To the editor,
Since the start of the year, I’ve had a lot on my mind. And with school starting up again, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of our education system here in the United States. The more I stare at it, the more I realize that our system of education isn’t broken. It is an uncomfortable truth, and we often refer to it as just that—a broken system. A dysfunctional system in need of repair. However, the fact of the matter is this—calling it broken lets the system off the hook. Calling it broken assumes it was meant to help us in the first place. It wasn’t.
What we have isn’t some well-meaning failure. Instead, it’s a system working exactly as intended. It purposely suppresses curiosity, rewards memorization over clear understanding, and punishes independent creative thinking. It is a system that teaches kids how to cram, follow instructions, and chase grades, but never how to think critically. Not how to question, or analyze, or create.
This isn’t some glitch or flaw. This is by design.
The roots of the American public education system go back over a century. In the late 1800s bleeding into the early 1900s, America’s public schools were modeled around the needs of the industrial economy. As the country shifted toward mass production during the Industrial Revolution, public education quickly became a tool to prepare children not for life, but for labor. Schools were designed like factories—rigid schedules, bells, rows upon rows of desks—to train future workers to follow rules and not ask questions. Uniformity. Punctuality. Obedience. Not virtues but expectations, enforced and unquestioned. This isn’t some metaphor for the rigidity of schools. In fact, Ellwood P. Cubberley, an influential education reformer, Stanford dean, and so-called architect of modern schooling, once eloquently stated, “Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned… according to the specifications laid down” (LOC).
Fast forwarding to today, and that same system still exists, only now it’s buried under slogans like “college readiness” and “21st-century skills.” We live in an age where creativity and innovation are supposed to be our future, but we still run classrooms as if they’re 20th-century assembly lines. Memorize, regurgitate, forget, and repeat. Show up, get the grade, leave, repeat. The system doesn’t reward understanding; quite frankly, it never did. It rewards and prioritizes performance. The student who questions the rules is seen as disruptive, and the one who follows them blindly is called “successful.” We’re constantly told “grades don’t define you,” but honestly, that’s a lie, albeit a convenient one. Because in this system, grades are the metric that matters most. They dictate which students are seen as capable, which are given opportunities, and which are quietly written off, regardless of potential, creativity, or actual understanding.
Let’s stop pretending the system is built to nurture potential. The state of our education system is so brutally rigid that falling behind in a single class, missing a deadline, or struggling with one subject can permanently derail a student’s trajectory and spell disaster. A 2023 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that students in the bottom GPA quartile were 75% less likely to receive college admission offers, even when their aptitude matched their higher-scoring peers. And yet, some argue that the system is changing—that test-optional policies are leveling the playing field, that colleges now care more about personal essays and extracurriculars, and that programs like AP classes give ambitious students a shot at real challenge. However, in reality, none of this changes how the system works on the ground. AP courses aren’t equalizers—they’re expensive, high-pressure commitments that reward students who already have tutors, stable home lives, academic safety nets, and access to resources. Extracurriculars are even worse: they don’t measure effort or creativity; they measure how much time, money, and parental freedom a student has. And “test-optional” doesn’t even mean what it pretends to—test scores are still king, and not submitting one has you running the risk of being invisible in a pile of applications. These aren’t solutions; these are illusions—tweaks to the surface that leave the deeper system untouched and a status quo intact. This is still a system that prioritizes performance over thinking and obedience over originality. The rules haven’t changed. They’ve just learned how to disguise themselves.
This warped definition of “success” becomes even clearer when you take a closer look at the institutions behind it—especially the College Board. Technically a nonprofit, but functionally a monopoly, the College Board controls nearly every “golden ticket” a student is told they need: AP classes, the SAT, and the PSAT—all designed, administered, and monetized by the same billion-dollar company. It is pure vertical integration at its finest. If you want to go to a top university, your chances skyrocket if you’ve paid into their system. It’s a $1.2 billion industry built on the backs of stressed-out students and anxious guardians, all while selling the illusion of meritocracy. We’re told these tests measure intelligence, discipline, or readiness, but really, they measure who had access to prep, who had the bandwidth to perform under pressure, and who had the money to play the game. The College Board doesn’t reward learning—it rewards survival.
And the AP program? It promises “rigor,” but more often than not delivers exhaustion. It’s not about deep learning— it’s about speed. Race through the textbook. Memorize every detail. Pass the exam. Then forget it all, just three weeks into summer. According to the Journal of Adolescent Health (2022), more than 61% of AP students report chronic stress levels, with many citing that they retain little to nothing after the exam—not the knowledge, not the concepts, just the fatigue. If we’re going to forget it all anyway, then why do we keep structuring our learning around this model? Why do we force students to suffer through content designed to be temporary, rather than meaningful? If retention, curiosity, and understanding aren’t the goals of education, then what are? To make matters worse, AP exam fees—now $98 per test—aren’t just steep; they’re borderline academic extortion, packaged as opportunity. The median U.S. household income sits at around $77,719 in 2023. A few AP exams can easily cut into a family’s monthly budget, especially in lower-income households (U.S. Census Bureau). And even its so-called fee reduction program, which offers $37 off for qualifying students, still leaves them paying roughly $67 per test post tax. $67 for a single standardized exam is not affordable. It’s not equitable. It’s not reform. It’s still academic extortion—just now wearing a discount sticker. And even then, fewer than half of deserving students even receive those waivers to begin with (College Board). These aren’t fees—they’re financial gatekeeping. For many students, AP exams aren’t a stepping stone to opportunity—they’re a toll booth. And the price of entry is excluded.
What we have created isn’t education. It’s glorified intellectual babysitting dressed up as “rigor,” and, at its worst, it’s academic racketeering—forcing families to pay for tests that don’t even guarantee a better future, all while calling it “opportunity.” It’s a system that wears the mask of opportunity while operating as a machine of equal obedience. What we call “school” doesn’t teach students to think— it teaches them to comply. To sit still, nod along, grind silently, and measure their worth in numbers they didn’t choose. Creativity is smothered. Autonomy is erased. And curiosity? That died somewhere around the sixth grade.
Congratulations, America, you’ve successfully built an educational culture that worships stress and glorifies burnout. Exhaustion becomes identity, and silence becomes maturity. We preach individuality, then punish it with rubrics and report cards. We tell kids to chase their dreams and then funnel them into a rigid, test-obsessed assembly line designed to benefit those with money, time, and access. We dangle success like a prize and then sell the ticket to the highest bidder. The result? An entire generation that is able to solve calculus problems, navigate artificial intelligence, and memorize historical dates—but fail to do the basics: think critically, speak honestly, set boundaries, or understand who they are after 12 years of obedience training.
This isn’t a broken system. It’s a perfectly engineered scam, and it’s working exactly as intended.
