People tend to have a lot of issues in school. Anything from learning to graduating. Why do we have so many problems? Is it because of how we are taught, or is it what we grow up learning? Maybe it’s not even our fault. We can’t take all of the blame right? I will be explaining some issues students have in school, with gender issues, race, and mental health.

First, gender issues. Let’s talk about clothes, the boys can mostly wear what they want but girls have to stay covered because “boys will be boys”. Why don't we make it so boys don't look at girls like sexual objects and keep us all focused on our education. I mean it’s just clothes. Schools have gotten to the point of banning hair styles. As CNN stated “A Colorado third-grader was suspended after shaving her head to show support for a friend battling cancer, because she'd violated her school's dress code banning shaved heads.” Can’t a little girl show her support for her friend? Is it such a problem for anyone to support someone with cancer? Dress codes have gotten out of hand. Girls are suspended or put in detention every day for wearing something against dress code. It’s not our fault that women’s clothes are made to show off what we have, and we don’t always want to wear a sweatshirt every single day.

What about school expectations? Do teachers really discriminate against boys? As said by Erika Christakis from the New York Times, "A study on gender disparities in elementary-school performance found that boys received lower grades than girls, even when their test scores were equal to or higher than the girls". Is that because of boys misbehaving? Or is it because teachers tend to favor the girls more than they boys? In my opinion, we should all be treated the same and not be discriminated for our gender. Girls can misbehave too.

Next, issues with race. Of course there’s going to be bullies, but how does that change anything. There’s plenty of things we can do to stop bullying but no one really does anything. We can go on and on about stopping it, but we just say stop and don’t really have consequences for those actions. With anyone from any race, if it’s mostly a one race school, there’s a high chance of that person being bullied. It mostly starts when a child doesn’t understand why someone is different from them or they want to make themselves feel better by hurting someone else. Their behavior problems start from home. It’s where they are taught to do good and bad thing. “According to new data from the U.S. Justice and Education departments, racial bullying is very prominent in teens age 12 to 18.While all different races are affected by racial bullying, Asian American teens are bullied more than teens belonging to any other racial group. The data also indicated that when it comes to cyber bullying; 62 percent of Asian Americans surveyed reported being harassed online once or twice monthly and only 18.1 percent of whites reported being cyber bullied.” If this doesn’t show how much of a problem bullying is, then I don't know what does. Now let's look at stereotypes. Most people think that black people are going to cause trouble, asians are super smart,  all muslims are terrorists, native americans love gambling, and white people are all racist. Stereotypes are hurtful and cause many problems in school. Again, with bullying, people think the wrong thing. I think that stereotypes are irrelevant and we again should all be treated the same. I mean we all have hearts don’t we?

For my final point, mental health. In school we are faced with challenges. Not just homework and studying, but with how we learn and how the school works with the students. As a student I know the work we have is intense. In every class there can be up to a couple hours of work. Also we have sports and activities. A typical student has at least one sport or activity after school. So if we add up one to three hours of practice, at least four hours of homework, and having a social life, we won’t have enough time to do anything. Our time is focused on homework and studying. That doesn't give us time to breathe and take a break. I know people, including myself who struggle a lot with school. We try our best, but we still don’t do as well as we would like too. The challenges we get are not healthy. We go home and do our work. How many people actually have breakdowns because they have too much stress. I know I do. It happens so often. No I don't have homework every night but, I’m still stressed from everything going on. We need things to change in school. There’s not enough time in our days to do everything that needs to get done. In an article written by Tricia Kinman, she states that “High school is a time of increased independence for teens, both academically and socially. As a parent of someone with ADHD, you may think, “Finally, my son or daughter is nearly grown and can be responsible for day-to-day routines and homework assignments.” While it’s true that some adolescents “grow out” of certain ADHD symptoms, it’s likely your teen will need your help and guidance more than ever in high school.” We need to fix these problems and make school a healthy place for students to go and not want to stay home and sleep.

In conclusion, I have given evidence on how school has problems with gender, race, and our mental health. Our perspectives on school need to be changed, and we should start working on our problems with school. Would you want your kids to have such a hard time at school so they don't want to leave their home? There’s so many people who struggle because of our school systems. Do you have any personal issues with school?