Quality post OP. As for the "forced" idea, it's simply not a decision to be made by an immature mind whether or not they want to go to school. It's mandatory to stay in school till 16, and I think that's fine how it is. If we go back to antiquity, when schooling wasn't mandatory and was exclusive to the rich, it was something to be sought after because of the opportunities and credibility it created. However this motivation isn't present anymore because everyone [i]has[/i] to go to school. So it seems like we have a paradox here. What I think is a plausible route to take, is by changing the environment of school. Which is not an easy thing to do, but it's a better plan of action than taking away the requirement of school. There are a couple directions we could take. [u]Later start times:[/u] Studies in education research have shown that the peak time for brain activity starts around 9:00 and fluctuates, however remains generally high, until later in the evening. So why are we having students having to be prepared and in class rooms almost two hours prior to peak brain activity? Odds are those early classes are going to be the easiest forgotten. Also, earlier start times are correlated with lower overall happiness, as a busy student who efficiently does school work and studying, has a dinner, and plays a sport, will not be going to bed until the earliest 10:00. This obviously doesn't happen though, and most students will tend to only get 5-6 hours of sleep compared to the 7-9 hours that is optimal for their brain. All of this snowballs together to create an unpleasant school environment for the beginning hours, which can attribute to a domino effect to achieve an overall unpleasant day. A proposal to fix this would be to start school later on, at a time such as 830 or 9, ending at 3-4, however this creates a problem of some parents being unable to provide transportation, and bus schedules being mixed up. But no issue is every going to be one dimensional. [u]Better Teaching Methods:[/u] It's no surprise when you clump a group of students together and attempt to teach them in the same manner, that some will simply not get it. The human brain varies in how it learns, however I think the biggest improvement is to make sure teachers are teaching through authoritative methods rather than authoritarian methods. In simpler terms, students should be taught the theory on how to conduct their work and understand why their answer was right/wrong, rather than having information shoved down their throats and taught that if they don't have great memorization skills then they are stupid. Personally, I barely passed my history classes in High School because I was constantly tested of dates and names that I couldn't remember rather than causes and effects of events. I passed every writing composition, math, and science class with flying colors however, because those classes focused on teaching you how to find an answer rather than the answer itself. This goes hand in hand with the idea that "doing" something is much more effective in learning that something that writing it down or hearing it is. I also disagree with any system that someone can pass without getting the right answer. I shouldn't be able to pass simply because I tried. That isn't [i]learning anything. [/i]Also, there were no such thing as 0's, you would get 50% credit for [i]not doing anything.[/i] This is horrible, and [i]does nothing to motivate a student to determine correct answers.[/i] Yes, I realize it would have been ever more of a struggle to pass history classes for myself if this system wasn't in place, however because it was I never learned much in these classes. Shit man I wouldn't be able to tell you shit about WWI without looking it up. Although you bet your ass I passed the exam essay on it by using my writing composition skills to reword the prompt and fill in with bullshit. (seriously, I shouldn't have passed) This "babying" further destroys motivation and our ability to use taught information critically. In addition, classes [i]should be separated by ability.[/i] My senior year, they clumped A1 (slower, more attentive classes) with A2 (faster, more challenging for the average student) to make "College Prep," or CP for short. The problem that creates is a teacher is forced to find a happy medium of teaching the kids that need more attention and focus, while challenging the kids who can handle it (because without a challenge, there's no motivating agent in the equation.) They made the system to not discourage the A1 kids into thinking they're stupid. How sensitized can we get, America? This causes the A1 kids to possibly fail and actually think they are stupid with valid reasoning, and the A2 kids to coast on by and have no motivation to actually try in school. There are more directions that I can think of, but those are the two main ones, and this is already a very long post.