Why School is Prison

Quotes of the week:

"Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing." -Euripides

"Beauty may be dangerous, but intelligence is lethal." -Unknown

Reasons why school is prison

(besides the terrible lunch meals)

Image drawing and editing done by me.

Have you ever sat in a boring classroom, with nothing to do but hear the teacher talk about the most boring subject ever, and asked yourself, "Why am I here?."

As students, we sit in classrooms, in the exact same location that we're in, six to seven hours a day, five days a week, sometimes even more. A friend of mine once said that "Instead of striving to learn any of the vast curiosities that surround us, we drill in just enough to bubble in and scribble out the right letters to be passed along year after year, with no actual gain of useful knowledge more than facts that we will inevitably forget as we move along."

The truth is that for most of us, it feels like we spend our limited time here on earth filling out useless review packets and worrying about test grades. They seem to be encouraging the death of our dreams and aspirations. We never stop to ask ourselves why are we really REALLY here?. After all, we could be doing a million other things, learning about a million new cultures and doing something that really interests us, but instead we are HERE, giving up our limited time on earth to be in school. 

It is quite funny that we go to school, because the truth is, that most of us don't really want to be here. In fact, scientist Daniel Willingham , author of the book "Why Don't Students Like School?" said that when students were asked how they would describe school, the majority of them said words similar to, or synonyms of, the word prison.

Now, if you are one of those students that would describe school as prison, you are not entirely incorrect. The first official place similar to what we call a "school" today, was created in the 1300's. It was actually invented for parents to send their misbehaved children to a place where they could be controlled and reformed...

...Well, 700 years or so have passed since...But we still have schools. Why ? I mean, we no longer have schools to reform misbehaved children or punish them. At least that is not what the modern definition of a school is supposed to be... Or is it?

Dictionary.com defines school as "a place where we are given an education". The ironic part is that when you look up the meaning of education, you will realize that one of the first definitions of the word "education" that shows up in dictionary.com is " an enlightening experience." So, if we were to go by that definition, we would say that school is a place where we are given an enlightening experience...

But... wait a minute... there's only a small problem here...most students do not find school enlightening or interesting or a place where they will learn something helpful. They define school as prison. 

So why in the world is it that a place that is supposed to give us "enlightenment" and spark our creativity, curiosity, and intelligence, is still perceived as it was 700 years ago?

We have no freedom

In a Psychology Today article written by psychologist Peter Gray, it was stated that the reason we viewed school as prison was because we feel like we have no freedom. Therefore, we associate school with a place of little freedom, such as prison. 

We are not encouraged to think outside the box or to find new ideas or challenge old ones. Instead we are given project after project and research paper after research paper... This gives us barely enough time to go out and  see the world with new eyes. 

Literally what comes up on google search when you type "School makes me feel"
Picture taken by me.

Instead, we are bound to look at the world through the vision of other's experiences that have been inscribed in paper long ago. We are never allowed to investigate what sparks our own curiosity, but instead we are told specifically what we have to learn and memorize. We are given standards and ranked by how well we can pass a test instead of our true understanding of life and the world and ourselves. We start to lose interest, not because we don't like learning, but because the material that we are taught does not challenge us. It does not spark creativity or new ideas.

A Live science article says that in a study done to students all over the United states, 75 percent of students report material being taught in school is not interesting. 

In fact, Indiana University's High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), done to to more than 80 thousand students all across the nation, found that 20% of students surveyed had actually considered dropping out of school. 60 percent of these students said they had considered dropping out because they did not understand or see the value in the work that they were being asked to do. (An old friend of mine swears a secret percentage of them would rather go and become strippers in Djibouti than be in school).

There is a problem within our education system

The truth is, we are supposed to view school as a place in which we gain those things. It should be a place which we dare to try new things and do so without worrying that as a result, we will be judged or our grade will be low because we don't spend hours memorizing facts and doing homework.

Image credit

We should view school as a place where we can think freely and spark our own interests. School should be viewed as a place where we will want to go to understand ourselves and understand each other. After all, you can make us memorize all the facts, formulas, and all the knowledge that you want. However, in the end, if we aren't taught how to use this knowledge to the benefit of humanity, it might be as if we had never learned it at all.

This is why our teachers, classmates, principals, and our government should strive to change our perspective of school. That way, it isn't what it was 700 years ago, but instead a place of thinkers, believers, and people who know that learning is not about the answers. It's about the better questions.