The Education System Vs Gen Z

As with every generation the majority of our lives been spent equating our worth to a random selection of numbers and letters which determine what we can achieve and where we end up.

Watching my younger siblings take their GCSEs and SATs, a 16 year old who has been a master at sewing since they were old enough to hold a needle and a 12 year old who was building complex machines out of lego as soon as he levelled up from duplo. It hurts to see them slowly lose their spirit because their schools only care when they haven't done their homework, or when their shirt isn't tucked in. They have the lessons they enjoy cancelled and are made to focus on the ones that our government think are the most important.

Even the systems put there to safeguard us are failing. With one UK student dying by suicide every four days it feels like the odds are stacked up. And for many who are affected by this we have nobody else to fall back on. The NHS mandated CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) all of us know too well is a plaster stuck over a gaping wound of lack of support. Even if you're lucky to find a member of staff who really cares the likely-hood is that they aren't there for you the other 18 hours of the day. Everyone knows that its only a matter of time until either we or someone we care about will just become a part of that statistic.

What should be a safe space for our Kids, Teens and Young adults is Instead, a system, like the rest of the country is systematically Racist, Classist, Ableist and Sexist. This doesn't mean that everyone and everything in it is outwardly bigoted but rather that social injustices are engrained into every fibre of the 'western world'.

We have managed to turn the education system into an introduction to capitalism. where the children from the most privileged backgrounds get the top jobs and the others get ignored. It has been decided for us that those kids who are better at English or more mathematically inclined are the smartest but this forgets the ones who are more creative or god forbid interested in something outside of the curriculum.

I feel my heart shatter every time I get given a grade that to my high school would've been just not good enough. Some students cope with this by not trying, can't get your heart broken if you didn't give your heart to it in the first place. But for some it has to be perfect and they know the feeling of spending hours and hours on some homework and it not being quite what they were asked for.

There simply isn't a way that this whole system can be catered towards everyone when the highest grades are reserved for the private schools and the lowest scores result in not being able to find work or qualify for higher education.

Media From Wix 18.05.23