The Importance of School

Deep down in their subconscious minds, many people may ask themselves “Why do I go to school to do the same old stuff every single day?” Well, I think that it’s because my mama wanted me to have an education like she did because only one of her parents went to college. My grandmother graduated from N.D. Taylor High School in the May of 1969. She then went on to further her education at Mississippi College years later, after she had started a family with my grandfather.

She graduated in the early years of the 90s and started to shape the minds of the youth in Yazoo City, Mississippi. My grandfather got an education too, he just never got his high school diploma. I always forget whether he dropped out in the 8th grade or the 10th. He always reminded me that if you had at least an 8th grade education, you were just fine. I know he got out within those two years.

My grandpa always reminds me to get an education and to keep going no matter how hard it gets because he didn’t go back and finish what he started. My grandfather always lectures me on the fact that education is key to my future being great and bright and I think that he thinks like that because when my grandmother and he were in school, the school system was much more different and it had different dynamics. Some caucasian people didn’t want Black people to educate themselves and to have the “upper hand” back then. Now that times have changed in America, I, too, am fighting for my education.

There has always been some form of formal education taking place since the beginning of time. Interestingly enough, the institution of school and education has existed since around 8th century BC and 5th or 6th century AD. Formal schooling has existed since around ancient Greece. The history of the school system in America is even more complex, though. Most of the learning happened at home hundreds of years ago. The parents who couldn’t afford to get a private tutor would teach their own children while the ones who were wealthy enough did. The people who primarily expressed their opinions on the need for some form of education were the Puritans. In the Puritan school system, they not only taught the essential elements of reading, math, and writing, but they also reinforced their core values. Following the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson stated that our newly born nation needed an educational system to mold the minds of tomorrow. He suggested that tax dollars be used to fund education and that may have been the reason his opinions were ignored. The idea of public schooling faded away for nearly one hundred years.

In the 1900s, The Association of American Universities (AAU) was consisted of sixty-two prominent establishments in the United States and Canada that continue to make society advance through education, discovery, and research. They promoted higher standards and raised the educational bar of American universities/institutions to match that of their European counterparts. Curriculum has changed in many ways since school has been implemented into the American way.

In a school environment, everyone’s experience won’t be the same. Some people could have a great time in elementary school, an even more wonderful experience in middle school, and they get to high school and become outcasts. In a high school societal setting, the people around you could be looking to bring you down. There may be some bad teachers that may not want to see you succeed in life. They may say that “I don’t have to teach you. I don’t have to babysit you. I’m just showing up every day to get a check.” There is a very few percentage of teachers who act that way, though. A lot of people who mold minds like to see their pupils progress and chase their dreams.

Some teachers make students not want to even go to school some days. Sometimes they give a plethora of homework like we don’t have a gigantic stack of homework from our other teachers. Many teachers make children suffer every day under piles of homework and for what? Some type of self-relief? And when they prepare us for standardized testing, some of us students feel a little bit left behind because of the teacher’s teaching style or maybe it’s a topic we just don’t know about. Oftentimes, students stress about the score they’ll make and it hinders their performance. A lot of the time, administration is focused only on scores and how it’ll make the school look. They don’t think about the students involved.

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