Are We Addressing The Needs Of Our Schools? Essay, Research Paper

There are many problems that need to be

addressed in the public schools today. What factors are causing these problems

in the schools? The main causes are absence of prayer, the many pressures

of school, lack of dress code, and insufficient numbers of caring teachers,

faculty, and students.

When I say lack of prayer in the schools,

I don’t mean lets make everyone one religion and every morning at school

we can pray in that one religion. Instead there should be a moment of silence.

Not to take up time but to let everyone have a moment to pray to whomever

or however they wish. For the kid who’s grandpa died and has to go to school

because they need their two points for this six weeks. And the ones who

wish not to pray can take that moment to just think. Lord knows we as high

school students don’t have much time to just stop and think.

There are many pressures in the public

schools. All of a sudden in high school everything changes. Everyone takes

that first merger into “the real world”. As a junior there is much more

pressure put on the students. One minute a sophomore thinking “Yeah I’m

going to college”. While the next as a junior thinking “How on earth am

I going to get to college”. Now that we are juniors we are suppose to be

grown up. Everything from “Where am I getting my gas money?” to “Where

am I going to college?” is going through our minds all of the time, and

yet some how we are supposed to come out calm and prosperous. All of this

pressure and many of young adults do not get a chance to let it out. It

is like tossing a human body in to outer space with no protection. It’s

a vacuum that just tears it apart piece by piece. Could this have been

what caused the Columbine shooting? Perhaps there was so much pressure

put on those two boys to be in the “in crowd” that one day they just couldn’t

take it anymore.

A small element in all of this is the dress

code. How sad is this? There is a shooting at least every year in a school,

and administrators and teachers are worried about whether our shorts are

too short. The office complains of girls wearing shorts that are too short

when there are rather larger girls running around with an extra layer of

skin. Perhaps we should have uniforms. Would that really solve the problem

though? Kids would still get theirs clothes too tight or too baggy. The

schools would still have as much segregation as there is in the schools

today. People do not only judge by how we dress but also by what we live

in, where our house is located, what we have, and who we are related to.

No one can change any of these things. Maybe uniforms will make a difference

and maybe they won’t?

Another factor in all of this is the faculty,

parents, and students attitudes. Most of the faculty either just do not

care, or they are afraid to say something in fear of loosing their jobs.

The guidance counselors are another part of this. When students go in to

talk to the guidance, they are always eating and they say come back later.

When you come back, they are still eating. When aren’t they eating? Then

we actually catch them not eating, go in to tell them our problems, and

they end up telling us theirs; then nothing gets done about the students’

problems. Where are the students suppose to go? We go to a teacher; they

tell us that is what the guidance is for. We go to the guidance, and they

are eating. We go home and our parents are at work. So here we are all

no where to turn so we are forced to bottle it up inside. When we do catch

the counselors and tell them our problems supposedly in all secrecy the

whole school and half the town ends up knowing. What were we better off

doing? Students end up with even more anger than before they even told

anyone.

It is no wonder that we have all of the

problems in our schools. We have no organization, the students don’t understand

what dress code means and the administration doesn’t understand that they

aren’t supposed to bend rules for relatives. The teachers, parents, and

faculty aren’t any additional help. Or maybe we could just let these problems

take their course and we won’t have to worry about over populating the

earth. It’s ironic that with all the things students have to worry about,

now we have to worry about the safety of going to school. Whether it be

the ride to school on the bus, being at school, or being discriminated

against.