If there’s anything that binds all students together in one broad category, it’s a shared distaste for school. Understandably, stress is the cause of the majority of this pseudo-hatred toward school, but it’s also inadvertently led to a complete lack of gratitude for education in general.

Lots of students complain about being “forced to come to school,” and these frustrations often manifest in the decision to skip school, despite understanding the consequences of such actions. Nobody’s character will be judged based on the fact that they might have skipped once or twice, but it’s a little disappointing to see education being treated as trivially as a toy that can be thrown away when it gets boring.

Every education system has flaws. Under-qualified teachers, badly developed curriculum and too much homework are only some of the reasons why students harbor grudges toward waking up for school every morning. It’s a justified feeling, but that doesn’t mean that kind of attitude should carry over and apply to the whole idea of education in general.

In some places of the world, nations are so stricken with conflict and corruption that the education system is essentially nonexistent. Families cannot afford to send their children to school, and need their extra hands just to survive on a day by day basis. This directly correlates to the maturity of the country’s economy and social advancement, because these aspects cannot develop without an educated population.

At the most extreme ends of the spectrum, education is banned for some students. For those young students who are barred from any exposure to knowledge, they are denied a basic right. Too often, girls are victims of this inequality, a microcosm of authoritarian patriarchy and a reminder that male dominance continues to translate into devaluing women on all platforms.

Of course, this still exists everywhere across the globe, but at different magnitudes. On campus, the issue is essentially nonexistent because we live in a nation where its citizens have consistently called out and protested against sexist, misogynistic rhetoric. In other places, people do not enjoy that same right.

So, as students who are lucky to go to a school district ranked within the top 50 in the nation, clean up at lunch, be respectful to faculty, and walk into school with at least some degree of awareness of just how fortunate we are. After all, it’s where we’re not that matters more than where we are.