes unforgiving school structure. Make sure you arrive to class on time. Pay attention. Keep all of your assignments organized so they are easily accessible. Once you get home, immediately start on your homework. Oh, and be sure to get a good night’s sleep so you can do everything all over again tomorrow. While adapting to a set schedule can be beneficial, my question is where are the opportunities for the system to adapt
to the students? They are nonexistent.

The main problem with school is that it does not allow students to be successful in the classroom, to cultivate relationships with fellow students and teachers and to maintain some sort of social life at the same time. The inflexibility of the system forces students to compromise and focus on certain elements of happy student instead of balancing them all.

Attending one of the top-ranked public high schools in the country, there is plenty of pressure to enroll in rigorous honors level and Advanced Placement (AP) courses from the get go. Beginning in freshman year, several honors foreign language and math classes are available as options for ninth graders. Now, freshmen can even register for an AP social studies class, AP Government, a course only previously available to freshmen in the APEX program. While it is very important to tackle a challenging schedule in preparation for the rest of high school and college, students are over-exerting themselves too early.

Many choose to take a very difficult class simply because their friends are. Accumulating too many demanding courses leads to immeasurable amounts of stress and the consumption of one’s free time. There will no longer be time to hang out with friends and countless hours on the weekend will be spent staying up to speed with classes. Everybody needs a break.

The daily grind of high school turns some students into lifeless robots, programed to go through the motions until the day is over. Sleep deprivation and simple boredom prevent students from being themselves and revealing the intricacies of their personalities.

I have heard too many teachers state how wonderful a particular student may have been in their class, but that they never really got to know them as a person. Teachers have taken a step in the right direction, bombarding students with surveys at the beginning of the school year that ask questions about their lives outsideof school, but this is not enough. School should present an environment where all students feel safe and happy.This is an ambitious goal, but one that is impossible to accomplish with needless
graduation requirements. If a student is not a math wiz, but has a passion for
the arts, they should not be forced to toil through years and years of math classes.

It’s time for the school system to adapt to a diverse student body with a variety of strengths, weakness, likes and dislikes not the other way around.