When you picture school, what do you see? Kids taking notes on paper? Reading a section in a textbook? Or perhaps a teacher writing information on a board, and students copying that information in their notebook. However you picture school, they all have one goal in common, and that is to help students learn. But studies find that students are having a hard time learning anything in school.

Kids all the time are complaining about going to school, either complaining about being boring or too stressful. But the most common thing complained about is homework. A recent study shows that kids have a right to complain about having too much homework. According to Kelly Wallace of the CNN health, elementary students are getting three times more homework than what is recommended by education leaders. 

There is a so-called 10-minute rule, but what is it exactly? It is a rule by the National Education Association and the National Parent-Teacher Association that states that there should be 10 minutes of homework per grade level each night: 10 minutes for first grade, 20 minutes for second grade, and so on. ‘’Parents reported first-graders were spending 28 minutes on homework each night versus the recommended 10 minutes. For second-graders, the homework time was nearly 29 minutes, as opposed to the 20 minutes recommended,” Wallace said.

One thing that most schools don’t pay attention to is health. Schools are not being active enough. And with obesity rates rising, shouldn’t schools try and take action? Literally. How to do that is to make physical activity mandatory. Getting kids active is just as important as learning science and math. Health classes try and get kids to eat healthily, but why do schools buy unhealthy foods? One answer, money. Though it would be a smart investment to get healthier lunches because healthier lunches improve grades and moods of students.

When going to adulthood, there is a lot of things that need to be known.  Like social skills, budgeting, and how to use a credit card. However, most schools don’t teach these skills, which is not very helpful for the future. 

“Credit card companies are aware of their ignorance and prey on them. If time was taken to teach students important life skills, it could be one of the most useful things they learn,” Robert Grimminick said, he is an author for Top Tenz.

A big problem around a lot of schools is standardized testing. The companies that make the tests have little to no knowledge of the schools they are testing. The tests go over topics that students have not been taught by teachers who are not expected to teach certain topics. These tests are also quite expensive, costing millions of dollars for companies to create and mark the tests.

What other changes should schools make? What should schools try and improve? How would you like to picture a school? How can you make a difference for your school?