Why do kids hate school?

I cannot relate to this because I loved school. But as a kid growing up, all of the other kids hated school and it seems to be a universal thing. Not the social part, but the learning part. Why is this? Why did I appreciate it when the other ones groaned and grunted about schoolwork and homework?

Hello felicia0923

Some of it relates to what students see as being personal relevance in their every day life and future significance of what they need to know.

It also depends on level of understanding.

If a student does not really grasp the meaning of concepts they will simply stop learning a particular concept / subject until they are extremely disengaged.

Also really truth be told some teachers simply don't know how students learn. They use their own preferred learning style and are simply unable to adapt a lesson to suit a wide range of learning styles, interests, personal relevance and future significance in the lives of students who are fortunate enough to be under their care for a short duration in time.
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Welcome to Psych Central, felicia. I don't know exactly because I liked school because I was a very competitive person and wanted to do good. What I did not like about school is the fear of failure. The anxiety and stress levels were high especially on tests. But it did teach me how to deal with stress!

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I hated it because it was like a prison. You're shoved together with a bunch of people you don't like. You get picked on, you see bullying, you're always being made to feel not good enough. Exams are stressful, teachers are unfair and extraverts rule. To me it was just an ego show. It was absolute hell.

I think anything regimented where other people are telling you when to show up and where and what to do, etc. It's like "work" for adults. Unless you are focused on what you are learning and enjoying it, as you did, or are working at a job you love, etc. it feels like someone else is calling the shots.

Very good question. My friends who opted out of college by choice did not see the value of it knowing they would not want to be there and would rather work. (they didn't really like precollege either but still graduated). Imo this is very responsible thinking. They are actually much happier now working for less than average than they were in school. Anything more specific than that I would have to ask but that much I know at least. So I guess working early is what made them happy where as school made you happy. Hope this helps

I work with kids who do not attend school. I've heard at least a zillion reasons for not liking school, some make very good sense. Some are bogus nonsense.

reasons I've heard or observed for not attending/liking school include, in no particular order

"School starts too early" - doesn't matter what time school starts, they don't want to drag themselves out of bed and go to school. (I consider this one of the bogus ones. If they didn't stay up until the wee wee hours of the morning playing videos games they would be able to wake up in the morning.)

Let's face it folks, academics are not for everyone. Some people excel at repairing things, working with plants. I think it's a shame that schools in my area have eliminated vocational/technical programs. Let's bring back those programs for the students who do well in those areas instead of trying to force them into a program that does not suit them.

This is very much not a politically correct statement, but not everyone is a candidate for Mensa. Intelligence is on a bell curve. There are students who struggle to making barely passing grades. Learning is hard work for them. Who likes going some place where you work as hard as you can and you're still not successful.

Bullying is a reality in schools. Doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to figure out that a person is not going to like going to a place where they are treated like shite.

I admire teachers. They have an incredibly stressful and challenging job. That said there are some who need to find another way to earn a living either because they just plan are bad at teaching, have burned out and just don't care or a dozen other reasons.
A subset of the above is those teachers who treat all students as if they are all the same. Different people have different learning styles, ya gotta teach in a way that the student comprehends.

I see a scarily large number of kids with undiagnosed learning disorders or mental health problems that interfere with learning. Again, how can we expect a kid to want to go some place where they are set up to fail? I'm likely to take some heat for this, but another subset are those kids with a diagnosed disorder, such as ADHD, but the parents refuse to put them on medication. Yes, the decision to medicate is the parent's right, but how can you expect a child to learn when they can not sit still long enough to absorb the information?

Someone mentioned the regimentation of school. There are those free spirits who chafe in that environment. I remember thinking in high school that it seemed their (school) goals was to turn us all in to automatons.

Then there are the kids who come from families/environments that do not value education. I can't tell you how many kids I've worked with whose parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents never finished school. The parents take the attitude that they are doing okay (usually on public assistance or working some minimum wage job) without and education, so why should their kids bother?

hi felicia
i dont understand it either because i loved school too. welcome to psych central. you will find we have several forums where you can post about your concerns and receive feedback from other members. you will get a lot of support here. again, welcome

Welcome felicia. Not all the kids or teens hate school...someone dislike things like tests, but in general they don't dislike school. In depends. Personally, I didn't like school, but for the 'social' part, not for learning. Though sometimes the work was really to much...I disliked also this sometimes, though I like learning...but possibly without so much pressure.
I think that the reasons that the others pointed out can be true.
However, welcome again here

It's boring. You're forced to sit in the same seat for over an hour. Hardly any break between classes, just enough to go to the bathroom or go to your locker. You get bullied. You're being forced to be there, learn things you don't care about. Sorry I have been without my adderall for a month now and I hate school right now. I need it back.

I guess I just don't understand how people could LIKE school. I like college overall right now except without my adderall it's a drag. I had ADHD in school growing up and I was soooo bored out of my mind. I was always the new kid because of moving so many times. I never fit in. So socially it was a nightmare. Academically it wasn't that bad except because I was in so many different schools I was either ahead or behind on a lot of curriculum. I just hated my childhood and school and I'm in a piss poor mood right now because I am without adderall and I am depressed as hell (not sure if theyre related or not) and don't see anything good about going to school as a kid being bullied and pressured. Being a kid sucks. Living sucks. Everything about life sucks so bad. I hate my life.

School was very painful, boring and pathetic. It felt like a chore. I dropped out in grade 11, because I couldn't stand the perpetual popularity contest and daily bullying. I was targeted because of my social skills and eccentric interests. These are pathetic reasons to bully and scar someone for life. Now that I'm an adult I am free to be myself.

My older sister loved school. Nobody really teased her and she had a lot of friends. Personality types that are well suited for the mainstream school environment seem to have a more enjoyable experience than us who lack them.

Hi felicia,

Welcome to PC! I don't come accross many with my name, so an extra special hello, nice to meet you

My oldest, who's 12, recently posed the same question. If bred into an educational type of family, guess the appreciation for learning exists. Some don't like it for reasons already posted, in this thread. I told my son, some struggle with authoritative style approaches. I live in a community that asks the same question. It's complex, incentive alone isn't the full answer...even vocational secondary education requires an acceptable application. Not certain where that leaves the remainder of the pack.

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((((krisakira))))

One thing I hate a lot is homework. We get given ridiculous amounts, meaning that almost as soon as we get home we have to do yet more school work. I hate this more because I pretty much have no motivation, meaning that I quite often don't get this homework finished on time, so the teachers hate me, meaning that the time I have to spend with them is awful, and therefore, I no longer like going to school... Also, almost every single thing you get taught you know is going to be entirely useless in your future.

I liked school for the learning. I didn't like the socializing part because I'm very quiet. I can't wait to start college in May.

person / environment mis-match.

thinking back... my mother played a lot of educational games with me. we had fun playing the games. she rewarded me for learning stuff and i developed a love of learning.

then pre-school was (partly) an extension of that. i remember learning how to skip (learning what skipping was). i remember learning how to draw people... things like necks and even bodies (you wouldn't believe how many legs and arms coming out of heads there were) and so on... again, learning was fun. conservation of shape with the water trough...

then school was an extension of that again. spelling words. and some stuff with numbers, i think i do remember. writing paragraphs... reading to younger kids and helping them improve...

then i moved to a public school with a much higher student to teacher ratio. the teachers... they didn't seem to have a love of learning. they were more focused on managing behavioral problems and / or the kids at the bottom of the heap... the kids whose parents didn't have love of learning, either.

partly it is about fit. i've developed an appreciation that i do (really and truly and genuinely) have a significant disability that is circumscribed to some contexts. some other people truly thrive in that context, but i don't. similarly... a lot of people really don't have an appreciation for things that delight me.

you can be turned on or off by teachers that resonate well or resonate badly... ditto for parents and peers and the like...

i know if i had kids... i probably would want to do a bunch of things myself (because i simply wouldn't want to trust others to teach / foster the things that i value that i'd like my kids to be encouraged to value, too). i would want to limit unsupervised play time (in order to prevent bullying). and so on... but then... i'd also want to have just the one and really invest a bunch of time / resources into that one rather than seeing what manages to survive (if any at all) from a tribe fairly much cast to the wind to fend for themself / take whatever they can get (or not)...

i mean... television is a babysitter - right? for adults and kids alike. adults talk about 'chilling' or 'relaxing' in front of the box. like it is relaxing...

watching shows that are full of adults bullying one another... victim - persecutor - drama triangle stuff... people seem to thrive on... repetition of trauma, or something.

that isn't relaxing... i see why people need to take drugs.

there are so many wonderful things in the world. great works of literary fiction that have much to teach us about (plausible) mature human psychology. great films, even. athletes to inspire us to foster our movement (rather than beer drinking) capacity...

museums... art galleries... those things are relaxing. inspiring. uplifting.

i'm not entirely sure what is wrong with most people. i think... most people don't get the 'good enough' care that they need in order to achieve their human potential. most people... seem to live not very far removed from animals. i mean... all of the 'higher' things that distinguish us from the animals.. things like art and engineering and science and literature... some people seem to live more like animals, for real... the lack of... being treated / raised like a human to take delight and pleasure in human pursuits...

much of the world lives without their actual survival needs being met, particularly. then there are the people who have most of that sussed... but haven't really made the leap. i guess there is still a bunch of stuff holding us back / that we allow to get in the way. that stuff is maybe harder...

i have concerns about population control / humanity. sigh.

I really loved school, but I can understand what everyone else has mentioned here. I do think that the way we run our schools in the US could definitely improve. We force kids to sit and learn. Learning can be fun and interactive and engaging, but we take it away to make them well-behaved and turn them into mindless masses. Well, that's what I think anyway.

I'm actually looking into being a high school teacher, so it's something I think about and worry about. Unfortunately I'll have to conform to the school rules, but I hope to make my class more fun and interactive.

~PQ

Hi felicia0923,

I hope I can shine some light into this issue. A lot of time we tend to groan and moan about doing something because we are not motivated to do it. We don't know the reason why and the importance of learning a particular subject. Growing up, I constantly heard, why would I ever need to use this kind of math ever again. Those kids tend to hate math and tune out. It actually became a vicious loosing cycle. Once they became unmotivated they tuned school out because they tuned school out school became hard because they started to fall behind. Just like Game Theory, we all need to little reward here and there to feel good. That said, because it was near impossible to get a good grade for these kids the motivation never came back to try hard and they ended up hating school. As for me, my dad was an engineer so he told me the importance of what I was learning and showed me math existed in every object. I was always motivated to learn and stay on top of it so as a result I liked school.

Today kids are overloaded with a demanding schedule plus they are very lazy and that is because most of the parents spoil their kids.