Angelo DiTocco
Throughout my entire life, I was what one might consider a gifted student. In elementary school, I had a memory like a 10-terabyte SSD. In middle school, I aced the advanced math and science classes. In high school, I got a top 1% SAT score and made it on the WatchMojo-style Top 10 list of students. And throughout college, I have yet to get a B. I spent my whole childhood under the premise that by taking advantage of my aptitude, I’d live a long and prosperous life with all the money I could imagine. But I’ve finally woken up and realized how ridiculous it all is. After spending 3 years living the lie that is higher education, and 17 years living the even bigger lie that is the education system as a whole, I am officially calling it quits.
Some might see this as a foolish decision. After all, I am in my senior year, so why not just stick it out and get my degree? The answer is that I can no longer in good faith support the evil and corrupt American education system. This article will be my last one, and after that, I will not be devoting another second of my time to this shithole. My only hope is that, after you read this, you’ll wake up to this total lie and consider dropping out on your own.
Let’s start with the history of school. Did you know that the American education system was designed back in the 1800s to teach kids to work in FACTORIES? That’s right! The school system’s sole purpose is to turn us into mindless drones so that we can spend our whole lives sewing clothes and getting our hands chopped off by giant machines! You might say, “oh, that’s outdated,” but think about it: schools back then had classrooms with desks, and schools today also have classrooms with desks! It’s exactly the same!
This is especially true with the “premier public ivy.” IBM, Lockheed Martin, General Electric—what do all of these big companies around Binghamton have in common? They all have manufacturing sectors! Our “career advisors” are tempting us with cushy, high-paying office jobs, but in reality, they’re probably trying their hardest to shove us into wage-slave positions where we see nothing but the color gray for 12 hours straight.
The experience of being in school itself is no fun either—it’s the same thing as a prison. You’re forced to be in a specific place at a specific time, and the food they serve is mediocre. In case that wasn’t enough evidence, the concept of the school bell—such as the one here that goes off every hour—is directly copied from SLAVERY! You can’t get any worse than that. Aside from the structure, students are treated with no dignity and respect whatsoever. Just the other day, I was minding my own business snorting crack in the lecture hall bathroom, when some fat, racist (I’m 3.6% black), sadistic PIG came in and threatened to confiscate my stimulants! Can you believe it? As you can see, the school Gestapo loves to infringe on our basic human rights, because to them, we might as well not have any.
These Orwellian rules might be worth putting up with if it meant learning useful things, but unfortunately, there is absolutely no value in what we’re taught in today’s education system. Why doesn’t anyone teach us how to do taxes? It would be so valuable and helpful to us, but instead, our misguided teachers choose to skip over it so that they can go over more bullshit topics like how the “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.” Literally why would anyone ever need to know that? Binghamton’s general education system is a perfect example of this, making us take classes where we learn things like “supply and demand” that aren’t used outside of class whatsoever. Our curriculum also doesn’t foster critical thinking or problem solving at all. You’d think that being curious and asking questions in class is a good thing, but when I tried to supplement my science lessons with a statement on how the topic at hand can be used to optimize my goon seshes, I was always told to “stop interrupting” and “focus on the quiz,” as if my insight wasn’t so ingenious that the whole class needed to hear it. Way to foster creativity, asshole!
Not only is the stuff we learn about in school completely useless and unengaging, but it’s also blatant propaganda. I walked through an elementary school recently (don’t ask why) and what I saw there was appalling. There was a HUGE pride flag in every single classroom! And not only that, it was an ultra-progressive one that had red and white stripes instead of the regular rainbow. Are they teaching these kids advanced homosexuality? There was also a poster that said “sharing is caring.” Fucking commies!
Average elementary school in 2024
Furthermore, the grading system is nothing more than late-stage capitalist conditioning (which is also bad). The teachers literally make us COMPETE to get As. It’s like they put us in Squid Game, but instead of playing Red Light, Green Light, we’re forced to write down names and dates like we’re a bunch of walking Google spreadsheets. And if we aren’t one of the lucky few who survive, we’re completely shunned and ostracized from society, never to recover from our blunders. Schools need to stop giving students brain dysmorphia with their impossible double standards and instead recognize everyone’s diverse talents. Albert Einstein once said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it’s dumb.” SO TRUE, KING! Maybe if our educators were brilliant people like Einstein, they’d actually appreciate my ability to write Review articles and give me 100s even though I didn’t do any of the homework.
Speaking of homework, that’s another aspect of school that’s causing widespread trauma as we speak. Teachers and professors churn that shit out left and right with the excuses of “practice” and “time management,” but in reality, they just have a hard-on for kids suffering. By taking away a whole 30 minutes of our lives every day, they are slowly chipping away at our sanity, and they know it. Psychologists speculate far and wide on what the reasons for today’s mental illness epidemic may be, but not once do they stop to consider that being forced to solve x+8=15 for x might be the answer.
But it doesn’t stop at mental illness. It’s clear that schools are physically dangerous for us as well. When schools were locked down due to the deadly global pandemic that was COVID-19, they rushed to get us back into school as fast as possible. Do they not understand how dangerous this is for us highly-vulnerable students? If it were under my control, I’d have school stay fully online forever. This would be great because I could go back to slacking off and cheating because of how much more effective online classes are for everyone. Yes, I also happened to be depressed when school was online, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it. Trust me.
And as if forcibly exposing students to lethal viruses wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that my own department is literally KILLING CHILDREN! Just look at this chalk that says so:
Oh, yeah, did I ever mention that the whole education system is a SCAM? We’re literally forced by counselors to go to these super expensive schools that charge $100,000 every semester, and then Joe Biden doesn’t even pay it off for us! Does he realize how hard it is to get a job as a Gluten-Free Microaggression Analyst? It’s not easy.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Alternative school systems have been tested all around the world and are showing marvelous positive gains for everyone involved. Just look at Switzerland, for instance. The education system in Sweden literally has no tests, no homework, and a 4-hour school day, half of which is recess. Not to mention, college is literally FREE there! And guess what! Studies show that Norwegian students end up better off than American students in every way possible! Refer to the graph below for details:
It’s clear that the education system can be WAY better than it is now, and it’s about time that we work to change it. After all, they call us Gen Z because we’re the last generation to put up with the world’s bullshit. Although I’m dropping out, I do have a few weeks before I officially leave this school, so I’ve decided to start a group called the Society of Underappreciated Students (SUS). Here’s the plan to get started: at 2 PM next Wednesday, we should all crowd into the union and start chanting, “ALL TEACHERS ARE BASTARDS!” Eventually, we’ll get students from across the country to join SUS, and we won’t stop until the education system is perfect. Who’s with me?