School is an everyday fact of life for most children around the world. On school days, children wake up, go to school, do their homework, go to sleep, and repeat. When most students go to school, they see it as a place to learn and see their friends. I think of school in a very different way. I think school is war.

One of the first major things that is necessary in order to understand a battleground is to understand what the battleground looks like. The way that I see it is as a steep hill with multiple strategic points on it. The higher up your troops are on the hill, the easier it is to defend it, yet the less strategic points you are defending. The lowest part of the hill, which is the hardest to defend, gives you control of more strategic points than the higher levels and thus makes it the highest grade. The highest part of the hill, which is the easiest to defend, gives you control of less strategic points and is thus the lowest grade. Controlling these strategic points is essential to your overall success in the war, and thus you must do everything possible to defend them.

How do you defend these strategic points? Well, the defensive process consists of three major steps - building up your army, anticipating the enemy attack, and repelling the enemy attack.

Building up your army is your preparation for the battles you will experience later. In terms of school, you can build up your army through things like studying. Whenever you study, it’s as if you are bringing new recruits to fill in weak spots you have in your defensive position. These new recruits make it so that if your enemies attack in those locations, you are less likely to be forced to retreat. In this case, the knowledge that you gain from studying can be compared to the new recruits you gain in war, as both are resources that can be expended in later stages of the war.

Anticipating enemy attack is like figuring out what your teacher wants you to study and how your teacher wants you to complete assignments. If you can successfully anticipate where and how the enemy will attack, you can properly position your troops to ensure a victory. Whenever you are given a test to study for, you have to figure out what things are most likely to come up on that test and use the majority of your resources on those sections. In other words, you must anticipate where your enemy will strike hardest and use your troops and resources to repel attacks in those areas. In school, if you can successfully anticipate what will be on the next test or what kind of response a teacher is looking for to an answer, you can put more resources into the things that will be more prevalent in the future.

Repelling enemies is like completing assignments and taking tests. Whenever an enemy army comes your way, you have to stop it from breaking through your lines and capturing your strategic points. In order to do this, you must use the resources you have obtained while building up your army and use strategic positioning. If you are able to successfully repel the attack, you will be able to keep your strategic point and your army will be able to fight another day. In school, when you take an assignment or take a test, it is like you are competing with that assignment for your grade, and by repelling the assignment you will get a higher grade.

Why are strategic points so important? Well, losing a strategic point can cause major impacts on the future of the war and your future as a general. Your country will no longer be asked to defend such key positions and will get fewer military jobs and assignments in the future. You will also not receive the resources and advantages the strategic points provide. As a general, you will also lose the chance to get military awards and decorations. Therefore, maintaining the strategic points is essential for you and your country. This is very similar to school, since dropping a grade can cause you to drop in class standing and will give you fewer opportunities in the future. Due to this, maintaining your grade in school is essential, just as maintaining strategic points is essential in war.

There is also an offensive portion in war. This offensive portion of the war consists of two parts - recapturing strategic points and competing with other countries for domination.

Recapturing strategic points is like trying to get a higher grade in school. In war, you can either attack the enemy position or counterattack after an enemy attack. In a counterattack, the enemy attacks your position first and after you repel them, you attack the enemy position. By attacking the enemy position, you have the chance to recapture a strategic point. A counterattack can only occur though if you have enough resources left over after you repel the enemy. In school, this process is quite similar. When you receive an assignment, if you were easily able to defend your current grade, you can go after a higher grade on that assignment. Attacking the enemy position involves you using your forces to attack against enemies who have taken advantageous defensive positions. Due to this, attacking the enemy is usually a lot harder than repelling an attack. In school, attacking the enemy positions is like going after extra credit. Extra credit is usually much harder to obtain than regular points, just like attacking enemies is usually much harder than defending against them.

Competing with other countries for domination in war is like competing for the higher grade in school. In war, there were many examples of allies competing against each other for a more powerful position after the war without directly fighting each other. For example, during World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, yet they still competed with each other to try to have a more powerful and advantageous position after the war. This behavior was prevalent throughout the war, and it was even a major reason for the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the secondary purpose of the dropping of the nuclear bombs was as a show of force to keep the USSR in check). In school, even though you are not directly fighting with your classmates, you are still competing with them for top of the class, kind of like how in war allies compete to be on top after the war.

School is a battleground that everyone has to go through at some point. It is a war that lasts many years, and it is a war that success is essential in. Although the main point of school is to give you the information you need to succeed in your life, the way that the school system is organized today makes it like a battleground. Instead of making school so competitive, I think that we should make it a lot more collaborative. If we do make school collaborative, I am sure that it will no longer seem like a war, and will promote pursuing content you enjoy.