Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,

Through most of my years being in school, I have always questioned the value of being enrolled in such an institution. I am a senior in high school and I wake up at 5:50am every morning hating life because I know that I am going to waste most of my day learning nothing of great consequence. So please tell me, what value do you see in these schooling systems? Clearly, basic mathematics and language skills are necessary to get by in life, but, when students with so much potential are forced to swallow down information that will soon be of no consequence, where is the value in that? Is it to teach discipline or instill the idea that we must suffer through life if we want to be successful? I ask myself these questions every day and I cannot come up with an answer that justifies the suffering students endure. So many students want to delve into things they are passionate about and simply cannot. Whether it be because of too much homework or a lack of energy when they arrive home, it’s challenging to muster up the will to do anything and to a certain degree school is at fault for this.

Many people go to work day in and day out and will find themselves suffering day in and day out, a suffering that is almost a choice. I question where it is that these people developed that habit. Surely they can work a little harder and perfect skill sets, maybe get a college degree and get their dream job, right? Then it hit me, that situation is very similar to what I go though in school. It is likely a learned behavior from their sentence to 12+ years of school. I myself go to school and find myself suffering, doing nothing that beings me joy, when there are plenty of things that I enjoy outside of school. It’s very detrimental to my healthy and my level of tolerance. I would love to be taking human anatomy courses, guitar courses and drawing courses but nope. I am forced to suck up whatever options are readily available. Similar to when people just choose whatever job is available. All they have to think about is whether it will pay the bills, which is very important, but not whether that will satisfy their emotional needs which to me, is equally as important. Are those behaviors something that should be constantly reinforced by a schooling system that hasn’t adapted to the modern world? There is already enough suffering in this world, modern schooling systems only adds to the amount of people suffering.

On a personal note, it pains me to think about where I could be had I not been sentenced many years of impractical schooling. I have been enrolled in martial arts courses for about seven years, I have been playing guitar for about three years and I have been drawing almost all my life. To be entirely honest with you, I see my skill set as mediocre for the amount of time I’ve been training them. Yet, I can also pride myself with these skills because I pretty much taught myself everything I know with the exception of martial arts. I often imagine where my musical, drawing, and martial skill would be if I had the opportunity to take guitar classes or to take classes that focus on drawing in school, or even if I had to energy and time to train my martial arts at home. School has limited my ability to grow in these areas. I am forced to do homework, to wake up at 5:50am every week day, and to waste a very large amount of my time and energy learning nothing. So I am forced to shift my focus from the things I am passionate about to the things that I hate. It’s not okay that I, like many other people enrolled in the schooling system are forced to push aside what brings them joy because they need to focus on getting good grades in subject that are likely to be of no use.

So, Mr. or Mrs. President, don’t you think it is time to reform the schooling system? I know for a fact that I am not the only one who has been held back by the schooling system. While there are greater issues that the USA is dealing with, I think if we reform the schooling system, we can help lessen the severity of those issues. How? The world is an ugly place filled with corrupt politicians, terrorists, psychopaths, rapist, murderers, gangsters and the list goes on and on. By reforming the schooling system and making an attempt to give students the opportunity to learn things they want, I think we can add a little bit more positivity to the world. Give people a reason to rejoice waking up in the morning, give students that desire to pursue the things they are passionate about. If someone is passionate for math, allow them to delve into the realm of mathematics. There is no reason why people should be forced to suffer through something that they don’t care for and won’t use outside that course. If people were are able to have more reasons to be happy or at least more opportunities to pursue the things that make them happy, I am certain crime rates, suicide rates, high school dropout rates, and unemployment rates will drastically decrease. If more people want to get up and go to work and want to go to school and learn about the things they love things will be very different in this country. Is that not what the job of the President is? To ultimately make this country a better, safer place? It starts with our youth. We train them to be happy and to pursue their passions so that when they grow up they can spread this positivity to other people and maybe even to other countries. Mr. or Mrs. President, if you have your heart set on making this country a better place for your citizens, I think this is step one. I beg you to please consider this issue, it is of great importance to the many young people whose potential is endless, yet hindered thanks to an ineffective education system.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Brandon B.