Education, it’s a central part of being a human, most of which happens in a place we are all familiar with: school. And every school has one thing in common and that is that each one is part of a school system. But you might be wondering, what is a school system?

According to Education Reform  “The term education system generally refers to public schooling, not private schooling, and more commonly to kindergarten through high school programs. Schools or school districts are typically the smallest recognized form of “education system” and countries are the largest. States are also considered to have education systems.”Each school system is unique to its country, but there are also differences in each state and county depending on which one you are looking at. And when you combine that with the individuality of each individual that partakes in the school system you find that everyone will have a different experience. So today we are here to talk about the experiences of students at Loveland High both good and bad.

 In recent times education has become an increasingly more controversial topic  as the skills students will need in their lives change rapidly along with advancing technology, but yet many of the systems we have in school are nearly identical to what we had in the early 20th century during the industrial revolution when the major benefit of getting an education for the average worker was to be able to learn to perform with the same efficiency as everyone else and follow instructions since many worked in factories where these were the main skills needed. But since then many companies have opted for the simple manual labor jobs to be performed by robots with recent tech allowing them to be far more efficient and cost effective, meaning that the job market for people has turned towards more specialized workers that are creative, individual, and able to problem solve. Not to mention that this system due to being designed to teach kids to follow orders kills individuality like a plague. 

It teaches kids that their ideas must fit inside a box and conform to others’ expectations. It teaches kids that they must choose something practical like a scientist, a doctor, or a lawyer as their career. It teaches that unless you work until your back is broken and your soul is nothing but dust flying away in a sandstorm of capitalism that you don’t deserve and will never achieve wealth or happiness. 

But in today’s society that simply isn’t true as platforms like youtube can become an income source, artists and graphic designers are essential to brands which more and more people are creating their own. All of these and countless other options allow for people to get jobs they love and still make a livable wage. And while some people refuse to let the system break them and are far too set on their dreams to let the ideas of the past get in their way. 

But that is not everyone. There are countless students that are essentially told by the system everyday that they are worthless and will never make it because their skills don’t fit the box the system draws and never try to do any better because they are told that they can’t. 

One might ask themselves, sure the tech and opportunities have changed but the students then were able to meet these standards and work long hours at a dangerous factory job, so why can’t the students of today do the same thing? This is the saddest part of this system. Those students that never tried to be any better because they were told they couldn’t be? They’ve always been here, they’ve been the broken stories you hear of alcoholics and criminals, suicidals and homeless people, and sometimes they are the stories of great actors, artists, musicians and scientists who against all odds made it in a world that wasn’t made for them. 

This is the truth of standardization. While many students are able to get by on this system, it expects them all to be on the exact same level of everything from literacy to math to science. But the more time you spend in this world the more you will see that this is not how humanity is. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses. Each one has something they excel at and something they will fail at no matter how hard they try. They will have something that they will be so fascinated with that they will never be able to learn enough about to satisfy their curiosity and something that they couldn’t care about less and wouldn’t be able to if they tried. This is where our school system here in America has failed us for many years as a species. It hasn’t taken into account how beautiful the flaws of humanity can be. 

But recently, school administrators have recognized the need for change as Marc Schaffer, our school superintendent has stated “For far too long, we have approached school with a one-size-fits-all mentality. I would like to see students continue to have more choice, flexibility and agency over their learning and their school day.  Put simply, some students struggle because they fail to see relevance and meaning in their classes and their school day.  There should be more opportunities for students to have "voice and choice" over what they learn, and how they go about learning.” 

Due to this recently our district and our has been working to slowly rectify these problems. In our own highschool we have seen many changes in many areas such as the school day schedule, classes becoming available to teachers to help them engage with and better teach their classes in more effective ways, and the majority of our assignments moved to online to help with efficiency and organization. While these are small changes they are an attempt at a step in the right direction. But how effective have these changes been and what is still in need of being fixed that could possibly be our next step in bettering our school system? 

The answer lies in those the system affects the most: the students. Recently, we have gathered opinions from students, this is what we found. Half of the students felt that they had seen the positive effects of the changes and saw how hard the staff are working to fix these problems while still dealing with the usual chaos that goes on everyday such as the recent bathroom situation. But most also had concerns about areas of our school system that are not reaping the benefits of these changes and could use some work. As one student said, “from my experience, I find that the school system has a habit of kind of ignoring kids that have mental health issues or more minor learning disabilities cause if it's not actually interfering with everybody else's learning then they don't want to do anything about it." 

While this is something that is supposedly being worked on this is certainly something many of the students here at Loveland High have experienced as it is easy to forget others' struggles when they do not directly affect you. It seems that many students seem to need a better support system and one part of that could be having a more flexible learning environment that recognizes that every student will learn at their own pace and allows that which one of the teachers at our school, Mr. Pintaric already uses in his teaching and the majority of the kids in his class have seemed to enjoy it at least do well in it. 

Which shows us how each teacher can benefit students which brings us to the next student opinion: "If a teacher is good you can learn a lot from them and it really depends on the teacher but they are not being treated well. Teachers should be paid more but also given incentives, cause they will do better with such things.” 

This, as you can see, is another concern of students as how can they expect their teachers to do well when they can barely make ends meet and are not rewarded for putting in a lot of hard work. But overall it seems that the students of LHS recognize the hard work of staff but also see major flaws in the school system that have yet to be solved that affect not just them but also teachers and would like to see changes in the school system.