Taiwanese high schools are hell, made to make teenagers suffer. Students can do almost nothing they enjoy and have very little break time. Teachers teach topics that are not beneficial to students’ futures. High school has become a place to fulfill the government’s so-called “education requirements”. This needs to change.

First, students should choose the classes they want to attend. Different students have different interests and different things they want to explore. Giving students the right to choose classes will help them explore subjects they desire to learn more about and help them become experts. It is a waste of time to make students join a class that they won’t care about.

Second, students should be able to eat lunch outside school. Although schools do provide food, it’s usually just some oily, overcooked, rotting piece of garbage, which is expensive as hell and won’t fill you up. Students need more options, and if schools cannot provide them, what is better than the food of the free, outside world? Let students buy lunch outside and stop siding with big food corporations.

What’s more, we need to teach students how to think critically and creatively. People invent new, wonderful things by thinking – not by copying other peoples’ ideas. There is no point to just to making students memorize every little detail in a textbook. Teach students thinking. For example, in history classes ask why something happened and how it will affect the world and how we should prevent bad events from happening again.

Students are also too tired. Waking up at 6:30 A.M. every day just to get to school on time at 7:30 A.M. is absurd. Then we stay at school from 7:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. That’s ten hours spent at school. Even after school, some students still need to go to cram schools until 10P.M. Do not tell students that they are not hard-working. Give them more time to relax, please.

Change is needed. Although it may take time, any change is better than nothing.