American Schools and the Lack of Freedom.

Recently I was asked a opinionated question:

“What does it mean to you to be American?”

To which I had answered quite quick with, “Well to be American in my eyes means obviously freedom. To have freedom I mean, it is what we were built on after all, and Americas subtitle is aswell, “The Land of The Free.”

But the more I got thinking on this question aswell as my own answer, I realized how I hadn’t felt any freedoms at all. Mostly in my school and the American school system. 

Upon hearing years ago of how many places in Europe and Asia function their class setup and graduation, I became jealous and overwhelmed with a feeling of betrayal of my own freedoms, and how America has taken it away. You see, in Japan, if you’d like to go into Construction, at 16 years of age you will be set into classes that are made to build your skills and knowledge of construction. This goes for any other careers aswell. 

While now let’s peek into an American school district, where still as a junior (most kids will now be 17 by this age), you are forced to follow the setup of classes and learning requirements in able to graduate highschool. This means replacing spots in a students schedule that could be used for multiple classes to teach them real skills for what they want to go into, with classes that they have no use for and frankly, will never use at all. In other words, a waste of useless learning for an hour a day, for an entire year. 

An example of this could be a writer, if a student wants to go into writing for papers or authoring or whatnot- they may rely on English, or maybe Creative writing, but their opportunities to fill their day with learning how to be the best writer they can be are altered with boredoms of science and fitness. The student knows they won’t ever be using chemistry, so why must it be taken when they can be doing a more writing based class? It doesn’t make sense! 

The idea of “freedom” in American school districts is an absolute phony. Freedom would be choosing our intellectual interests to be the best that we can be in what we want to do. If we follow in these other countries footsteps, we will not be prone to losing maths and science, but we will be able to focus on our adult life in the last two years of our school experience. We will be able to be prepared. For collage, the job, whatever it may be. To be able to dedicate our last years to beneficial things would be freedom, not a forced plan that tells me still, as a legal adult, a senior in highschool, I must take science just in case, because America does not think me knowing what I want to do with my life, is good enough, so they must control it.