A little disclaimer here: I did have a bunch of good teachers throughout high school. This isn’t an attack on the teachers I had, but rather on the system itself. A system that couldn't care less about the well-being of the students and, instead, focuses on standardized tests scores and GPAs. People always told me grades weren’t everything. However, I think that, as students, we have been trained to strongly correlate our self-worth with our test scores and GPAs.

If we go back in time, very little has changed about the school system. However, the school system was originally meant to produce factory workers, which is why school works to teach complete obedience. "Follow the rules and you’ll do fine." However, this motive put me at a loss when I first got to college. In college, there’s no enforced day-to-day regime. You go to classes, and if you don’t, it's your loss. You must be diligent about learning information on your own because professors don’t teach you every piece of information you need to know to master a subject. You’re not spoon-fed information in college, and me, being the obedient student I was, had trouble comprehending that, for the first time in my life, I needed to think on my own. So how are students supposed to be prepared for independent and creative thinking in college when high school is an inherently regimented institution that does little to promote independent thinking? Also, how are teachers supposed to show any passion for their subject when the majority of their time is spent preparing students for standardized tests, instead of subject mastery?

Think: if students can’t make the grade, they’re blatantly told they're a failure. This had significant ramifications on my mental health. Anything below a B typically left me emotionally paralyzed because I knew a bad test score meant I wasn't enough: not smart enough, not driven enough. The association we create between a number and who a person is in general is very real, and one that I have yet to see many recognize and accept. Being able to make conclusions about somebody based on a number is simple and easy to comprehend. As a consequence of the emphasis on scores and numbers in school, it turns into a system that does very little for the emotional development and lacks the fundamental capacity to empathize with students and allow them to grow as individuals

And why not use a growth model instead of marking students' success solely by test scores and a GPA (a so-called proficiency model)? Because if a student who is far below average shows significant improvement, yet still doesn’t meet proficiency, why deter that student's success by marking them as a failure? To me, it seems counter-intuitive that, in certain cases, a student's growth is rewarded by calling them a failure if they still don't meet proficiency, no matter how dramatic the growth. It's a deterrent to the students and teachers both.

I came from a poorer high school so, because of a lack of resources, we consistently fell below proficiency on standardized tests. I was essentially within a school in which the entire student population was being told they were complete failures. I found that there is a lack of empathy within the school system that ends up being detrimental to a poorer school. Standardized tests don't take into account that some students don’t even have a good home to go to to do homework. They also don't take into account the kids that have to work constantly to help support their family. Nor do they take into account the kids that come from emotionally and physically abusive households. In situations like these, making the grade simply cannot be the top priority for students, and it is vital that teachers are working to help students grow as individuals, not just academically. It's also essential that these teachers fight for their students because, sometimes, they have nobody else to fight for them.

Additionally, brighter students in these schools often get left behind because teachers are spending so much time trying to get the struggling kids up to proficiency. I'll never forget how lost I felt during my first semester of college because of this. When I got to college, I found that I was nowhere near college ready. I essentially missed out on a plethora of academic growth that I needed to be college ready.

This system leads to impassionate teachers, as well, as they become so tired of having to play within a system that won't let them actually cater to their students. Impassionate teachers forced to play within this system will lead to impassionate students.

The little regard for actual subject mastery and personal and academic growth has to change. I know this first-hand because I cared very little about what I was learning in school. I simply did what I needed to do to make the grade. It wasn’t until I got into college that I gained an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It was simply because I was finally out of the system and was finally forced to think and grow myself (with the aid of professors).

So, all in all, the only way the schooling system is going to get any better is if we focus on empathy, creativity, and personal growth. Because we're human beings who deserve a little bit better.