Not everyone's school time was shitty.

Especially those of us who had school before "A Nation at Risk" incited changes in education.

Reagan's department of education concluded that falling scores meant kids were slacking and needed to be pushed harder on standardized testing. The result was culling of recess, gym, arts, and things like home economics/shop class. To make more room to hammer in "important" stuff. So the experience became razor focused on some of the most soul crushing material without much reprieve. Note that there's a thought that making people take the tests they didn't used to take caused scores to go down, rather than some soft laziness of the system, so we might have 'fixed' the wrong things.

Then COVID happened and schools dramatically cut back on social events and interactions. Even as the critical threat of COVID subsided, I think administration found it easier to manage the students this way, so students did not access to lockers back (because that would encourage congregation in hallways) and on top of everything else, they have to lug all their school stuff around. Somewhat a mixed bag as most of the 'textbook's are digital now, but still have a few big ones.

For me, school had carved out time to socialize pretty freely, to be vaguely active in a gym class, to just do some woodworking stuff, to do some cooking and sewing. Recess until like 13 years old. Current kids stop getting recess about 10 or so and unless they join a sports team likely never see physical activity from school again, and while there are still electives, much more rare. I don't think I even saw an option for a 'home ec' class in my kid's elective options, everything seemed to be more 'substantial' than those sorts of classes I had growing up.