It's hardly news to say that students complain about school being boring. But it ought to give us pause that such a wide and varied range of students report, contemptuously, that America's high schools are almost uniformly incapable of sparking their intellectual interest. For example, take this completely anecdotal but nonetheless fascinating article in Educational Horizons, produced by Pi Lambda Theta. The authors asked more than 70 students to keep journals about their experiences in school. The 52 students who brought back usable journals were uniformly displeased, and 50 of them had one complaint in common: uninterested teachers who refused to deviate from the textbook or enliven instruction with example, discussion, or outside materials. The two words these youths used most often to describe their education were "boring" and "stupid." Pretty standard adolescent fare, perhaps, but even academic high-flyers were disengaged, and the general tone of the responses is remarkable for its ferocity. Write the authors, "Even students who received mostly good marks said that they endured their classes to attain marks that would qualify them for particular colleges&. One college-bound student in an urban school wrote, 'Sitting on your a-- all day and doing nothing is a waste. I wouldn't come to school, even if someone paid me. Personally, I'd rather take out the trash than show up for first period.'"
"Disengagement and loathing in high school," by Lawrence A. Baines and Gregory Kent Stanley, Educational Horizons, Summer 2003