30 Article on the Effects of School

School affects our personality in many ways, both positively and negatively. School makes us more social, more educated, more successful, and also enhances our desire to strive for greatness. While these are all great, some of the affects, like demotivating students, as well as depression are quite bad. It also leads to a loss of sleep in teens, stress, and bullying. This really makes you wonder, is school really worth it.

First let’s look at some of the upsides to school. Obviously, it educates our children, which improves their intelligence, and helps to prepare them for the real world. It also gives children and teens alike a safer place to be social with one another, and allows them to meet in a safe environment, without much worry of any harm coming to your child. School can also lead students to strive for excellence, both in an individual class or in general. Schools offer programs like the academic and principal role, the valedictorian, and many other systems, such as the honors system can give a students a reachable goal, and can help motivate them to strive for greatness.

While this all sounds great, there are many issues with school. While school can lead to motivation, school can also strip people of their motivation. These competitive programs, such as the academic role, are great goals for students to strive for, but if a student fails to reach it, they can be left feeling like all of their work wasn’t worth it. That, combined with the practice of sharing grades can make getting a lower grade hurt that much more. It also is a major contributor to stress in children and teens. Schools give somewhat unrealistic workloads every night, that require working through the night and into the early morning to finish, which does cause stress in students. This issue also results in getting less sleep than the recommended amount, and students commonly come in for school with 3-4 hours of sleep. For comparison, the recommended amount of sleep for a teenager is 8-9 hours. The last issue to bring up is bullying. School’s can easily lead to students being bullied, and the school’s don’t always handle the situation well. This can cause students to become depressed and suicidal, which not only is unhealthy for them, but also causes them to lose all of their motivation to work. 

After looking at these points, its hard not to question wether or not school is actually healthy for students or not, as well as wether or not the schooling system needs a great reform, matching the current modern world, instead of preparing students for factory work like in the 19th century, when the current school system was established.