"The ends justify the means": this maxim is the brick and mortar foundation of public high school education; yet it is a rudimentary ideal incongruous with our aboriginal nature.  Children are not repulsed by the concept of learning. Children are not of an innately idle disposition. 

Education reformers today peg a lack of teacher motivation, excessively large classroom sizes, and a dearth of technology as the antagonists for our free-falling education system, but using our magnifying glass of reform to burn scattered leaves on the pavement proves inefficacious when the massive tree which disperses the leaves remains unhindered; the education system is designed in the image of an industrial factory. "If the American school system is a mess, it's because it has been reformed to death until it has stopped being a system for educating children and become a system for educating teachers and administrators about all the latest trends in educational theory." (Greenfield)

If the purpose of school is to promote learning, and a school yard is not treated as a mandatory expedient, many of these problems that are insurmountable today, will be trivial tomorrow.

Keep in mind that we will not argue against the efficiency of the current model, although America boasts the 24th highest rating in the world as defined by the amalgamation of mathematics, science, and reading scores (Educational Score Performance).  Instead, we will describe how the unenviable quality of life of those in the system leads to its current complications.  We will focus our magnifying glass on the negative externalities which repeatedly materialize among those currently entrenched in the system we are scrutinizing. 

Let us begin with the problem that teachers need to pull teeth in class to get their students to say anything.  Our educators are actually reduced to demanding attendance by inventing a participation grade, then proceeding to tank the aforementioned participation grade if the child fails to participate; this is the commonplace practice.  The rest of the teachers resort to just flat out calling on him, especially if he succumbs to the temptation of sleep.  Some teachers pick on him by plopping a twenty-pound textbook on his desk, and the class laughs heartily. Others stage performances such as silencing the classroom, arbitrarily clapping, and enjoying the spectacle of the dormant student erupting and clapping like a sea lion in a Sea World show. There are actually a myriad of by-teacher-for-teacher educational websites with sections solely dedicated to strategies for coping with this recurrent incident (http://www.teachhub.com/strategies-dealing-sleepy-students; the link is axiomatic).

This phenomenon is not the teachers' faults.  The problem is traceable to two root causes: a lack of sleep among teenagers, and the children not particularly caring for what they are being taught.  Let us evaluate the former. 

Teenagers need 8.5-9.25 hours of sleep each night, yet 2/3 of student's report getting less than seven hours on average (MedicineNet). Why don't teenagers get the proper amount of sleep? Well, about half of all high schools have a start time of before eight o'clock in the morning. Therefore, it should not surprise the reader to learn that a third of teenager's report falling asleep in school (Wake-Up Calls, Fast Facts). "To get to school on time, (kids) have to wake up as early as 5:30 a.m. We are fighting biology." (Yeager)

The best route districts can take to assist in high school children's endeavor to meet the medically recommended number of hours of sleep, is to push back the start time of school, and let it run a little later.  The obstacles involved in implementing this solution are: busing schedules will need to be readjusted, some athletic practices/events start times will need to be pushed back, and parent's schedules will be negligibly impacted. 

But we are up to the task: "Five years ago, Sharon High School in Sharon, Massachusetts decided to delay its start time after nearly eight months of deliberation. A task force of representatives from the school committee, the athletic department, teachers, parents, and students decided the school should move its start time back 40 minutes from 7:25 a.m. to 8:05 a.m." (Sifferlin) This school district paved the way for districts around the country, as they were able to overcome all three of the menacing obstacles presented in the above paragraph. 

When all districts invest the time and resources to crack their idiosyncratic codes, the rewards will be unfathomable to us who only dream of such a historic movement.

But we must not forget that this is a two-headed monster.  The students have unconsciously initiated a revolutionary rebellion against their despots.  And what could be more American than rebelling against those taking away your freedom and despotizing you to swallow information? According to WebMD- the omniscient medical website of our time- "All teens go through similar phases -- the need for independence, a separate identity, testing authority." (Davis) The restrictive school schedule and the independence-craving teen are destined to clash.  This inevitable battle must be subverted before it comes to fruition. 

A solution is to treat high school the same way we treat college, and establish a system where children may choose their own classes.  Although there will need to be gateway classes which every student should take, the opportunity to pick and choose classes should be an inalienable right.  If school is mandatory, the right to choose classes must follow suit. If taxation is mandatory, the right to representation must follow suit. This initiative must be taken to produce interested and well-rested students, as the tax initiative produced interested and content citizens.

Unfortunately, our society came up with two alternate solutions.  The first of these solutions is the propagation of the use of Attention Deficit Disorder drugs.  However, this is too massive and controversial a topic to tackle in this overview of high school education.  Because it would be unwise to completely overlook this peculiar hole we have dug ourselves into, I will present an overall synopsis: children are beefed up with drugs to alter their brain chemistry and enable them to focus in class.  Performance enhancing drugs are not a new concept for any active and attentive member of our society. We will evaluate the second solution: the GPA system.

This one dates back to higher education in the late 19th century.  The first recorded system in higher education to rank students was initiated at Harvard University in 1877.  It classified students into six divisions, the best being above a 90, the worst below a 40.  Through trial and error, our current module was implemented in 1897 at Mount Holyoke (Durm Vol.57).  Almost immediately after, the system began to trickle down into high schools.

This system utterly succeeded in its mission to encourage students to work harder, as it was then and is now clearly better to be at the top than the bottom.  Unfortunately, it is a seldom occurrence for something to go exactly according to plan, and this initiative was no exception. 

When arduous work became irksome, children resorted to finding ways around the new system.  Cheating and plagiarism began to run rampant through schools, and they still do to this day.  When the goal is to get points, why wouldn't this be the case?  This is one student's mindset on cheating, but I would venture to say that he speaks for a prodigious amount of his peers: "It boils down to this: we are told that cheating is wrong because we are attempting to earn a grade that we do not deserve. A grade earned by cheating is not a grade reflective of our true achievement. But my contention uses identical reasoning. I cheated because the grade I would have otherwise been given was not reflective of my true learning." (Lahey)

The education system stagnated, while innovative cheats to beat it surged.  This inevitably led to a game of cat-and-mouse between the teachers and pupils.  The teacher deceives the students by rearranging the letters corresponding to each answer- resulting in a variance of tests and homeworks- and lamentably lassos the student and drags him along to the conduct office when the evidence insinuates that he cheated.  On the other hand, when the students figure out who among them have the same tests or the same homeworks, and manage to merge their minds and pens unnoticed, they emerge the victors. 

The average school day is eight hours long, with an hour and a half break dedicated to the combination of lunch and gym.  Although there are varying opinions about gym class, or "physical education" (you risk being harangued by a teacher for not using the proper term), at least it gives you the opportunity to move around a bit.  I will limit myself to piggybacking off of Plato, "Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play. This will also help you to see what they are naturally fitted for."

The unanimously nominated best "class" is lunch, which demonstrates how optimistic our children actually are.  "My favorite class is lunch because i can talk to my friends and i dont have to do work:)<33333." (Alicia) First things first, scheduling the time someone eats literally happens in prison.  But at least they eat at a reasonable hour in prison; in our education system, lunch can vary from the antipodes of 9:00-1:30.  Yes, a lamentable portion of our children are designated the lunch time of 9:00 in the morning.  The repercussions of this ridiculous lunch time are emerging: "Little energy and light-headed" is how one parent described her daughter on school days, because the high school serves her lunch around 9 in the morning.  "She tends to be sick when coming home." (Jones)

This situation is dismal in New York City. Due to shortages in cafeteria space, students are designated the lunchtime of 9:07 in the morning (Lunch Starts before 11 A.m. at More than Half of City Schools).  After their lunch period, they are not allotted time to eat again for the rest of the school day. 

Although it is not the panacea, a respectable attempt to address this issue could be to cut two minutes off of each class period (four minutes if the school follows a block schedule), eliminate the lunch period all together, and then designate three 25 minute free periods throughout the day for the students.  This would relieve them from the onslaught of information they receive nonstop for hours on end.  It would also help to relieve the lack of cafeteria space.

If one takes a glance in the rearview mirror of history, this blatant confinement would dumbfound him.  Less than six months after our Founding Father George Washington liberated our great country, he hired tutors for his "adopted" grandchildren and said that their education would "be mere amusement, because it was not his wish that the children should be confined".  Pretty ironic.

As long as our minds are traversing 18th century America, let's take a peek at our truancy laws.  These laws keep young adults in school at all times.  And, if someone attempts to skip out and go into town, they will stumble across posters that act as the 21st century equivalent of Runaway Slave Advertisements (See Figure 1).

Restricting and directing children like we do can have serious consequences for posterity.  In "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"-a piece about the effects of and reasons for fettering a Populace-Paulo Freire writes "the oppressed, as objects, as 'things', have no purposes except those their oppressors prescribe for them." (42) What this means in relation to education is that if we limit the minds of our children, and mold them into the models that we want to see, they will not be able to think for themselves.  The population is already preparing for this inexorable prophecy.  According to a plethora of articles, such as Top 10 Things Employers Look for in New College Graduates, creativity is growing as a coveted trait searched for in employees. This is directly attributed to the overarching theme of our education system, and as Thomas Morehouse puts it: "I don't think obedience, the ability to follow rules, falling in line with authority, uniformity of belief and process, and deferring to experts and standard explanations are desirable traits in individuals and societies." (Morehouse)

The ubiquitous school system is doing much more harm than simply stifling creativity. We have found ourselves in a predicament unknown to our history books. Adolescent Suicide has sprung up from the foundation of the education model.  It has actually spiraled so wildly out of control that suicide is now the third-leading cause of death for 15 to 24 year-olds (About Teen Suicide).

The conclusion we have arrived at as to the cause of this tragic phenomenon is that we place too much stress on our youth to succeed, but this is only one slice of the pie.  Yes, according to a surfeit of studies, the number one reason for teen suicide is stress.  And I agree that this stress appears because the "pressure at school to get good grades and pick a career at such a young age agitates teens and becomes too much for them after a certain point."  But it is because of this myopic mindset that this travesty continues unabated. 

It is not the parents' insatiable hunger for the child to succeed, but rather it is the road to success, which leads to this calamity.  Instead of enjoying their youth while simultaneously adjusting to the expectations bestowed upon them, kids are literally stuffed into a building and forced to sit in a chair for roughly eight hours a day, for more than two thirds of the year, hopelessly staring at a clock and counting down each and every second.  They are simultaneously relentlessly striving to achieve our oscillating definition of "success" and yearning to be anywhere but in school.  We impose on our children's lives because we know what is best for them, but we are stifling their creativity, individuality, and most importantly, happiness.

Chris Lehmann describes the situation perfectly.  When he speaks about high school, he says "School should teach us how to learn.  If nothing else, school should open our minds to ideas, to critical thinking.  Every idea is a lens to look at the world.  Classes are not silos of information, but lenses, that we can open our eyes to."  High school should be the beginning of something great, not just another step on an assembly line. 

To dig ourselves out of this hole, we need to change our fundamental outlook on education. Reforming issues as they spring up is equivalent to cutting off the Hydra's head: solve one problem or cut off one head, and two more will appear.  We must make education enjoyable, and not a means to an end.  This is not based on a hedonistic philosophy; this is a more efficient and effective approach. 

