Until I graduated in 2015, I was among some 50 million students in the United States that attends public school and my younger brothers are still a part of that statistic. When I first came home from my freshman year of college, my brothers were still in school and often asked for my help with their assignments. I quickly learned that they were not being held to the same standards as I was at their age and I found this to be rather concerning.

I remember being in middle school and being handed a spelling test every single week. We read books at an admittedly slow pace as a class, but we still got through a few outstanding books every year. My math classes were fast paced and my science classes were far from easy. I got through it, as did everybody else, and I felt prepared for high school. High school was the same: I had spelling and vocabulary tests into my senior year, I was expected to take nothing less than math courses that would challenge me, and I took nearly every science course that was offered. I was often held to high expectations by my teachers, and that is exactly what helped me earn a full tuition scholarship and prepared me to be successful during my first year of college.

I went through a completely different school system than what my brothers are going through now. One is going into 8^th grade, the other is going into 11^th, and both of them don’t know how to write a formal paper. They don’t know how to do research to make a well-constructed argument, they can’t do basic multiplication very quickly, their knowledge in math extends to only about the Pythagorean theorem, and almost all they know about science is that plants need sunlight, nutrients, and water to grow. Pretty basic stuff, right? These are smart kids, too. They aren’t being held to high expectations by all, if any, of their teachers, and I do not think that they are in any way prepared for the next steps in their lives. What's also concerning is the fact that they're receiving lists of what they need for school supplies. Sure, we all got that in elementary school, but if teenaged kids are being told what kind of notebook they need to take notes in and how many colored pencils and highlighters they need for class, how are they supposed to learn to make decisions and be self sufficient at all? (Hint: they won't because college professors don't spoon feed you and direct your entire life down to the damn notebook). My brothers will undoubtedly struggle more than me once they reach college simply because their curriculum is easier than mine was and they’re being spoon fed information.

Who is to blame for kids like my brothers not receiving the same education that I did only a few years ahead of them? Perhaps the government and school boards. Things have drastically changed in the curriculums of kids that are still in the public school system, and quite frankly, I don’t think that it’s for the better. For example, the school district from which I graduated (an International Baccalaureate school) focuses on things like Chinese when the students in the schools aren’t even properly educated in English. Yup, an IB school in the United States is putting Chinese ahead of English. My thirteen year old brother and his peers have been taking Chinese since kindergarten and they feel that if they were to go to China, all they’d be able to do is ask where the bathroom is, introduce themselves, and maybe order themselves a meal. But at the same time, they lack the simple skill of spelling basic words in English. These kids can’t even communicate effectively without the autocorrect on their i-Phones.

Aside from the lack of important topics being covered in school, especially in school districts that are considered to be “prestigious,” it also takes repetition to learn and I know from firsthand experience that very few teachers incorporate repetition into their curriculum. You can’t explain to a twelve-year-old kid how to write a paper and then never cover it again, expecting them to remember and be successful in college. It takes practice, constructive criticism, and reinforcement. Or how about the amount of times that I’ve heard “we don’t have time to cover that material?” We don’t have time. How about we take out the busy work? Replace the word searches in human anatomy with dissections. Replace the book work with a hands on activities that actually teach students a thing or two about what they’re studying. Or maybe even teach geometry with physical, three dimensional shapes and assign projects that involve building. That’s exactly how I learned geometry and while I only got a B in the class during my freshman year of high school, I remember every important thing I learned in that class.

The significance of the 50 million students that are a part of the public school system lies with the fact that they are the future of the United States. How are we supposed to progress at all if the middle and high school students today can’t even spell or do basic multiplication? I truly believe that humanity is headed in a good direction. Maybe our government is a little crazy right now and our country is in an insane amount of debt, but consider humanity itself. We’re focusing on sustainability, we’re coming up with wonderful new ideas to make the world run more efficiently, we’re learning to love each other within the entire human race, and we’re accomplishing things that we never before thought to be possible. My short nineteen years of existence is a mere blip in the general timeline of modern day humans being present on earth so I know that my perception may not exactly say much, but if a teenager like myself is noticing a lack of quality in education, maybe it’s time that the system is re-worked. It’s time to properly educate the leaders of tomorrow because while they may currently be playing Pokemon Go and using texting as the main mode of communication, it’s going to actually matter when the fate of the United States lies within the hands of those illiterate kids that aren’t receiving the education that they deserve.

"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world."