6 Reasons Why School Sucks

It looks peaceful on the outside, but you probably don’t want to go in. (image via wikimedia)

August is back-to-school time.  Yes, thinking ahead to the upcoming school year can ruin the few vacation days that might (or might not) be left, but if you’re about to go back to school (as a student or a teacher), don’t stress.  Everybody goes through it.  The school day always ends.  Vacations will always get here.  And 20 years later, unless you really truly screw up, nobody will care what you did.

What makes school so bad?  Everybody has to do it, so it can’t be that horrible.  Except it is.

1.   Kids sit all day.

People weren’t designed to sit all day, especially kids.  When kids have to be still, they fidget.  Nowadays, if they fidget too much, they get medicated.  So kids are getting medicated for being kids.  Back in the old days, if we fidgeted too much, we got beaten.  That might seem abusive now, but it kept us off medication.  The fear of getting beaten was enough to keep us from being fidgety.  Living with a little fear isn’t bad, especially if it keeps kids from getting addicted to prescription drugs.

2.  There are too many kids.

If you put hundreds (or even thousands) of people together in a confined space for 7-8 hours a day, bad things are going to happen.  If it’s kids, it will be worse.  It might be miraculous that school isn’t worse than it is.  Between bad hygiene, bad manners,  bad intentions, and low intelligence, every day at school is a disaster waiting to happen.

Between the hallways, lockers, classes, lunches, and buses, a kid has to deal with maybe hundreds of people.  That’s a lot of social navigation, and that isn’t easy, especially for a self-aware kid.

3.  There aren’t enough bathrooms

It sucks not being able to go to the bathroom whenever you want to.  If you have to go during class, the teacher will probably say no and throw in a sarcastic comment (which might be deserved).  Teachers who say yes are seen as weak, and teachers can’t afford to be seen as weak.  A teacher would rather have a kid pee in his/her pants than let him/her go to the bathroom and appear weak.

Without bathroom privileges, kids fart.  At least a teacher can move around the classroom to avoid farts, but kids are stuck at their desks.  If you’re next to a farter, you have to suffer through the smells.  Plus, you can be falsely accused of being the farter.  Few accusations are worse than that of being a farter.  During vacations, you can sit at home and fart all day.  But at school, you have to hold it in… unless you’re a social deviant who loves the chaos that follows a smelly fart.  In that case, you deserve to be in school.

4.  It’s like prison.

Everybody who’s been in school understands how school is like a prison.  Just add uniforms (maybe orange or gray with stripes) and a license-plate making class.  If you can succeed in this prison-like environment, then you’re far more likely NOT to go to prison as an adult.  But if you suck at school, then you might want to get used to that environment.

5.  There’s too much criticism.

There is no way to get through school without being criticized.  You’re going to make a mistake sometime.  You’re going to talk without permission.  You’ll choose an incorrect answer in front of the entire class.  You’ll leave materials in your locker (or your previous class).  And if you get caught, you’ll get criticized.

Nobody likes being criticized, but teachers have to do it.  If they don’t, you’ll just keep repeating your mistakes.  It would be nice if they could criticize you in a pleasant way, but life doesn’t work like that.  Nice criticism would be like giving out trophies just for participating.  We can’t have a bunch of kids growing up worthless and weak.

6.  There’s no break.

Every adult job (except Amazon warehouses) has a break, but school (except maybe the elementary years) doesn’t.  Students go to class for 45 minutes and then go to another class and then to another.  Even lunch isn’t much of a break because you’re surrounded by hundreds of open-mouthed chewers.  Everybody else in life gets a break.

How can students NOT get tired when they never get a break?  Then, some teachers pile on the homework so that students can’t even get a break when they get home.  The only thing that gets a break is a student’s spirit, and that’s only if it’s not crushed first.

As an adult, I probably should be more positive about school.  I survived it and got myself a pretty good job because of (or despite) it.  If anything, school prepares you for work.  You learn to get there on time.  You learn to follow the rules, and do what you’re supposed to do, and to try to learn something new every day.  Those aren’t bad things to do.  But it sucks that we have to go to school first to learn them.

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What do you think?  Is school as bad as people make it out to be?  Are critics of school being too dramatic?