Modern Education

In today's world it's not extraordinary to see an immense amount of stress in a schooling environment. Things like GPA and solid extracurriculars, including standardized tests like the SAT and ACT, play into which college you end up going to. Over a period of time, competitiveness in environments like these increases because everyone is trying to be better than the people around them. College acceptance rates are changing and students are pushing themselves harder than ever before, and ultimately everyone is trying to outwork one another.

Personally, I have heard the phrase, “don't compare yourself” about a million times from my parents, friends, and teachers. But if you step back and look at how the schooling system is set up, it's designed in a way that if you want to succeed, you have to compare. By ranking, GPA, and so many other factors that, unless you are the valedictorian, someone will have better than you. And to motivate, or in other words, torturer yourself, you compare.

Changing Education Paradigms

Historically, it has been proven that today's outdated education system can be traced back to how children worked in factories around the time of the Industrial Revolution. To bells indicating the start and end of a class, dedicated rooms for specialized subjects, and separation of age groups. Otherwise known as the production line mentality, many people don't agree with a system as such because, taking into consideration age, all students have different maturity levels, times of day that productivity spikes, and social limitations.

I am about half way through my first year as an international baccalaureate (IB) student and in full honesty, it has not been easy. It has been manageable, and grades wise I am getting the results I want, but the mental stress has been through the roof. At least for me, in an accelerated, college-level class, I feel as if everyone is better than me. And for a majority of this schooling year I have felt like the dumbest person in the world, rarely ever feeling satisfactory when I’ve gotten a good grade, because surely, someone did better than me. The anxiety I feel every time I work on an assignment is not desirable, my brain tells me I did something wrong or because maybe the guy sitting next to me didn't take as long as I did.

Ever since we started school, it's been like that. Maybe some of us took longer to notice what was right in front of us, but eventually, the conclusion was made. I’ve learned that unless you are godly smart or somehow have access to drugs, you probably can’t relate. But in the end, we are all human and I feel as though if the schooling system somehow did change, we would still find a way to compare. Maybe the stakes wouldn't be as unreasonably high as they are now, but the destructive mentality would still be there.