Looking around to see students sharing answers from a test they previously took to their friends is a real wake up call to what school has come to.

The majority of students have to memorize information; it has become extremely rare to find teenagers who truly learn the material. Students no longer come to school and leave with knowledge they did not know before. What they do learn does not actually stick with them.

What brought so many students to this sad state? One reason could be the amount of competition there is among students. Everyone wants to do better than someone else, whether it is for the show of it or to have their chances at getting into a great college.

A bigger reason is the overload of information given from teachers. The amount of material that gets thrown at students each day can be seen from the exorbitant amount of papers they hold in their binders, backpacks and lockers.
So many teachers rush to fit in lessons in limited periods of time. This leads to cramming of new knowledge and can become way too much to handle. Teaching information cannot be put in a schedule.

Every teacher’s goal should be to have their students really learn. This takes time and absolutely cannot be a rushed process. Because it usually is, there is literally no time to be able to sit and really study.
If one wants to truly comprehend the knowledge given to them, not just memorize it for the time being, they will need more than the hour and half of class time in which teachers are giving their lengthy speeches.

Because they are in a hurry to get in everything they want to cover for a lesson, teachers tend to speak for long periods of time and it becomes too easy to zone out of the lecture. Because of this, to be able to grasp all the information students need to review it at home on their own. But where is the time with all the homework assigned?
The load is ridiculous and uncalled for– there has to be an easier way for teachers to teach their students. So much material given in short amounts of time can drive a teenager mad. What gets even more frustrating than the bulk of homework that is given each night to be due next class is the difficulty of the homework.

It would be nice to use the assigned homework as that individual review time needed after a class discussion, but more often than not the homework itself is new information to a student. It is much more reasonable to give homework that is straight information from notes taken in class that day.
Leave the harder activities to be in-class work so it is easy to ask for help and not stress alone at night. This makes a lot more sense than the current teaching systems where new knowledge is not only hurled at students in class, but at home too.

One begins to question why things are this way and why there is no simple change such as this one taking place? All the blame cannot be placed on the teachers as it is understandable that there is required material that needs to be taught and the amount of it does not fit the time given.
However, over everything, the number one priority of teachers should be to really teach students and have them actually learn. This can simply be reached with a change in the amount of homework they assign. Class time may be lacking to cram in that required material, but if there is no way to change that they can at least change the amount of work given for home.

The majority of students want nothing but to succeed in school and all their work. For tests and quizzes, they cram whatever they can memorize the night before and get answers from other students for an A, but they are not learning any of it.

Once the tests and quizzes are over, all that info is gone and forgotten– a big problem when it comes to the finals at the end of the year where all the things on those tests will come back on the big exam.
The lack of time brings procrastination and cheating among students. They say to never do these two things, but it seems like teens really have no choice if they want good grades– and they all do.

Because of the heartbreaking amount of students who are not learning anything even with all the time they are spending with school, there needs to be a change. Their stress and hard work is futile when the information given to them cannot stick with them.