Schools: Real Life, Grades, and More!

An opinion piece all about school.

Written by Andrea, one of our current world events and opinion piece writer, and edited by Udita, one of our editors!

I don’t need to remind you what school was like, it’s something we ALL have to go through, no matter what your opinions of school are. Some of us actually enjoy school, and for others, they’d rather forget those years of their lives. I’m about to head off to college next year, so what better way to end my secondary school years than with an article about them!

The thing is, school is actually something that some of us out there never got to experience. Now, you may think that they’re really lucky, but in reality, school shouldn’t be a privilege. It has been, for years, something only a select few of us could have. I’ve known people who left education at 15 (Though this was years ago!) It does show how much times have changed. There was a time when girls couldn’t go to school at all!

The next thing is: Does school actually help us prepare for what’s out there? This is something many students have brought up in the classroom, including myself. Are we going to need algebra or geometry every day of our lives? Unless you want to go in that industry, no. No, you don’t. Life is short, and many people think that learning all this ‘useless’ information for 5 years of our life (That’s 6.25% of our entire life, if the average person lives to 80) is a waste of time. What do you think? Personally, I think that there are parts of school that may be less useful than others. School also helps develop teamwork, organisation and communication skills, plus it has important lessons on topics like smoking, alcohol, and drugs, which I definitely agree are useful.

Of course, this leads us on to bullying. (Hands up, anyone who has had an assembly on this already!) Now, I’m really lucky, I’ve never been bullied. So I’m not the most qualified person to discuss this, but even I know that so many people get picked on all the time. It’s honestly really saddening at this point. School and bullying seem to go hand in hand. The good news, however, is it does get better. Eventually, you grow older, and start to care less about being popular and all the pizzazz associated with secondary school. If you ARE being bullied though, seek help, speak to someone who can prevent the bullying. Obviously, it’s not something that should be normalised.

To round it off, there’s exams. You may be an A*/Grade 9 (for all my fellow UK residents!) student. You may be a C- student. Either way, there’s no escaping exams, no matter how many sick notes you forge. The UK and U.S. education systems are a bit different, so bear with me here, but for the UK GCSEs, there’s LOADS of pressure to do well. GCSEs basically indicate what courses you can do at college. (For me they do, anyway. For the courses I want to go on to do, you need an average of a grade of 7- an A in your GCSEs.) Many students are under a lot of pressure from parents, teachers, and peers to ace everything. Sometimes it gets overwhelming. My advice here is to simply do your best and to find out which revision technique works best for you (This is a HUGE help when it comes to exams.)

So yes: School. I don’t need to remind you what it was like. You may have loved it, hated it, or just about survived it. Either way, I think that if you look at your friends, experiences, and qualifications, you’ll find school may have given you more than you first thought.