Bored-in-School Tweets—in Real Time

I was 34 when I went back to high school. I returned as a reporter, visiting schools all over the country, and eventually the world, as I wrote about education. On my new beat, almost everything felt familiar: The cafeteria still smelled odd, not bad, not good. The main office still felt like a place to avoid. In the classroom, the black-and-white analog clock remained at its post, just like the pencil sharpener, God love it.

There was one surprise, though. Something I’d forgotten, though I can’t imagine how. I am talking about the one emotion that dominates the experience more than any other, the signature sensation of high school. I’d forgotten all about the boredom.

It sneaks up on you, when you go back. Like the students themselves, reporters who camp out in schools find themselves wishing and waiting for large portions of the day—waiting for kids to finish their worksheets, wishing the video weren’t so long, waiting for the bell to ring so we can move on to the next interview. When Gallup asked American teenagers to choose three words that best described their typical feelings in school from a list of 14 adjectives, “bored” was chosen most often—by one out of every two students. (“Tired” came in second, chosen by 42% of teenagers surveyed.)

And boredom is global. Across 32 countries, nearly half of 15-year-olds said they often felt bored at school on average, according to a 2000 OECD survey. (Ireland did worst of all, with 67% of teenagers reporting frequent boredom, compared to 61% in the U.S.)

It’s important, I think, to remember this boredom. Otherwise, adults can build fictional schools in their heads, places where time behaves normally, where one can go to the bathroom without asking permission. Then they can obsess over things that matter only in these make-believe schools, not in real students’ real lives. They get into bitter feuds, for example, over whether Education Secretary Arne Duncan did or did not diss white suburban moms, while in the background, millions of teenagers fall into a catatonic state.