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The Humanity We've Lost Through Education

Updated: Oct 6, 2022

By Paige Jensen-Rutter April 27, 2022


Student life. Remember it well? The countless essays, all-nighters, and numerous rantings about the teachers who will never relent when it comes to asking for extensions or turning in that sub-par late work done the night before. The expectations of parents, teachers, society, and ourselves weigh us down as we drudge through our dehumanizing education. The system is broken, and the unspoken letter of the law is the problem. Throughout the years of education, the lines between ‘student’ and ‘human’ have been blurred to the point where their drastically different meanings have been forgotten. Student life comes with countless unrealistic and unachievable expectations that destroy individuality and place major strains on mental health, annihilating the basic foundations of what it means to be human.


Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines student as “one who studies: an attentive and systematic observer” and defines human as “representative of or susceptible to the sympathies and frailties of human nature.” As far as education is concerned, the differences between their societal meanings are impossible to separate. The idea that our fellow man should be treated with compassion, understanding, and respect seemingly falling through the cracks. As a person, it’s shockingly clear to me that we should respect, protect, and care for our fellow human beings. As a student, however, it seems as if this has been forgotten on all sides of the equation. Students forget that their teachers are people as well, and need to be treated with respect. Whilst staff members forget and often contribute to the pressure that students are constantly dealing with no matter their age as they see them as students and nothing more.


I’m quite cynical for a high school student, but I’m not alone in my thinking. What do our lives even amount to during those years of schooling? The pressures pounding on us until we’ve become mere shells of who we used to be, submitting to the system that strips away the idiosyncratic elements of our humanity?


In high school, the pressure mounts. Words like ‘career’ and ‘finance’ and ‘college’ are thrown around, leaving most teens in a daze as they try to figure out what they want their life to be like down the road. Choosing a life path at 14.


Daunting.


Most 14-15-year-olds don’t even know who they are, and yet they’re asked what they want out of life, only to have a stack of cure-all-questions sort of pamphlets shoved at them. Pamphlets loaded with dense language and enough information to knock someone out more swiftly than a brick. That’s pressure for you. And in high school, “‘You still feel the pressure [from people saying] “my parents went to Harvard, or my parents went to Yale Law school,”... ‘Even if it’s not Harvard or Yale, even if it’s Boston College, some feel that pressure all the time, and I don’t feel it’s really healthy’” (Abrahamian qt. in O’Rourke & Feist). This combined with the fact that most teens start looking for a job as young as ages 15 & 16 to get “work experience,” often provides a whole other set of work-related stress. This determines if they’ll get hired at other places in later years and takes away from time spent on school, ultimately adding to the daily stresses of life. For some students, getting a job is a matter of life and death, determining factors at home and carrying their families on their backs. School just adds to the load. And it’s not only the pressure on students to succeed and go to college; it’s the toxic perfectionism mixed in with the factors of competition to get there. All for the sake of several fancy pieces of paper that showcase extreme student loan debt to the world. With such high standards for oneself and the constant ‘need’ to be that perfect student, it’s no wonder that “anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation are only some of the mental health problems that specialists have repeatedly linked with this form of perfectionism” (Sandoiu).


I’ve seen the rise in anxiety and mental health issues in my generation as well as others, and while quarantine made us all more aware of them, our education system still forces us to brush it under the rug. Why? Because there’s no time for sleep–a now precious commodity– and remembering to eat simply falls through the cracks. Please reread that previous sentence if you have to. Because of school, critical things one needs for the mind and body to function are being forgotten in the quest to cram knowledge into the growing and adapting mind of a teenager. There’s seldom time to socialize because there’s work to do, grades to keep up, and tests to study for. Because being depressed, anxious, or suicidal with the mounting pressures of student life pressing in on us takes up too much space on a clock. The aspects of human nature ignored for the sake of a few points on a GPA that will determine the rest of life. There’s no time to be anything other than the perfect student for that future college transcript. Because we’re just that. Students, not humans. Because there’s no time to remember how to be people anymore.


Because Grades. Are. Life.


Where did the humanity go? When did this system tear away the very core of who we are, destroying our individualities because there just isn’t time for them anymore? When did we lose sight of the clear, unjaded humanistic lens we once knew? The one that guided us towards our fellow members of society with nothing but kindness and respect?


Furthermore, it’s not just the students who’re trying not to lose their humanity to the school system. Students are absolutely vicious when it comes to dehumanizing their teachers, painting them as monsters who give bad grades simply because they feel disliked by the teacher. Because blaming someone else as the cause of all their anxiety makes it easier to deal with. We’ve all been guilty of it. Calling our teachers names and blaming them for our poor grades, never stopping to think of them as human. Never realizing that they are trying their very best to do their job, just like us as students.


“The bell doesn’t dismiss you. I do.” – Many Teachers At Some Point In Their Careers


And yet I feel like this is wrong. The bell dictates the courses of our lives, but we’re the ones who dismiss each other, student and teacher. Choosing to ignore the fact that we’re all just trying to get home and destress at the end of the day. Dismissing each other as irrelevant because we’re just students and teachers and that relationship doesn’t seem like it will ever change.


Some may argue that schools set the right amount of expectations and push us forward in the best ways. Looking at the increased suicide rates and mental health issues among students and teachers, among the fellow human beings we interact with on an almost daily basis, you can plainly see that this is not the case. Emily Kaplan claims that emotional labor is “often invisible and almost always undercompensated” in teaching: a statement that showcases the decreased support provided in schools.


In closing, we’ve lost sight of the fundamental aspects of being human, straining our mental health as we struggle to cope with the unrealistic and unachievable expectations of student life. Remember kindness. Remember the person next to you is struggling too. Gain back your humanity. Treat those around you, student or teacher, with newfound kindness and a sense of respect as you bear in mind that we all have a right to be treated as human.



Works Cited


Feist, Jessie, and Sidney O'Rourke . “Students: ‘We Feel Pressured to Succeed, and It's Harmful.’”

Wayland Student Press, 2022,

“Human Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, 2022,

Kaplan, Emily. “Teaching Your Heart out: Emotional Labor and the Need for Systemic Change.”

Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 19 July 2019,

Sandoiu, Ana. “The Effects of Perfectionism on Mental and Physical Health.” Medical News Today,

“Student Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster,


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