Abolish or Reform?

Throughout the world, students are encouraged to attend high school and continue their education. However, many students find it worthless and become uninspired. They blame the faculty, school policies, and fellow students, when they should be blaming themselves. Unchallenging course work is most likely a sign that the student isn’t taking a hard enough course. During my high school experience, students had the opportunity to take college courses through our high school. This gave the more advanced students a chance to practice the same routine as “normal” students, but still challenge and educate themselves. Abolishing high school would not solve any problems in our educational system. There are many ways to improve upon our school system; however, we need to start at the beginning.
In an essay by Harley Tong, high school is portrayed as “a waste of time and a struggle to remain interested in schoolwork.” He continues to describe his own experiences and how they led him to begin his college career two years earlier than most students. He complains of the way that he was physically and verbally abused by other students, which is the case in many high schools. High school is not only a cognitive learning environment; it is also a social learning environment. Students learn how to communicate with fellow pupils, teachers and administrators. They find out how to come independent from their parents and how to prepare for the rest of their lives. I believe that Harley Tong was simply too advanced for his surroundings. He most likely found the other students immature and didn’t fit in with them. In his case, he found a solution to attend a community college instead of his high school, which I commend him for. Many students in his situation would simply drop out, and that is not the answer.
George F. Will’s “College President’s Plan: Abolish High School” conveys ideas that had never crossed my mind. He states, “For various reasons, some rooted in American history and others reflecting recent developments, education has become, for the moment, the most salient social concern and therefore the most potent political issue.” Will introduces Leon Botstein, who doesn’t actually option to abolish high school, just to change the structure of our schools in general. Botstein says that high school was created for 15- to 18-year-olds who were still children. In today’s society, those children are now young adults who are physiologically and psychologically more advanced.