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Ethan Tordjman

Professor Beard

English 110

1 October 2023

Beyond the Bell: Lack of Confidence in My College Preparatory High School

The cold classroom goosebumps. With my phone in my backpack, I looked at the clock,

silver, with bright red numbers to tell the time. It was like a huge timer, counting down to the

moment of relief, when class would be over. The door to the classroom was a portal to an abyss

of sadness, boredom, and loneliness. I felt so isolated and unwanted–it was almost like I had

walked into the wrong room. Life at the college preparatory school, Buckley, was competitive,

intense, demanding, and dreadful. There was a heavy workload with little help. “In college, you

don’t get help. You’re on your own,” every teacher and administrator would say. This was the

school’s philosophy. I was not there to enjoy learning, to want to go to class, to get a positive,

well-rounded high school experience, or to create relationships with my teachers. I was there to

pretend. I was there to get straight As, to get into a good university, to prepare for college, and to

improve the school’s reputation. But this system and I were not compatible–because it was not

effective by my standards. Buckley is an effective high school if you just want to get into a good

university, but Buckley is not effective at preparing students for the real-world and real-world

problems. My high school was not “effective” for me because it focused solely on academic

preparation for college, did not teach me about real-world problem-solving skills, and created an

unsafe, negative environment, where I could not be myself, explore my interests, or engage in

genuine learning.
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Buckley’s focus is for students to be prepared academically for the next step, which for

them is college. They wanted students to be able to get into a good university and prepare

students by providing minimal help to thrive in college. The Language Building at Buckley

consists of two levels. The second level includes the College Counseling Office, a glass cube

completely covered by the “University Wall.” It shows the Ivy League school flags, with a

picture of the students who got in and their description. This is how the school programs its

students. When students walk past this wall covered in Ivy League banners, it pushes them to do

whatever it takes to receive those grades and get into those schools, even at the cost of academic

integrity, mental health, or a social life. This creates a toxic learning environment, rather than a

friendly, warm community where students can learn in a peaceful, enjoyable way, where they

care not just about their grades, but about the material they are actually taught.

Beyond my high school’s walls, grade-focused education through the United States has

negative impacts on students’ success and confidence. In an article published in The New York

Times called “What Students Are Saying About How to Improve American Education,” a North

Carolinian high school student, Andrew, argued that, “Everyone is so worried about grades and

test scores. People believe that those are the only things that represents a student. If you get a bad

grade on something you start believing that you’re a bad student” (“Learning”). This was what I

believed as well, because of my high school environment. I think that it’s important that students

know that they shouldn’t be frowned upon by administrators for getting bad grades; they should

be taught other ways of understanding the material. In my opinion, Buckley didn’t care how

much they were damaging the kids’ mental health or self-confidence in the process of getting

them into a good college. They didn’t give me motivation to learn, and it brought my self-esteem

down, knowing that the school’s target was just to find a way to get students into good
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universities, rather than caring about our learning process. If you weren’t able to keep up with

the standard, you were unimportant and weren’t given the skills needed to improve or succeed.

High school should be about much more than getting into college and being able to do

well in university courses. Students could learn how to look after themselves in the

real-world–for instance, learning about taxes, how to rent an apartment or get renter’s insurance,

learning how to make food or do laundry, managing money, or the stock market. High school

should socialize students to understand the norms of business, such as teaching them how to

apply for jobs, prepare for job interviews, learn and practice negotiation skills, and better

understand how to properly dress for and act in the workplace. An effective high school

experience should prepare students for real-world problems to come, and Buckley was

unsuccessful in getting their students ready for those problems. After high school, if you dropped

me off in the real-world with a budget of money, I would be lost, unsure of how to apply for

insurance or rent an apartment. In Jack Trapp’s article, “Why The American Education System is

Failing Us,” he argues that doing well on tests and memorizing facts equals success in school,

which doesn’t apply to the outside world (Trapp). He argues that school isn’t teaching skills that

are relevant in our modern society, so we should make educational advances that match up with

the technological world, and focus on critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and

communication.

If high school focused on more real-world development, it would be a better place for

students to grow educationally and emotionally and would be drastically more effective. In an

interview that I conducted with a Buckley student and close friend, Stephon, he stated that his

favorite course was nutrition because it actually had real-life applications, noting, that this class

taught me “the right nutrients and foods that should be ingested in a human to get all the benefits
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of looking good and feeling good...other classes I took in high school don’t even apply to my

daily life. Like not at all.” He finds that the most crucial class he took during his high school

career was the nutrition course because he was able to connect it to and apply it in his actual life,

demonstrating that students are more interested in schooling when they can learn and retain

information that they will be able to use in their future practices.

Buckley was not an effective high school because it failed to be a place of growth for me,

as it felt unsafe to be myself and explore my interests without risk of failure. My sense of

confidence was broken, and I stopped participating in class and group projects because I felt

alienated from the school community. I didn’t want to try because I thought if I did, it would be

wrong. In “The Purpose of Education—According to Students,” published in The Atlantic,

Caleb, a junior, argued that “the role of education…is to empower students not just to do what

they want, but to make mistakes. The more often you make mistakes, the more likely you will be

to do something important. Messing up is something that we have to foster” (Slapik). Caleb

suggests that it’s important that students know that they can make mistakes because that’s the

way they learn and grow the most. Unlike Buckley, an effective high school education should

teach that making mistakes is a healthy, crucial part of the learning process. Taking risks and

failing over and over again is the only way to succeed in life beyond high school.

Upon leaving Buckley, I’ve realized that my experience throughout high school was not

isolated to me–it is something many students across the country relate to. The American

education system often focuses too much on grades, success, college admission, and avoiding

mistakes. A lot of students feel overly stressed and anxious–and don’t feel motivated to learn or

to be taught because school isn’t a place where you’re able to safely make mistakes and learn and

grow from them. It can be an unhealthy environment to study in, explore your interests, or
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prepare for the real-world. In an effective high school experience, the door to the classroom

should be a portal to excitement, collaboration, creativity, and safe exploration of interests.

Works Cited

The Learning Network. “What Students Are Saying about How to Improve American

Education.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Dec. 2019,

www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/learning/what-students-are-saying-about-how-to-improve-

american-education.html?smid=em-share.

Slapik, Magdalena. “What Students Think Public Education Is For.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media

Company, 2 Oct. 2017,

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/10/the-purpose-of-education-according-to-s

tudents/541602/.

Trapp, Jack. “Op-Ed: Why the American Education System Is Failing US.” The Huntington

News, 26 Jan. 2021,

huntnewsnu.com/64775/editorial/op-ed-why-the-american-education-system-is-failing-us

/.