Op-Ed: The Life we all ‘Need’

Anonymous Writer, ‘21

Feburary 2020

Imagine this. Imagine a society where only traditional schooling methods are accepted. Imagine thinking that school is for everyone. Imagine forcing stereotypical possible future professions on your children from an early age. Imagine forcing kids into hobbies and forcing them into hobbies and sports as a kid, so they have something to put on their college application. Imagine stressing over what kindergarten your kid is going to because you want to set them on the track to success. Imagine forcing your kid into an instrument they hate, so they have good experiences for their college interviews. Imagine forcing your kids to go to college. Imagine forcing kids into debt to fulfill dreams that aren’t theirs. Imagine people having more and more kids making applying to college harder and harder because you have to compete against twice the amount of people in the country and even the world to get into a university. Imagine being immensely disappointed in them for not getting into an elite college even though the acceptance rates are decreasing while the number of kids that apply increases exponentially. Imagine forcing students to take the hardest classes rather than classes that they are interested in. Imagine making students join a lot of clubs to differentiate themselves from other applicants. Imagine making a difficult test that doesn’t reflect anything learned in school. Imagine that test being a major factor in your acceptance into university. Imagine paying thousands of dollars paying for tutors and hundreds of more on books studying for this test. Imagine not having thousands of dollars to pay for tutoring or hundreds to pay for books. Imagine spending hundreds of hours studying for a test and doing mediocre. Imagine spending a couple of hours and doing well. Imagine being denied from your dream school because of your score on that test. Imagine not being able to retake that test because it costs too much. Imagine forcing kids to only reach for certain top tier schools, or they’re not good enough. Imagine forcing them to maintain a perfect GPA. Imagine having to intern and put in volunteering hours alongside the hours of studying for school, the test, and focusing on clubs. Imagine a nonprofit organization (The CollegeBoard) making a billion dollars in revenue each year. Imagine never sleeping. Imagine never seeing your friends anymore. Imagine not going out as much. Imagine a nation encouraging and profiting from a student’s cycle of sleep deprivation, and horrible mental health to maintain these impossible stereotypes. Imagine that.