Wednesday, May 27, 2020
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Welcome to my not-enough-sleep-or-enough-scraps-of-my-will-to-live fueled rampage of why American schools don't support kids! I low key want to die!
Right so, let's see. Each new generation is more and more depressed, more stressed, more anxious, more insomniacs, more and more self harm and commit suicide.
Now of course that also correlates with the way society is currently (global warming, incompetent government officials, bigoted people in poison power, elitists that grow richer while more and more people just barely get by as is, a darker and darker world we greet every day we wake up), but today is about the education system not society.
So let's see. Depressed? The expectation to be a perfect student. Stressed? The building pressure of everything. Anxious? The knowledge you're judged as soon as you step foot on to the grounds by teachers and students. Insomnia? Too much homework leads to cut into sleep time. Self harm? Not enough time for healthy outlets. Suicide? Everything above that became too much.
Depressed.
From the very beginning your parents tell you that you're smart and that subconsciously teaches you to hold on to that. That you being smart will define who you are and how well you do in life. And then you get to school. Teachers pressure you to follow the rules, pay attention, get As, do everything they ask of you. They ask you to be perfect and cement it every time you don't hold up to that image. It builds up, up and up and up and up until you snap and suddenly don't care at all because you'll never meet those expectations so why even try?
Stressed.
Projects and essays and reports and homework pages and after school reading and studying and extra practice. It builds and builds up, so much work in so little time, till all you do is live day to day because you can't think father down the line because it's just too much. There's just so much, tests to practice and study for (even though you never really learned how to study in the first place), projects and essays to write up and practice and edit over and over again, homework and reading to do and finish before school the next day, all in a day or two.
Anxious.
As soon as you become a student, people judge you. Teachers for behavior and talent, which they pass on to fellow teachers and stick with you forever. Fellow students for personality and ability and passions and a thousand different little things. And maybe they don't mean to, but they do because they have to know who you are and how it will affect them in different ways. You need to act a certain way to get more points on presentations and change yourself slightly to fit every person you meet. Constantly changing and adapting just to pass.
Insomnia.
So much to do in one night. And of course there's extracurriculars and what time you even have to get work done and if you have a proper space to work in. So of course students would turn to the one thing that takes up time we can control: sleep. If we stay up an hour, that means an hour more for homework and projects and last minute edits. Stay up longer for more time and soon we're conditioning ourselves to need less sleep because it's stay up late for schoolwork and get up early for school, rinse and repeat. It builds up and soon insomnia happens because the body can't fall asleep due to a consistent severe lack of sleep.
Self harm.
Let's see, the above have so many good points, but let's build upon what they've said. Too much work and too little time. Too little time for themselves and too little time for relaxation or hobbies. That equates to not enough time for healthy outlets for pent up emotions and feelings caused by this. And not enough time for outlets equals little to no outlets which leads to unhealthy outlets that only harm in the long run but provide what is wanted short term. And because we can't see father than a day or two ahead because of how much there is to do, it "works" for a while.
Suicide. It becomes too much.
As pointed out in the above, there's so much going on. Add it all together, it builds higher and higher. And just like with depression, something snaps. But this time, it snaps in a worse way. You can't see a way out. There's no way out of this mixture of apathy, stress, anxiety, insomnia, and/or self harm, not one you can see. So you come to the conclusion that's shaky but sound in your mind: death. You see it as an escape, because it is to you. It's not good and not a good way to escape, but that's what you see.
And this is a mix, because it can be one/two or more, all in differing degrees of strength. But it's all caused by an education system that sees these numbers, that sees what's happening to kids, but not making the changes that need to be made.
So yeah, the American education system has failed me, you, and all the students it has ever used and are using.
Stay safe kiddos, drink some water please!
All my platonic love <3<3<3
~Ink
