School is a struggle. It can cause depression, insecurities, a lack of motivation, and other mental hurdles. Years of putting in hard work and learning many subjects, just to graduate and be lost or headed in the wrong direction. It’s not only the school, it’s the educational world as a whole that creates robots out of students to release out in the world.  Wendy Priesnitz, a renowned Canadian Politician, once said  “Public education… exploits children in the same way it takes the earth’s resources for granted.” This quote speaks on behalf of the students and how they are shaped for the world, not for themselves or their dreams. Education is shaped by our society. The government shapes the school districts to benefit them.

 Teachers are forced to teach us to work alone, learn on our own, don’t ask too many questions, speak when you are asked to speak. These qualities that students learn within the eight hours of school are ingrained in their brains. Students are permitted to follow all the rules or they will be punished with detention or a bad grade. Having this type of weight laying upon a young kid’s shoulders is a lot to carry throughout the years of schooling that everyone must go through. 

The title of this article means much more than words on a paper. Schools all around the world are constantly changing rules, and not in a good way. Having things change all around you every day can make students frightened. Not very many students like change or a different type of scenery. For instance, taking away the privilege of a ‘no dress code’ school is possibly the worst thing you could do to a student. A policy like this takes away their only way of expressing themselves and feeling comfortable in such a strict area.

Prep for the real world? Not there. The time after graduation is a scary place and a lot of graduates have no clue where to go, since their own interests have been muted to learn the basic subjects offered in school. Dreams have been crushed all throughout their lives. School has shaped students to work quietly, listen, write, read and to not share their opinion. Those few things stand in the way of the many opportunities that students could have had. Every school wants their students to succeed in the same way, they do not value the aspirations of each student. No school wants you to embrace yourself and go where you want to go. Once a student graduates and ventures into the real world, they realize that their past years were a waste of time. Skills like how to solve long division or how to read the periodic table don’t help in the real world. Instead of the important traits you need for the future, like how to pay your taxes, schools teach basic fundamentals that only get you so far.

The future has obstacles that students aren’t able to overcome. To help overcome these obstacles, schools should provide clubs or classes that teach the qualities we all need in the future to succeed in life. Customer service skills, how to properly file taxes, and other economically-beneficial skills are necessary for our futures. Everything that the educational world teaches students is what the government wants them to do when they are done with school, such as working at an office job and living a boring and depressing life. We should feel like we’re on track to reach our dreams. Right now, we don’t.