Heritage Edition – Debate Column: Is School Really to Blame for a Decline in Mental Health?

  Going to public school should have a warning label: Don’t come if you’re sensitive. Public school is not for the weak, if you want to be talked about, belittled, and labeled, that’s where the public school will get you. Unless of course you’re popular, untouchable, and have all the teachers wrapped around that frail finger anyone could break at any time but no one dares to cross those people. Why? Why do we, as students, have to live through something like this for 13 years of our life and no one has made the executive decision to fix the issues at hand. 

Students have been struggling with mental health due to the school system for decades, but no one cares to just look a little deeper and really make a difference for these kids. What about us quiet students who’d rather be anywhere but school? The lonely kids who keep to themselves, the ones who have no one but themselves to get them through the hardest of days. As much as teachers are “Here for us” it’s not as helpful as they think, except for those few teachers that give students a sense of relief at school, the teachers who genuinely care and understand, and for that we students thank you. 

Teachers want to send you off to the office for having a hard time, but they’re the ones who label us with grades and categorize students based on assignments and tests. There are countless intelligent students on this earth, who have retained the most information but we just don’t apply it, instead, we are told “Try harder,” “do better,” and “that’s not enough.” All the things we already know, but get driven into us, until all we do is try harder and harder till we are withered away from this system we call public school. Teachers fail to be observant of their school and the students; one thing I have learned is that even one teacher has more of a say than a thousand voices of students begging for help because we are drowning in a sea of people who make us invisible, assignments stacked taller than Mount Everest, this is the world we live in and teachers and administrator fail to see. 

If someone higher up just made a decision and got the ball rolling students around the world would cry with relief if just something beneficial happened for mental health. Public school has made countless students all over the world want to give up, and that’s why there are so many students struggling, we gave up trying to fight for our mental health at school, where there are no resources because nothing can be confidential here. The mental effect school leaves on us students is unbearable, and teachers wonder why no one comes to school anymore, we are slowly giving up. The school system needs to work on healthier and easier ways for kids to reach out for mental help where we won’t be questioned about how good we are in class, or worry about when they’re going to call our parents when they hear the word “sad.” Students need a break too and it’s not a hard thing to fix someone just needs to take initiative, it’d be the biggest improvement the school system has made.