What is the goal of school? It is to discipline and make ready the next generation who will be leading this country. People and tests say that kids in the United States today are scoring lower than the children from other westernized countries. I believe that school today, in America, is not teaching its younger generation well. I don't know anything about schools around the world, but there is definitely room for improvement here. I believe that there are too many superfluous rules, making life unnecessarily harder, and that today's society is warped out of all comprehensible reasonableness. Things have slipped too far, and it's time to bring them back.

Kids today go to school so they can be prepared to lead this country well, make responsible decisions, and not end up basically worthless. School is a tool to make people better, but this tool is wearing out. I don't learn leadership tactics, how to run a business, how to build a house, manufacture a car, etc., until I've spent 11 years taking spelling quizzes! School has become "make the grade," not "remember the material." This make-the-grade pressure forces kids to cheat, and ultimately learn far less than if they were learning in a pressure-free environment. I have no miracle cure for this, but it is society as a whole that must reform.

There are many schools, but almost all have one thing in common: rules so that teachers can exert some power over kids. The schools that have the most unnecessary rules are the more conservative and older in teaching style. Ironically, these schools are usually the most respected! We need to re-evaluate the teaching style and the structure of the school day in order to make it worth the up to twenty years of life it takes. n