Dead Code and Overloaded Classrooms: Why Students Say "I Hate School"

By Scott Morris, Founder of Knox Academy

In software development, there’s something called dead code — parts of a program that are still hanging around but don’t do anything. They don’t serve the user. They clog up performance. They make the whole system harder to maintain and slower to evolve.

Something like this is going on in education — especially when it comes to how we’ve structured classrooms.

AND the biggest piece of dead code in our current system is this:
One teacher. Thirty students. Same lesson. Same pace. Same everything.

The Core Assumption That’s Screwing Over How Humans Learn Naturally

Mass education was designed for efficiency — like an assembly line. Teachers teach a lesson. Students listen. Then they’re tested. Anyone who doesn’t fit the mold either gets dragged along or left behind.

This model might have made sense when the goal was basic literacy and workforce readiness. But today, it’s a relic. It doesn’t scale to human potential.

In tech terms, it’s like trying to run a modern app on an ancient operating system. The user experience crashes — again and again.

Students Can Feel It — And That’s Why They Say “I Hate School”

Kids are incredibly perceptive. They intuitively know when things are just not right. They know when the content isn’t for them. They know when they’re being asked to sit still and memorize facts that have nothing to do with who they are or what they care about.

And they respond in the only honest way they can:

“I hate school.”

They don’t hate learning.
They hate the feeling of irrelevance.
They hate the boredom that comes from never having lessons that pique their natural human curiosity.

What Dead Code Looks Like in the Classroom

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• An intelligent student who can’t see the relevance of remainders in long division.
  
  
• A pleaser student who just does the assignment because they don’t want to get yelled at.
  
  
• A curious student with a thousand questions is told there’s no time for tangents.
  
  
• A creative student is asked to stop doodling and “focus.”
  
  

This isn’t learning. It’s compliance. It’s code that no longer functions — and yet we keep it, because it’s how the system was built.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

Today, we have more tools than ever — from AI tutors to project-based learning models — to give students personalized, meaningful learning experiences.

But we’re still running bloated code: huge class sizes, rigid curricula, standardized everything.

It’s time to get back to basics in human learning both in the classroom AND for parents that want to try it at home.

Because the real problem isn’t the kids.
It’s not even the teachers — who are doing heroic work under impossible conditions.
It’s the code that governs the system.

And when we rewrite that code, we’ll stop hearing, “I hate school.”
We’ll start hearing, “I love learning.”