As humans, we are instinctively predisposed to enjoy education.  As babies, we are enamored by learning. Except for the fear of parental separation, the major sentiment among preschoolers and kindergarteners is excitement and exploration.  Though many elementary-schoolers complain about homework, most 8 to 11-year-olds still enjoy going to school.  In junior high, school is often disliked, but usually not despised.  By high school, however, this transformation takes a detrimental turn, and schooling officially becomes the bane of most students' existence.  How does this happen?  How does the American education system transform its children from babies who salivated at the thought of learning something new into a legion of adolescent high-school-haters?  I believe they accomplished this unfortunate transformation through a process I like to call "The Cycle of Preparation."

What is this Cycle of Preparation?  It is the process that we have all been experiencing for at least a decade, in which every aspect of our schooling is simply a form of preparation for another aspect of schooling.  Preparation has been lurking among us since the first day we entered preschool.  By definition, preschool was preparation for entering a K-12 school system.  In kindergarten, we prepared for first grade.  In first grade, we prepared for the future years of elementary school.  In fourth grade, we began a system of partially-blocked schedules to prepare for sixth grade.  Eighth grade was basically a year-long preparation fest for high school.  Now, we are in high school, and the cycle has not ceased.  The new frontier of the cycle of preparation: college.

It is hard to deny that we are in an environment based around the preparation for and admission into college.  College posters plaster the walls.  We have a whole system of classes known as "college preparatory."  The phrase "baccalaureate" of IB fame is based in the same Latin root as the phrase "Bachelor's Degree."  Sophomores and juniors recently sat through a forum in which 17 alumni reminded us how the IB program is helpful in preparation for college.

The most vexing example of all, however, is the constant barrage of reminders that we are taking "college-level classes" by an average of two to three teachers per day.  It has become the default excuse for workload.  "This is a little too much for one night, Ms. Blank."  "Well, sorry, Pete, this is a college level class."  "Can we possibly have more discussion and less lecturing?"  "Well, Pete, that'd be fine in a high school class, but you forget.  This is a college class."  "Can I go to the bathroom?"  "Nope…in college you wouldn't be able to." 

Many might be shaking their heads at this sentiment, wondering, "What is so bad about preparation?  What is wrong with teachers challenging us into getting out of the high school mindset?"  Well, I truly don't have a problem with preparation.  And I do not have a problem with doing college-level work. However, the Cycle of Preparation as a whole has a problem that lies in two loopholes that have culminated in high school. 

The first is the fact that we are building up to nothing.  The sentiment that has grown among our student population is that if everything is just preparation for the next thing, and college is just preparation for "the real world," and the real world is just preparation for retirement, and retirement is just preparation for death, then all we are doing here is simply preparing to die.  The reason that this sentiment has grown is because our school system has built our education sequentially.  Everything is cause and effect, everything is a preparation for the next link in the chain, every fact prepares us for the next fact, and every class prepares us for the next class.  The mindset that built the system this way is based on the fact that schooling is here to prepare one for life.  A more sensible and, in a way, more useful and efficient mindset would be that schooling and education is a part of life.

This format is parallel schooling, where life and schooling are intertwined as one.  What does this mean?  Well, first off, it does not allow school to become a quarantined island of a rigid “curriculum-is-everything” style of learning.  If something comes up in our collective lives, there should be enough structural breathing room to connect it to the class.  If there's a news event that pertains to the class, it should be mentioned.  The State of the Union should be discussed in history class.  Newly published books or articles should be mentioned in English.  Recent applications of mathematics should be mentioned in math.  However, the effect of life on courses is only half of parallel learning.  Courses should also affect life.

Many adults decry student apathy yet never question its source.  They cite video games or sleep habits to explain why homework completion is low.  Few even consider the likely possibility that homework completion is low because students do not believe that the homework is very important.  When a student works hard on a homework assignment, what is the reward?  A grade? Yes.  A letter or a number?  Yes.  Some more knowledge?  Maybe.  Anything else?  No.  The product of our decade of institutional educational output has been a series of letters and numbers.  Why not lower student apathy by making educational output affect our lives and communities?  Why not produce not only for grades, but also for something more?  Poems written in English class could be turned into poetry readings.  Government class debates could be turned into letters to the editor.  Geophysics projects could aid Falls Church streambeds.  Biology students could go to hospitals.  Let's not just produce grades with these 13 years of education— let's do something!  Let's have our educational experience affect life.

With these recommendations towards parallel schooling, we can plug the first loophole of the Cycle of Preparation.  However, a second loophole still looms.  The second loophole of Preparation is the simple fact that we are never in the setting for which we are preparing.  Sure, one can say we are in college level classes, but we still are not in college.  The sentiment that has grown among students is that we are given a college-level workload without the perks of attending college.  We may be reading out of a university textbook in IBH History, but we still have to ask to get a drink of water.  We may have to write intense 10-page papers in IBH English, but we still cannot leave campus at will.  We have a higher-education workload but not the breathing room of a college schedule.  Most irritating of all, we are learning facts that college students learn, yet do not possess the same educational liberty- we do not have the opportunity to learn the way we want.  In college, we will be educated but not instructed.  If we want to learn about a certain subject in our own special way, most professors are accommodating.  Most college projects are open ended and most written assignments are broad.  Yet in high school, despite learning at a similar intensity, our educational liberty is more confined.  We are forced to do worksheets and tedious homework, even if we, personally, have deemed the assignments unnecessary.  I am not saying that we should have a right to turn down homework assignments, but I am saying that we should have a right to say to a teacher, "I understand what the goal of this assignment is.  However, I have a different way of learning that better suits me, personally.  May I learn this in my own way?" or "I already know the material of this section, so I don't feel a need to do this.  May I take a pass on this homework and have my progress shown on the test?"

What is the solution to the fact that we are preparing for something that we are not in?  There are two options.  The first is to not challenge students to do college-level material.  This option is illogical because it goes against the educational axiom that we should strive to be the best we can be.  There is a second option, however.  To reach it, we must invert the old saying that "privileges come with responsibilities."  Responsibilities should come with privileges.  We are responsible to do higher level work.  Thus, we should have the privilege to more educational liberty.

Despite these solutions to problems caused by the Cycle of Preparation, there are still many who say that the cycle is necessary.  Their main argument is that "college is going to be hard, so we should make high school hard," or more generically, "The impending event (test, paper, grade etc.) is going to be something, so we might as well make now that same something."  This is the largest problem of the Cycle.  It causes the now to always be copying the impending future, thus never letting anyone truly be in the now, for our educational lives are set constantly in the future.  Confusing?  Yes.  Illogical?  Double yes. 

There is a surfeit of examples that quiet those who think this condemnation of the Cycle is generic and unrealistic.  For example, the Reading Log in IBH English must be handwritten because that is the way the IB Exam will be.  For many, typing would allow one to get more thoughts down and ideas organized.  However, this is disregarded by the preparation for a single test in the future.  Since IB Examiners do not like present-day analogies to history, IBH History of the Americas discourages them, despite the fact that many historians make their living comparing the present to history.  Many electives are not being taken by students who have a passion for those electives because they fear non-weighted classes will bring down their GPAs.        

The most grievous example of how the "impending doom of the future" has overtaken the present is how modern American education has dealt with the idea of grades.  Grades originally began as a learning tool.  They were ways that a teacher was able to officially communicate how well a student was doing in a class.  When one received a bad grade, they were not heartbroken, but rather inspired to try harder.  They were not meant as incentives to do work, but rather as tools of inspiration and understanding.

However, this unfortunately changed when grades became a pawn in Preparation's game.  Colleges began asking for high schoolers’ grades and grades were no longer educational tools, but rather ways of showing "how good we are" at a class.  Suddenly, GPAs and class ranks cropped up around America, and grades became a contest.  What began as a personal education tool between a teacher and a student soon became a rank that was shown to colleges, principals, counselors and transcripts.  As the Preparation-intoxicated grading system became the center of American schooling, education began to fall apart.  Students are no longer going to school to learn and better themselves.  Students are now going to school to gain grades, and take tests, and do assignments, which simply prepare us for the next link in life's chain.

I am not a pessimist.   Despite the fact we are in a flawed system, we are not unfixable.  There is a path towards a rejuvenated form of schooling, which goes back to the basics of education.  All signs towards this educational salvation point to one action - we must break out of the Cycle of Preparation. 

The era of living in the future must come to an end.  All students are tired of the tone that "the next thing is going to be where it all comes together and so we must prepare for the next thing."  Students are tired of this tone, for the next thing never comes.  Instead of having high school be wasted preparing for college, which is supposedly our educational magnum opus, let's have high school be our educational magnum opus.  Instead of having the mindset that "the next thing is going to be bad, thus the now has to be bad to prepare for the next thing," let's have the mindset of "the next thing is going to be bad, so let's have the now be the best it can be."  What can we achieve if our curriculum and schooling-style is dictated by what a college or test wants?  Instead of succumbing to the pressures of the future, our school should make its decisions based on what is best education-wise, not best preparation-wise. 

Let's not teach for success in college.  Let's not teach for success on the IB, AP, or SOL exams.  Let's not teach for success in the workplace or in "the real world."  Let's teach for the original purpose of education—the intrinsic human love for the pursuit and spread of knowledge.  Let's stop The Cycle.  Let's stop preparing to die.  Let's even stop preparing to live.  Let us not prepare for the future—let us learn in the now.