Our schools have a big problem. Our students aren’t engaged in their schoolwork. The problem is the lack of emphasis on the actual education. We focus on being eligible for sports and extracurricular activities but we don’t teach students that they need good grades to be successful in life to find a career. We see grades as a ticket to play sports or do extracurriculars that we can lose for one year and be fine the next.

 But the cruel reality is that students who get held back are more likely to drop out due to the difficulty of school. Not only does getting held back affect our likelihood to fail, but it also has the potential to decrease the overall intelligence of the student.

I am not suggesting that we get rid of sports or any other extracurricular activity, I am however suggesting that we encourage students to learn the subjects they need to learn. Some of our teachers don’t care if a student is learning the subject;  they only care if a student is passing the subject. How can we expect students to care about their grades if their own teachers don’t even care?

Now that I have highlighted a couple of problems, I think it’s time to discuss solutions.

One way to increase our students’ learning is by understanding that not every child learns the same way. There have been a multitude of scientific studies that show that students learn in different ways. I’m not saying that every child should have their own classes, but we do need to make the lessons more specialized toward the students.

The other way we can increase the graduation rate is by allowing students who have good grades to have more privileges. If we give rewards to students who have good grades than the students with lower grades will try harder in order to get more privileges. We should not give any privileges to students who are doing badly in class or in specific subjects. The requirement should be a certain G.P.A. It should not be higher than a student is capable, but it should be something that students can obtain through hard work.

The only thing that we should do no matter what, is to have better teachers and staff. I am not saying that our teachers are bad at their job but anyone who has been in a public school knows that some of the teachers are less than likable. We should not have teachers who are a negative factor in our students’ lives. We still need teachers who are strict enough to keep students in line but only if it is affecting the learning ability of those around them. Studies have shown that students who are taught by teachers with a positive and strong moral code grow up to have a positive and strong moral code. We do not have to get rid of any teachers, we would just require that they be morally positive and try to be engaging with all of our students and be a positive role model in their lives.