HW 42 - More Research and More Thinking

School may not be the source of our depression, but it definitely is one hell of a helper. And
what bothers me the most about school, is thinking how it most likely contributes to the suicide of thousands of teenagers. What exactly are we getting from school?

Just to be clear, I am not against nor in favor of school. This being said, I do not consider school as an "evil system" which has the only purpose of ruining children's lives. Even if this may be the case, I do not think of it that way because I have been taught that school is GOOD. My negative thoughts on it come from self experience.

After researching on school as a source of teenage depression, I have found many articles suggesting that indeed there are many students being negatively affected by all the pressure and discomfort in school, and most importantly these teach how to identify depression signs in students to avoid the risk of suicide.
Suicide is not only ending your suffering, but your entire life. Personally I have never had serious suicidal thoughts. The typical phrase "I ll just kill myself so I don't have to go through this or that" has never actually meant suicide. However, there are people out there how are seriously thinking of way to end their lives. And these people could be my classmates. Thinking it from this perspective, I have become worried about my classmates and friends. I do not know what is happening in their personal lives, but I have an idea of what they are feeling in school, and it might not be helping them. And although suicide will end all our problems, it will also end our dreams, hope and goals. But these are not even recognized when when we are depressed.

This is not the case for every student. While researching I found poems about school. There were some children who wrote poem expressing their immense love for school, and that is completely valid, but not understandable from my perspective. I can barely relate to people who love waking up every morning to go to school. It is not only strange, but somewhat concerning. I tend to think that those people are not entirely aware of what is happening in school. In other words, they are living in their heads, where it's "safe". Or perhaps I am the one who is unaware of what is happening, and I just happen to be a rather negative human being.

This topic overall, personally matters to me because of the simple fact that I am a student and I do not like going to school. Much less studying or doing homework. Just thinking that I have to wake up at 7:20am to go to school ruins my night and morning. And my feelings of disliking school are clear specially when I realize how happy I am when I have vacations. These negative feelings toward school, also represent that I become sad when I think of it. Because of college I am not able to enjoy one second of class. I currently feel very pressured and I also feel that my teachers have given up on me. I am NOT happy in or about school. At this point not even seeing my friends changes my mind.

I am truly concerned about myself, and because of the research I did I have been looking at myself and searching for any signs of depression. Currently I have some of them, but personally I do not think these will become any worse. I cannot say that I will not definitely commit suicide because I do not know what will happen to me in the future. However, at the moment I do not nearly wish to do so. My sign of depression is my lack of motivation and interest.
No matter what i do I cannot become interested for a long period of time. By not being interested I live unmotivated. This is also causing me to skip school, avoid my chores, miss my private lessons, etc. I see no point in doing my best when I know that is not what I want.
I really truly want to feel motivated again, it is a matter of time until I find something interesting enough to motivate me. I do not like being in "stand-by".

This whole topic also reminds me the movie Pink Floyd- The wall. Although I do not remember very well the main story, I do remember a famous song about children and their interaction with society and education. School was represented as a factory of making worms. And these worms represented society. That is something similar to my own point of view. I think that school is teaching us to become SOMETHING that will fit into a bigger group of people. It teaches us how to think in a specific way, so that we can function properly individually. School might as well just be a factory, and the system is just a whole industry. We are the product. The following link shows the mentioned song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24hkfhw-uXs

This video shows many different aspects and characteristics from a child's point of view. And it also explain the teacher's character. This is more like the children defending themselves from the teachers, the system. Even though a teacher might have the best intentions of all he or she will still brainwash his or her student into his or her own beliefs. Those believes shape us into something that fits. It could be a worm like the ones in the video. However, it was all a fantasy in the end. Children could not really go against it. All students could never agree to destroy and burn down the entire school. Because for these children, it is too late.