Have you met anybody who actually likes school? I know I haven’t. It has always been a thing everyone could agree with and make jokes about. For me, it has always been boring and tiring. It feels like more than half the things school teaches us is useless, and whenever you ask why what we’re learning is going to be needed you always get the response: “Well, you can apply these concepts to other things you do.” That’s why I think schools need to change.

An annual survey called,  Indiana University's High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), which included around 81,000 high school students, were asked what they thought about school. Around 73% of them said that they disliked school and 60% also said that they didn’t see the value in the work they were asked to do, according to Jeanna Bryner from LiveScience. Many that I know also complain about not getting taught what they feel is needed, for example cooking, taking care of your clothes, and personal finance. This wasn’t a problem before as home economics classes were mandatory, and that’s what you learned in them. Now they aren’t and many schools don’t include them. Some feel like this is the jobs of the parents, but many parents work full-time jobs and don’t have the time to do it. Although there is time during the weekend, “Some parents don't think about it until it's time for their kids to leave” . My friend believed that school was useless and boring for him. It got to the point where he would fake be sick just so that he didn’t have to sit down around seven hours daily learning something that would be on one test and then probably be forgotten a few days later after the test. Many others want to get out of school as well. According to DoSomething, 2 million high school students drop out yearly, this is 1 student every 26 seconds; this makes the United States ranked 22nd in graduation rates out of 27 developed countries. Some of the major reasons for dropping out is boredom and that the students didn’t see any value in the work that they have to do. It is very logical to drop out if you see school as useless, but still having to do a lot of work which can make a person very stressed.

School is a common reason for stress. According to U.S News and World Report, if you ask a teen what got them so stressed up, most of the time it’s because of school. “In most cases, that stress is from academics, not social issues or bullying,” says Neighmond, a writer for NPR. All the amount of stress is caused by homework and worrying for your test grades. It is okay to feel a little stress, but a lot of stress can be very harmful and cause things like sleep deprivation. Sleep is very important for teenagers as it gets energy for the brain and it is when the body develops. A teenager should have at least 10 hours of sleep each night according to National Sleep Foundation, but U.S News says that only 15% of students actually achieve that on a regular school week. Students get too much homework and that is the reason for their stress, says Veronica Rojas. The amount of homework students get is excessive sometimes. I usually don’t get too much homework, and most of the time I do, I have enough time to do it. But sometimes one teacher assigns too much homework. This doesn’t benefit either of us as when I have lots of homework it doesn’t make me remember better than when I have a reasonable amount of homework. The teacher also has to correct a lot and that stresses the teacher out as well. Students want to have time to relax instead of always doing homework.

But many people don’t think that students should relax too much. If they don’t get things to stress them out they won’t be able to function in society. They will expect everything handed to them and won’t work hard for anything. I believe that this is true; however, I do believe that students should get a little less. Homework is very helpful as it helps students remember what they did in class, but it doesn’t help much more if you give a huge amount of homework, but instead just makes the student stressed.

Students get stressed out by school and what they have to do, and most of the time they don’t even find it useful! This is why I believe that schools should change, not to make students get better test scores, but to make them find school enjoyable, and if students find school more enjoyable they might get better scores on tests because they find it more important.