From the time I could read a full-length novel, "Magic Tree House" books were the way to go. From learning about ancient Camelot to saber-toothed tigers, I was hooked. I had no idea how much I was learning, but I loved to cheer on Jack and Annie as they raced back to the tree house. We had a reading program in elementary school where we gained points for reading books and taking quizzes on them, and I crushed it every year simply because I read as many "Magic Tree House" books as I could. For the first and last time in my life, I loved learning.

Flash forward to junior year of high school. I am staring at the red 74 painted over the words "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Test." I'm not surprised, though, because I didn't even read the book. I was a little disappointed in the low grade, but I never had any motivation to read the book, so I didn't really care. What had changed from fifth grade to now?

The education system that is failing us all had taken its latest victim. I had long since fallen out of love with reading as well as learning. I had become an unmotivated high school student who got nearly perfect grades simply by learning the system. I had figured out how to learn the way American education wants us to learn: for weeks at a time and only for a passing grade.

Instead of learning to learn, as one would expect the human race to learn, we are taught to learn to pass. I remember vocabulary words only as long as I have to. I no longer have any idea how to take the integral of a function, but yet I passed the AP Calculus exam with flying colors. This issue is not just one that I have, it is an epidemic that is sweeping high schools across the nation. Don't get me wrong, there are many people out there who still love to learn, and I commend them, but those of us who just want to get by, often fall into the trap of beating the system and eventually forgetting any love we once had for learning.

Nowadays, it is hard for me to get through my history readings week in and week out, and my laziness can only take half the blame, as it was perpetuated by my ability to slide by throughout high school without ever really learning anything. So, my question to the world: Are we actually learning anything in high school, besides how to maximize efficiency with minimal effort? While this is a useful skill to have, what ever happened to our love for learning and exploration of the arts and sciences? Instead, high school is written like a formula, where the goal is to get an A on the next test, not to actually learn about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. As a student whose love for learning has slipped through the cracks of the machine that is the U.S. education system and who still managed to finish at the top of his class, I would simply like to reinstate the values of education that seem to be lost today, so the next generation of kids actually gets something besides a diploma and a lot of stress out of high school.