I remember my first day of pre-kindergarten vividly, lining up at the door and peeking through the window on my tiptoes. Everything was so exciting to me; learning was such an adventure, one that I had listened to older kids brag and gush over for years. Even the unopened pack of perfectly sharpened crayons in my backpack screamed anticipation. Other kids, people that I did not know at all, jostled against me to get a look into our new classroom, and anxious parents watched us over steaming Starbucks cups as they tried to reconcile their nostalgia over our growing up with the inevitability of it all.

This past week, which marked the end of my sophomore year in high school, has been marked with a smiley face since the year began in August, and the sheer relief of the end of a another year has made me so happy that I’ve almost thrown up several times. Why the drastic change in attitudes? Studies have shown that I’m not alone – only 48% of students think their teachers care about them, 49% actually like being at school, and a mere 38% of students think their classes are going to be useful to them in life. The idea is simple – the structure of our education does not help the students that are actually suffering within it.

Stress and pressure to accomplish and excel has pushed students’ health to the brink. 80% of students do not sleep for the recommended number of hours for their age - no matter what age group one surveys – and an average of twelve hours of free time per week is lost to studying and completing homework, a number that is expected to almost double as students take higher and higher level classes. The homework load has increased by 50% since the 1970s, gobbling up all of the extra time that was once used for outside play and social interaction, reading, drawing or any other creative usage of the brain that allowed children to develop as individuals. With no time for release of stress or personal exploration, diagnosis of ADHD has increased by 6% since the 1980s amongst children even of younger age, and psychologists have seen an 8% increase in problematic behavior among fifteen and sixteen year olds. This problem is compounded upon by the common theme of teachers seizing recess time as punishment, a period of makeup work or even simply due to laziness. While I was in elementary school, teachers were allowed to elect to not take us outside for recess if the temperature was below forty degrees or above eighty. Growing up in Johns Creek, the temperature was often in these ranges, and many of the kids were hyper and energetic without outdoor recess; the teachers would then get angry and take away our recess time the next day, keeping us from even playing with toys indoors and instead making us put our heads down on our desks.

The inherent pressure in our education system also has created a social hierarchy that is difficult to surmount. 77% of students have been bullied in some form or another, and 58% do not bother to tell an adult because they feel it would be futile. Children are often taught that bullies are unkind because they feel inferior and not to worry because they “are a better, more mature person”, a thought that may be comforting to someone who is hurt in the moment but ends up merely perpetrating the idea that there is a group that is better and more mature than another. The fact that moral standards are deteriorating in many ways among young students – evident in the increase in drug and crime rates among kids as young as elementary age, as well as the 55% increase in cheating admissions (with a 7%-11% margin of error) since the 1940s – does not help the case for making school stay fun and interesting. The irony lies in the fact that this stress and focus on strong school performance as the only key to a successful future is almost useless; 40% of American students are so unprepared for college that they are stuck taking remedial classes.

The truth is simply that American education is not helping anyone; the overall culture associated with schooling in the United States is harmful to the overall health of the students from an early age and has yielded almost no positive results. So, students – enjoy your hard-earned summer, still filled to the brim with summer work, and be ready to go back to school in the fall for another useless year filled with stress, caffeine-induced all-nighters to finish your work and irrelevant busy work. Maybe the futility of it will inspire you to make a change. Someone needs to.