Burnt out kids

How many kids suffer from burnout at school? Well, I know I was one. And boy oh boy is it a vicious cycle.
It started in 7th grade when I passed History and had to go to summer school anyway. Apparently I didn't pass by enough. Go figure! Well, I failed summer school...not because I failed the tests, but because I had to memorize the preamble to the constitution and some lines from the declaration of independence. I'm a monarchist now...how prophetic, eh?
Well, I had a month of summer instead of two. See, every year I would think "Yep, this is the year where I'm not going to miss homework!". Well, a few months later I was already burnt out from having to go to school from 8:30 until 3 and having only 15 minutes to eat and 15 minutes to play. Oh, and being forced to play basketball twice a week, a game that I absolutely stunk at. Yep, no rest for the weary. So, thanks to all that, I actually failed. Another month gone from my vacation.
"Yay, highschool! Everything is going to be different!" I thought. No...it was worse. We were told to spend at least two hours on homework. Glorious. I did pretty well until I started forgetting books because of all the homework. Then I just sorta gave up. Yep, more summer school. I had summer school for my 4 years in highschool. It was usually from 9-9:50 and 11-11:50 or something like that. It's really not fun having an hour "break". The heat really gets to you...like the time I made over 300 paper airplanes or a skittles mosaic. I'm sure if I had a cup I would have measured how much sweat dripped off of my nose.
Anyway, all this homework really screwed me up. I got bad to mediocre grades because of homework. Sometimes I got good ones. Those classes usually counted homework as 5% of the grade. Some classes actually took a point off of the quarter grade.
So, two or more hours of homework with a 45 minute "break". No wonder I was always so chipper in the morning and didn't get addicted to that drug called coffee.
Yes, it's a vicious cycle for them too. They do all their homework well. They get to bed late because people do have lives (of course, teachers are either suffering from burnout themselves and don't care about other folks or they have no lives and forgot that other people do). They wake up tired and reach for that coffee. Get to school when the coffee is wearing off and are half tired the whole day. They can't pay attention. When they get home they have to review the lesson because they couldn't pay attention. Then they get older, have a massively receding hairline, and choose to have only one kid, if any, because they're too burnt out to deal with any silliness.
So, how do we solve this? Well, let teachers stop teaching while going to school for a master's degree (Catholic High school of course). Or better yet, don't waste any time! I can't count how much time things like classwork takes up. Homework is just basically classwork that they didn't get around to, so there's nothing wrong with classwork, but the time wasted in between waiting for everyone to be finished is laughable at best. So is the time used telling people to shut up, review time, waiting for the stragglers. Time used to make people come up to the board to either show off or embarrass a kid who made a dumb mistake.
Apparently, homework is to help students understand the lesson. Why make it mandatory then? Not everyone is going to understand it, but not everyone doesn't! Of course, they'll argue "If it is optional, then no one will do it!"
Of course, but that's their own problem. Schools are nanny state indoctrination camps. Everyone is equal, everyone has to do the same work, if there's a problem we'll take care of you, and we'll run your life. It even happens at neocon schools.
Us conservatives say that it isn't the school's job to probe into our problems. If we can't take care of something, we ought to ask or parents or someone we actually trust. Yeah, schools give you false trust.
I wouldn't worry too much about what schools teach as much as they teach indirectly. A good parent would raise their child to not totally trust the school. "The schools says contraceptives are cool and I think so too!" says the 11th grader. Who do we blame? The school, and not the parents for properly bringing them up.
The bigger threat is the school replacing the parent and acting like a friend. Schools ought to be viewed as a double edged sword. On one side they're useful, on the other they can wound you.
Schools sure love the cycle of burnt out kids, but they sure love the zombies even more.
Edit-What inspired this rant? http://www.lewrockwell.com/chartier/chartier90.html
It's far better than what I wrote.