American School System A Disaster In Every Way

In a world where there are thousands of sucides every year by students because they are overstressed, overworked, and overly anxious about school every year; the question must be asked is there an overemphasizes on school? And further more with this much pressure put on students why are American students doing way below other countries on international testings?

From the day we are born on this Earth, humans have always had one almost divine goal which is to seek out for more knowledge and to understand the world around us.  This has been going on since the dawn of man; we have come a long way throughtout time but why as a country are we starting to lag behind? 

First you are put into elementary school and there is the pressure to succeed, so you can get into a good high school.  After that there is the hereculian goal of getting into a great college, when your competiting with millions of others across the nations.  Finally you do and then you must work hard and then after that graduate school and then finally you are apart of the "real" world; and guess what you barely remember anything of what you learned before college. 

I see this as America's promblem we are so driven to succeed and our animal instinct to survive pushes us to do our best but in the end we may have the highest average so we get into that college but we really haven't learned anything; except in the not so rare instances how to do the immoral: cheat, copy work, and do the least amount of work with the greatest benefit.  There is so much pressure on students to deliver those A+ there is not enough time to slow down and actually learn anything especially know that grades alone aren't enough we must have a part time job, be the best on a sports team, win medals for the science olympiads, and it doesn't hurt to be published too. 

We as people were never supposed to have to deal with this kind of pressure on top of all the other emotions that come along with being human.  We are constantly fighting off our feelings of desire for love, fun, frienship, and joy because we must say focused on these goals society has laid out for us.  This is why so many students commit sucide and this isn't just an American promblem many nations have put too much pressure on their students but those other countries' students have well educated students who have actually learned something. I'm not saying that this is justification for all this pressure but it is better than the American promblem of low grades and high sucide rates.

In 2002 an international study was done in 21 nations taking high school seniors and giving them a series of tests and American students scored badly in both math and science.  They scored third to last in general math coming above only South America and Cyprus. In general science they scored sixteenth.  In Physics they scored dead last.  Many members of the Board of Education saw these results and said we must increase the amount of work in every grade but this is not the answer because this is just more pressure and in the end this "bandaid" will come off and only bigger cracks will have been formed.

America must now look at their internation counterparts and completely reconstruct the American school system, and I am not talking about making every grade increasingly harder because that would just put more pressure; they must come together and systematically change the American school system in every aspect.

In a better society students with lower averages but who were more intelligent would be praised not seen as lazy, because they were actually learning the material and not learning how to fake grades their how lives.  Most students learn what they must for the test and only make sure they actually can remember it if it will be on the SATs.

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