Are We Addressing The Needs Of Our Schools? Essay, Research Paper
There are many problems that need to be
addressed in the public schools today. What factors are causing these problems
in the schools? The main causes are absence of prayer, the many pressures
of school, lack of dress code, and insufficient numbers of caring teachers,
faculty, and students.
When I say lack of prayer in the schools,
I don’t mean lets make everyone one religion and every morning at school
we can pray in that one religion. Instead there should be a moment of silence.
Not to take up time but to let everyone have a moment to pray to whomever
or however they wish. For the kid who’s grandpa died and has to go to school
because they need their two points for this six weeks. And the ones who
wish not to pray can take that moment to just think. Lord knows we as high
school students don’t have much time to just stop and think.
There are many pressures in the public
schools. All of a sudden in high school everything changes. Everyone takes
that first merger into “the real world”. As a junior there is much more
pressure put on the students. One minute a sophomore thinking “Yeah I’m
going to college”. While the next as a junior thinking “How on earth am
I going to get to college”. Now that we are juniors we are suppose to be
grown up. Everything from “Where am I getting my gas money?” to “Where
am I going to college?” is going through our minds all of the time, and
yet some how we are supposed to come out calm and prosperous. All of this
pressure and many of young adults do not get a chance to let it out. It
is like tossing a human body in to outer space with no protection. It’s
a vacuum that just tears it apart piece by piece. Could this have been
what caused the Columbine shooting? Perhaps there was so much pressure
put on those two boys to be in the “in crowd” that one day they just couldn’t
take it anymore.
A small element in all of this is the dress
code. How sad is this? There is a shooting at least every year in a school,
and administrators and teachers are worried about whether our shorts are
too short. The office complains of girls wearing shorts that are too short
when there are rather larger girls running around with an extra layer of
skin. Perhaps we should have uniforms. Would that really solve the problem
though? Kids would still get theirs clothes too tight or too baggy. The
schools would still have as much segregation as there is in the schools
today. People do not only judge by how we dress but also by what we live
in, where our house is located, what we have, and who we are related to.
No one can change any of these things. Maybe uniforms will make a difference
and maybe they won’t?
Another factor in all of this is the faculty,
parents, and students attitudes. Most of the faculty either just do not
care, or they are afraid to say something in fear of loosing their jobs.
The guidance counselors are another part of this. When students go in to
talk to the guidance, they are always eating and they say come back later.
When you come back, they are still eating. When aren’t they eating? Then
we actually catch them not eating, go in to tell them our problems, and
they end up telling us theirs; then nothing gets done about the students’
problems. Where are the students suppose to go? We go to a teacher; they
tell us that is what the guidance is for. We go to the guidance, and they
are eating. We go home and our parents are at work. So here we are all
no where to turn so we are forced to bottle it up inside. When we do catch
the counselors and tell them our problems supposedly in all secrecy the
whole school and half the town ends up knowing. What were we better off
doing? Students end up with even more anger than before they even told
anyone.
It is no wonder that we have all of the
problems in our schools. We have no organization, the students don’t understand
what dress code means and the administration doesn’t understand that they
aren’t supposed to bend rules for relatives. The teachers, parents, and
faculty aren’t any additional help. Or maybe we could just let these problems
take their course and we won’t have to worry about over populating the
earth. It’s ironic that with all the things students have to worry about,
now we have to worry about the safety of going to school. Whether it be
the ride to school on the bus, being at school, or being discriminated
against.