The school system that we have today is very broken. Here are some examples:

Our school system was created in the Industrial Revolution and is designed to work for that period of history, not the modern day. Children are grinded down to fit the needs of the Industrial Revolution. We see this in the way we assign importance to different subjects: math and language arts are "the most important", science and social studies are a little under that, and arts, music, and everything else is at the bottom. We need to teach the arts, music, and everything else more because more people are going to end up in one of those fields. They should be the same time as the "core" subjects.

A lot of the things we learn are a complete waste of time, and we will never use them in life. We spend about 13 or 14 years in school before we even start talking about what subject we want to specialize in. We study so many details and we never get the big picture. We learn to do things that most us will never use in their jobs or personal life. We are wasting our time with details and failing to see the big picture. Students should be spending more time critically thinking and analyzing information themselves, not learning it. They should do real things and developing their talents.

School teaches us that some lines of work are better than others, and that life is a race. The system ranks us over and over again, and reminds us that most of us are not near the top. It seems like our paths are predesignated for us.

Our education system is built on the idea that everyone learns the same way, that everyone has the same mindset. All of has have different mindsets, but school doesn't take that fact into account. Our way of thinking is changed into the same mindset that was thought to be the best mindset by others. But there is no best mindset. When a student has a talent unique to them, they are told to hold it in and are bombarded with tons of useless information.

Being graded in school can be really demoralizing. Assigning a value to a human being is not human. Being graded all the time is actually crippling the students. People learn the most from their mistakes, but mistakes are the worst thing one could do in the context of contemporary schools. We are rewarding following blindly, instead of thinking, risking, evaluating and creating. The best way to get the good grades is to do things exactly in the way you are told to. But even if we forget the lacking morality behind the grading system, we can easily see that it's far from adequate. The world is full of people that got good grades in school and failed in life and people that got bad grades in school but succeeded in life. This means grades are simply measuring the wrong things and there is no way around it other than to get rid of the system entirely.

The sad truth about modern education is that it works to destroy creativity, personality and personal initiative in favor of standardizing people and their minds in order for them to fit better in to a the factories of 200 years ago. The modes of teaching are even older - coming from the Middle Ages. There is a teacher that tells you what to think and all your duties are to write it down. And if you don't do what you are told, you are going to be punished. We need to read our textbooks and learn the dry facts as if we are 100% sure they are all true. Until next year somebody will disprove or expand our knowledge on the topic.

I want to see a system that embraces independent thought, personal talents, making mistakes along the way, humanistic values and fostering creativity and uniqueness. I'm sure that if we decide to open our eyes to the inadequate education we are paying for and throw the old system away, we will inevitably come to something so much better. It will not only make the younger years of our lives more enjoyable, but our society more open, tolerant and productive.

Thank you for reading this. If you agree, please sign this petition and share it with your friends and colleagues. Together, we can fix this broken school system.