The goal of high school is to prepare students for their future by the time of graduation, both in academics and in maturity. At UAHS the first part is passed with flying colors but much of the school system falls short in the second point. As seniors we are growing more and more conscious of the fact that in just four short months many of us will be moving out of our parents’ houses into dorms. With that will come the expectation for us to act responsibly and with maturity. Yet, we are not being taught any sort of independence at school to aid us with this transition. This issue also seems to be getting worse as time moves on. Our schools seems so terrified of any sort of bad press that they have done a full 180 to a bad version of our school that actively nurtures immaturity in its students. The school has slowly taken away many of the things that gave high schoolers independence. With that, many of the students around us at school are either left unprepared for college or simply frustrated with the excessive oversight.
This can be demonstrated by many policies at Upper Arlington including staying on campus during lunch, e-hall pass, the phone ban and the forum signout sheet. All of these have led to students not learning responsibility. Having your every move be tracked has made me feel as though I am in a prison instead of school. Many of my friends who attend other schools are able to leave school during lunch and walk the halls during their study halls, while I am not allowed to walk a few feet down the hall to talk to the juniors during forum or go to the bathroom without filling out a pass saying exactly where I am going to be.
There are many students who attend this school, including myself, who are 18, meaning that we are considered adults and have the ability to join the military, be given the death penalty and vote, yet we are treated as very incompetent and untrustworthy little kids. At home my parents have always had the philosophy that they would guide me to make good decisions but if I did not I would learn the consequences of my own actions and learn naturally to not do it again which I think has prepared me very well for when I go to college in a few months. The school does have some good consequence systems in place like if you are caught skipping school (or not coming back after leaving campus for lunch) you will get a Saturday school, which is good to teach kids that actions have consequences. But if we are not trusted enough to be given an option to make a bad choice then we are never going to learn. Some of the best lessons I have ever learned have been from having the option to do the wrong thing, doing it and then experiencing consequences for what I did. For example, when I was about 13, I stayed up all night on my phone before a school day. My parents could have taken it away before bed and I would have gotten adequate sleep that night, but instead they made me go to school and practice after so I would get to feel why sleep is so important. It is safe to say that I understand that I made a bad decision that day and in college when I get the freedom to do what I want I will always prioritize sleep since I know what it is like to not get enough.
The school also excessively uses hall passes and personal control to track students. I take classes at Columbus State in the morning in which I am trusted to drive, alone, to the downtown Columbus campus and attend classes. Then I get back to the school for the afternoon and am required to create hall passes for the smallest things. For example, to go to the library from forum I am required to have four different check in points just to move 50 feet down the hall. There is no reason I should have to make a pass that is then accepted by both my teacher and the librarian, then have to sign in at the library and have my name called out by the librarian as a check in to confirm that I am still here. On top of all of that, I am then required to sit somewhere in constant view of the librarian, meaning no benches or couches facing the other direction or huddle rooms. This constant need for oversight is completely unnecessary. Students who are skipping class from the library are few, and they will skip whether or not they have to sign in multiple times. The only people these rules harm are the people who are trying to find a quiet study place. I have friends who refuse to go to the library simply because the whole system is such a hassle and wastes almost 15 minutes of your study hall between waiting to make passes, signing in and being disrupted by the constant shouting of names.
Since the system that has been set up for us since we started attending school in this district does not prepare us for the freedom we have in college or after high school, we have to learn self control on our own. Later in life when we have to make our own choices, we will have to teach ourselves to make the best ones for ourselves. Even though the school has not done the best job of allowing us to make our own decisions, we all have a place outside of school where we can practice having freedom and learn how to deal with it before entering the outside world.
