Whenever I see an ice-skating, gymnastics, or sports movie, I always wish I could do everything they could do in the movie. That’s kind of how I felt reading this excerpt. I can’t help but wonder what my life would have been like if I had gone to that school.

When Mr. Bell and Mr. Lessing summarized what the reading was about, I though it would be some wacked up hippy school that believed children needed to meditate every hour. But after two pages I realized this sounded a lot like the dream school I had described to my friend just weeks before. A school where you didn’t have to go to classes that didn’t interest you, or didn’t have to go at all. It sounded like the same idea as Summerhill.

I know I’m not as happy as I could be and want to be. I also know that the number one, and pretty much only, reason is school. It seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Let’s require a seven-hour school day, then send the kids home with hours of homework! Really? Way to let kids be kids. Anyway, that’s not the topic of this paper.

Happiness to me is being satisfied with your life. Waking up every morning and looking forward to the day ahead. I rarely hear a peer say they were happy to be at school, while I’ve hear countless times I’m tired, I hate school, I don’t want to be here. If no one wants to be at school, why in the world would they want to learn? I think we would all be a lot happier if we only took classes that interested us. I agree that we need to learn the basics and I find elementary and middle school useful, but once you reach high school you should be able to focus on one thing. Of course not everyone knows what they want to do in high school but by then you know the subjects that interest you. If you focus on one area, such as math or art, you might just find what you want to do with your life. I just find it pointless to fill your day with required classes like typing when I can obviously type; how else would this paper exist?

Happiness is doing what you love and being with the ones you love. I happily wake up at eight in the morning to go hang out with friends, or go to the art wing at school, or go to dance, because those things make me happy. Waking up to go to school makes me unhappy because I know I’ll just trudge through it all. Yeah I’ll see friends, but I will also listen to lectures, do homework due next period, and get more homework. I’ve recently been thinking about becoming a jewelry designer. The ONLY class that will benefit this dream at all is jewelry making. But I’m stuck with required classes that only cause frustration and stifle my ability to grow as a jewelry designer because they take up the valuable time I could be using for jewelry making. What good will it be to know the properties of a parallelogram or the history of the Han Dynasty? What are the chances I will remember any of this if I do become a jewelry designer? Zip. I feel like our society is making our children less happy by requiring them to do things they don’t wish to do. Maybe all the adults say we are just lazy, unappreciative students who will ultimately benefit from learning self-discipline. But try teaching us to learn what we love rather than shoving meaningless lessons into our brains.