A Society Where Everything is More Important than Education

In today’s society, the most precarious problem a student can encounter is losing his or her cell phone. With that in mind, students may not have their priorities straight if they deem updating a twitter status and chatting with friends more important than their grades. Simply looking around a high school classroom, over half of the students will probably be sleeping, on their phones, doodling, or just not paying any attention. While statistically it may appear that test scores are improving, the reality is that America is slipping further behind in the world’s education rankings. With teens becoming more independent by procuring licenses and spending more time with their friends than family, they are being consumed by the emergence of drug use, social media, and electronics which appear to have a negative impact on students’ grades. Not restricted to these said causes, a student’s life at home and their relationships with their teachers may also yield alterations to GPAs and can negatively result in a student dropping out.

A recent study performed by The Miriam Hospital´s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine on college women showed that the average student spends nearly half of her day occupying herself with trivial electronic usage, that is, personal cell phone usage, internet usage, and watching television. There was a strong correlation that linked low GPAs with high usage of social media. The low GPA may be resultant of the fact that increased social media usage also yields lower classroom attendance, lower assignment completion rates, a lack of sleep, as well as low levels of in-class confidence. Not limited only to grades, levels of loneliness, anxiety, marijuana, and alcohol use also increase with the use of ...

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...nts may be able to be halted. In the United States, there is growing student apathy for education. One look around a high school classroom will yield signs of uninterested students who do not want to be there. With that in mind, over a million high school students dropout each year, and many more perform poorly in the classes that they do have. In order to address the issue, the reasons why high school students dropout and perform

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poorly must be investigated so these reasons may be pinpointed to stop the rate of high school student success. Both private and public education systems should carefully consider implementing changes to help provide for a better learning community for students and faculty alike. With the United States falling behind in the world education rankings, this country may begin to lose ground economically shortly after as a result.