Dear Horace Mann: creator of the modern school system,

The pressure on students nowadays can be a lot. Not a lot of people know what the future has in store for them past high school or college. What comes “after” can be a mystery for a lot of people, and it’s a mystery that is not necessarily a fact of life but instead a problem inherent in our secondary education.

The Modern School: invented by you, Horace Mann, in the early 1800s was genius: a a huge step in the movement toward social equality. It effectively educated the masses and bridged the gap between the less fortunate and the privileged, creating a more equal society as said by Horizon Educational. But nearly 200 years later, our school systems have had a minuscule amount of change. Our understanding of human psychology has developed so much, and what we aim to teach our children has changed dramatically. Why has our school program stayed at your level?

Granted, we have made some improvements without you recently. We have better school lunches and one or two practical classes for money management. But the remainder of your system focuses on the “it will help you problem solve in the future” aspect. 38% of students you’re responsible for never going to college, and of the ones that do go, 40% will drop out. Last year in the US, 40 million students dropped out of their degree program according to the Education Data Initiative. 13 years of mandatory school for what? 40 million people left with book skills for the first 18 years of their lives, with hardly anything else to show.

If young adults had been prepared for real life instead of learning about cell anatomy and math theorems, we might be in a different spot. Instead of dropping out, students can find a way to better themselves and the people around them by finding their passion; instead the sitting through a 40-hour school week and pulling all-nighters just to pass one class. I guess my issue isn’t with the creators of this system but more with those who continue it to this day. We are not in the 1800s anymore. We are not being schooled into factory workers. We are individual people who need to be set up for a successful, free life instead of a life of struggling to stay afloat in this world of opportunists and giant corporations.