Why Most High Schools Should Be Eliminated: What I’ve Learned from Teaching Teenagers
The first bell rang at 7:45, and I stood by my classroom door watching students drag themselves past me. One boy had his hood up, earbuds in, backpack hanging off one shoulder. He stopped and asked, “Can I go to the bathroom?” He’d asked the same thing yesterday, and the day before. I said yes, because saying no felt like admitting we both knew the worksheet waiting for him wasn’t worth his time. He was gone for twenty minutes. When he came back, he sat down, copied a few answers from his neighbor, and waited for the bell.
That scene isn’t a failure of that student. It’s a failure of the building he’s required to sit in for six and a half hours a day.
I’ve been a high school teacher for twelve years. I’ve worked in comprehensive public schools, small alternative programs, and one charter that tried to do things differently. The longer I teach, the harder it is to shake the idea that most high schools as we’ve built them are not actually serving teenagers. They’re just processing them.
By “eliminated,” I don’t mean we should stop educating people between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. I mean we should stop treating the traditional high school as the default container for that education. The building with its bells, its fifty-minute periods, its six classes per day, its age-based grade levels, and its assumption that everyone should learn the same thing in the same room at the same time—that model is outdated. And most teenagers know it.
Last spring, I had a student named Marcus. He was failing English and barely passing history. He slept through my class twice a week. But Marcus worked at an auto shop on weekends, and his father ran a small remodeling crew. Marcus could diagnose a brake issue, estimate a paint job, and read a contract for a kitchen renovation better than most adults I know. He wasn’t dumb. He was bored. School only asked him to prove his intelligence in one narrow way: written assignments, timed tests, and sitting still.
One day I asked Marcus what he wanted to do after graduation. He said, “Work with my dad, maybe open my own shop.” I asked if any of his classes related to that. He laughed. The only class that came close was a financial literacy unit we squeezed into one week of advisory.
That’s the real problem. High school operates like a warehouse. We move kids from subject to subject, collecting seat time and completion stamps. The system rewards compliance, punctuality, and the ability to produce answers on demand. It punishes restlessness, questioning, and deep interest. Teenagers are developmentally primed for autonomy, status, and meaningful contribution. Instead, we give them hall passes and bell schedules.
I remember walking through the halls during finals week. Kids were sitting outside classrooms, knees to their chests, scrolling on phones. One girl had a chemistry textbook open but she was staring at a wall. She looked exhausted. I asked her how it was going. She shrugged and said, “I just need to pass.” That’s the phrase I hear more than any other. Not “I want to learn this” or “I’m curious about that.” Just pass. Get the credit. Move on.
We’ve somehow convinced an entire generation that learning is something you endure so you can receive a transcript.
What’s frustrating is that the alternative is not rocket science. Small schools with longer blocks and real projects tend to do better for kids who would otherwise slip through. Programs that let students earn credit through internships, independent research, or community college courses show that teens will work hard when the work feels real. The issue is that these things are treated as exceptions. They’re for the “struggling” kids, or the “gifted” kids, not for everyone.
But think about what a typical high school day looks like. A teenager starts at seven or eight in the morning, when their circadian rhythms are still telling them it’s nighttime. They sit through six or seven different subjects, many of which they will never use again. They have no say in what they study or how fast they study it. The only choices they get are which elective fills the last slot, what to eat at lunch, and whether to use their one bathroom pass strategically. Then they go home to two or three hours of homework that often just repeats what they already didn’t understand in class.
It’s no wonder depression and anxiety have become so common. We’re keeping young adults in a state of forced dependency, then calling them lazy when they check out.
There are practical steps schools can take even without a complete rebuild. Start later, at nine or nine-thirty. That alone would improve attendance and alertness. Create longer blocks of at least ninety minutes so students have time to actually get into something. Allow students to spend part of the day off campus—working with a local business, doing community organizing, or taking a class at the community college. And let them earn credit for what they do there. A student who spends a semester building a website for a nonprofit is practicing math, writing, problem-solving, and communication. They just aren’t doing it in room 214 during third period.
Parents can push for smaller moves too. At the next parent-teacher conference, ask not “How is my child doing?” but “What is my child working on that matters to them?” If the teacher doesn’t have an answer, that tells you something. Ask the counselor if your teen can earn credit for outside activities. Many districts have work-study or service-learning options that are rarely advertised. If your child is wasting time in a class, ask about changing the schedule, not just pushing them to try harder. Sometimes the most supportive thing a parent can do is shorten the school day by letting the student spend the last period at a job or on a personal project.
I’m not suggesting we just turn schools into free-range day care. Structure is still needed. Some content—algebra, biology, history—still matters. But it can be taught in context. Marcus wouldn’t learn fractions from a workbook. He’d learn them from a wall measurement or a paint estimate. The same is true for a student who wants to be a nurse, a mechanic, a writer, or a teacher. They need a foundation, but they also need room to build something on it before graduation.
I still work at a fairly traditional high school. I still give grades, issue passes, and follow the master schedule. But I’ve changed what I can. This past year, I stopped giving homework that didn’t come directly from what we were doing in class. I started letting students use half the period to work on anything connected to their own plans—college applications, work portfolios, even job search letters. It didn’t fix everything. Some kids didn’t know what to do and just sat there. Others asked for help with things unrelated to my subject. But a few produced the best writing I’d seen from them all year.
Maybe eliminating high school doesn’t mean burning it down. Maybe it means letting it become something smaller and more honest: a place where teenagers spend some of their time, but not all of it, and where the learning they do connects to the lives they actually want to live.
I don’t know exactly what that looks like in every community. I’m still figuring out my own classroom. But I know this: if a student asks me for a bathroom pass and I feel relieved when they leave, something is backwards. The school should be the place they want to stay.
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