School is harder than average adult life

I'm 25, with a college degree in Psychology + minor in Neuroscience. Parents and teachers constantly try to brainwash you guys into thinking that you have it easier in school and that adult life is much more stressful and unforgiving with less protection, this couldn't be further from the truth. Adult life is 10x easier and you guys have it the hardest.

1. Schools operate in a way that is psychologically damaging to the mental health of anyone, but especially young kids and teens. The absurdly early start times, the anxiety-inducing strictness of a fixed unchangeable schedule, classroom rules, having to stay seated for so many hours a day at a time in your life when you naturally have more energy, extremely hard work over a long period time only being rewarded with something like 1 grade, or 2-3 credits at the end of a whole year, the total lack of basic common sense autonomy, with teachers going as far as trying to restrict when kids go to the bathroom, eat a snack/drink, leave and re-enter the building, punishing kids for trivial things that no one cares about in the real world or on the jobs..etc. Schools are literally operated more similar to low-security federal prisons than anything in the work place.

2. Children have an astonishing lack of basic human rights in this supposed "first world country", but it is especially bad in grade schools. Physical needs such as being able to get enough sleep when their brain is still developing, eating decent food, right to use the bathroom, a reasonable temperature in the building..etc are all blatantly disrespected. In the real world and workplace, you are rigorously protected by OSHA regulations, labor laws, compensation for injuries/illness suffered on the job, and half the stuff they pull in schools wouldn't fly for a second even in the most difficult jobs. And the most important thing is, in a job, you're getting paid, and every minute you're clocked in whether you're actively working at the moment or not. Which is the next point..

3. The lack of pay. I'm sorry but school is basically a form of unpaid labor by students. If it's compulsory with minimum standards and all those rules, with the amount of hours you put in every day/week and then overtime with excessive hw, you should be getting some level of pay, even if it was something like $5/hour to be saved into a bank account available upon graduation/turning 18 for the future (that parents couldn't touch). And then incentivizing good grades and studying by increasing this pay to $10 or $15/hour for getting above average scores in classes. Or even $1,000 bonuses for getting the top 20% in a class or something. Dedicating 12+ years of your life to forced work and losing sleep/freedoms throughout should be paid, no matter what the purpose. That's basic ethics and in accordance with how the real world works. And all schools should be required to follow the exact same OSHA regulations for air conditoning/heating/sanitary environment.

4. Being Compulsory. The required standard for mandatory schooling is far too high. Each high school class goes way too much into detail for what are supposed to be foundation courses like Trig/Global history. 97% of it you will not need. EVEN in more STEM-oriented fields due to the use of computers for all of that stuff automatically. No one needs to understand how electron-orbitals in chemistry work even to become a doctor. But the main thing is that the compulsory aspect of school is so unrealistic and opposite to the real world. In the real adult world, you can quit a job and start a new one and there's nothing they can do about it. Most jobs have to pay for training, you can search out of the millions of jobs for ones with hours you like, and even ones where you can set your own hours. Most jobs, once you are trained and know what you're doing, that's it. It does not get any harder. School you are constantly taught more and more information compounding on itself that gets more and more difficult overtime. Most jobs don't involve so much constant unreasonable amount of memorizing. Or classes that assign massive workloads having no idea what you're getting from 6-7 other classes. Jobs aren't so disorganized like that. Regent exams (in NYS) are too long, I mean multiple essays for each history one and the English one? Come on. Compulsory education should not be until the 12th grade, and has no need to be. 10th is likely good enough in most cases (assuming they take out the useless filler classes like 4 years of ELA or GYM) and actually incorporate real life things like classes in job searches, how to handle bank accounts and file taxes..etc, mental health awareness courses (not the dumb general "Health" that they do and then ironically break every health rule outlined in there for kids when they actually structure school. It's bad for both your physical and mental health, worse than "using too much social media" or "violent video games" or whatever other debunked nonsense child psychological theories. (What's funny is I read so many threads online with parents arguing relentlessly about why phones are unhealthy, when they are obviously the ones obsessed with replying to comments lol)

5. As I just touched upon in #4, instead of having entire 10 month long courses in Algebra/Trig/Chemistry, actually put courses relevant to daily life in. Like "Fundamentals of internet usage and safety", "Basic accounting", "Resume making and Job applications", "Mental Health", "Nutrition and Exercise", or even "Travel", not the ridiculous "common core curriculums" that are almost totally pointless, irrelevant, and do nothing to help with real life skills or reasoning ability. Global history..we don't need to understand how every single ancient civilization developed, the focus needs to be on Civics and how the US government works. And more importantly, the constitution, knowledge severely lacking even on the very top of these governments...

Additional Pointers:

Teachers may have said bogus things like "oh this is nothing when you go to college next year you'll be a number in a giant lecture room where the professors won't even know your name or care about you"...they have that totally backward. I'm still in contact with a couple of my professors from college, one of them even immediately remembered me when I emailed him for a survey or something 2 years later. Most of them were very nice, empathetic, down to Earth, easy people to interact with. College workload is far less, more gradually, reasonably paced, and you just have a few exams and maybe a paper or 2, if that, in a class, and you only take 3-4 classes a semester, you pick and choose what hours you want for everything, there's tons of student resources for counseling, medical, job placement, computers with unrestricted use, student centers/faculty offices..etc, with a totally peaceful atmosphere unlike overcrowded high schools. High school was ridiculous, up to 100 HWs in total for the year in 1 course, 12+ exams in some cases + a couple projects + classwork, multiply this by 7. The workload at even the easier schools (I went to Brooklyn Tech) is totally insane and unreasonable for teenagers and gives them 0 free time. And so many people expect them to work too? Insane. The average workday you do your stuff come home, and are done, off the clock, they can't even message you, and anything after your normal clock out time is 1.5x pay. With that logic, good grades on hw should be weighted 1.5x your normal grades.

And for another comparison, teachers get paid a salary to teach the same things over and over, but every new class/grade learning it it's their first time, and unpaid. 

Passing scores are too high, and I'm glad I finished 8 years ago as I read something like they want to up the min passing score on certain regents exams to 75% or even 80%? Totally unreasonable. Minimum passing score for all humanity classes should be 50% since 97% of it is useless for daily life/future, and only 65% for everything else (some schools its 70 which is ridiculous). Standards way too unreasonable for people's whose brains aren't even fully developed yet to handle the workload and lifestyle.

Finally, there should be much more available pathways for people who would just rather work than finish school to drop out sooner and get a job if they want. 16-17 is too old as that basically forces you to finish junior year at least or even just the whole thing if you were born later in the year. If a kid/teen can show they can hold down even a part time easy-going job and are consistently saving money, they should not be required to get any type of degree. The real world doesn't end up really caring what your grades are. And college debt is not worth it unless you have like an 80% chance of getting into one of the few very specific STEM fields or solid high paying career choices. Spending 5-6 figures just to "enrich your mind" is the most laughable philosophy I've ever heard. I personally regret college and wish I had been working then too vs just the last couple years after college. (I also took my sweet time 5 years to graduate cause I spaced it out how I wanted, not cramming an absurd amount of work in at once for grade school students).

So yes college and working are far easier due to the much more sensible workload and more importantly being treated like a human being.

I was just about to add that point. Kids get sick so frequently from school, suffer things like ear infections..etc, for what? Anyone sick should be REQUIRED by law to stay home for 10-12 days minimum, for their own health, and to not infect other people. So many jobs out there where you can spend the day on your own with almost no germs risk (truck driver..etc). The whole "minor thing" is just part of the absurd ageism against younger people that quite frankly is worse than other forms of social bigotry. The US couldn't even bother to ratify the UN Child Rights Convention that literally every other country including Somalia. Your emotions are accurate, not "teen drama". Age limits are ridiculously high for most things (except for age of consent/military/age of criminal responsibility, those should all be 20+)

If the age of consent is 20+, half of my HS would have gone to jail. For age of marriage, yeah, i agree.

Although college is wayyyy easier academically and life-wise even in engineering, it's far less close knit socially than hs/ms/es. That is the one thing i feel will never return.
In chess club people just screw around within the club and then leave after the club ends.

And this lists a good lot of the points why the public school system is pretty useless in general.

I agree factoring quadratics is worse than a laborous job from 9-5

School is there to separate the wheat from the chaff. Nothing more.

You get more days of paid time off per year at almost any union job.

Math was my best subject, and I totally forgot most of all that. 0 point, nothing I couldn't have learned on my own anyway. I occasionally look back at the regents exams site, they've made so many of them more difficult than when I took them in 2014-2017 it's mind boggling.

Yes, and then parents will dump random unhealthy medications on kids.

What they fail to realize is that anti-anxiety/depressants medications are meant for correcting brain chemistry when you already have a stable emotional life + decent health and just some neurotransmitters got out of whack and need correcting to enjoy that decent/stable normal life. It won't work as well when outside factors are causing it. School is the #1 cause of the insanely high anxiety and depression rates in young people, that is certainly not worth the few things you'll remember from it later in life. Then other adults will complain about things like "driving 10 hours straight is more tiring" LOL that's just laziness. It's the easiest thing in the world.

FALSE

School (and even uni) was so free. It's essentially life's tutorial.

Pressuring kids into those extracurriculars is a form of psychological child abuse. I chose chess cause I liked it, was a break from school, but it should be 100% the kids decision ONLY. Football quite frankly is a ridiculous sport as it is, let alone for kids to play. You don't need sports scholarships because it's perfectly fine to just go to the basic public university system in whatever state you're in. I went from one of the top 60 high schools in the country, to CUNY. Can't even imagine an ive league college. Many jobs these days don't even care about a college degree, let alone which college. They want working experience.

I agree. I just finished my freshman year of high school, and it truly sucks. I feel a sense of dread with every day I wake up and have to go to school, knowing that I have eight hours of useless learning to do.

So, there’s a reason that more and more kids are depressed nowadays. Going through a day of school is a grueling process, and it doesn’t even end at the end of the school day. Especially in high school, you have daily homework, and there’s always some kind of test you have to prepare for or a project you have to finish by a certain date. It adds to the stress of kids, and doesn’t make learning fun at all.

The school system has not been changed since the beginning, and you’re forced to sit in your chair for seven hours a day, only really getting to socialize during your lunch period or in between classes. AI and the internet has made it to where we have everything at our disposal to use, but we are still forced to learn useless information daily, incorporating subjects like algebra, biology, and other useless information. The only useful class for me was my business class, which taught me the basix of running a business. Other than that, I spent my time playing games and relying on my natural intelligence, and got mostly Bs in my classes.

It’s reassuring to know that it gets easier. I’m glad that I realized that school doesn’t really matter, and that our system is outdated and needs to be fixed.