A joke of an education system.

stratovarius, you're gonna hate me for this, but... you're 15... i assume you live with your parents... do you know how much it costs to support yourself independently? god, i sound so old and robotic even to myself, but it's fucking true... life is better when you have somewhere to live and food to eat. and if you have some unusual talent and can earn a living from it, fuck school and go do it, but most kids don't. and if they do, they won't discover it or have all the knowledge (including knowing how to deal with assholes) to use it until they're probably in their teens, and unless they have spent time in an environment like public school.

i'm only a year older than you, and i dropped out last winter... i have learned a lot on my own since then, because i am the kind of person who loves to find information and answer my own questions. i like learning. a lot of people have to be forced to learn, though. i'm not gonna say "i'm doing fine!" or "i wish i had worked harder!"... school isn't for everyone, and it isn't mandatory. there are ways around it. it is really fucked up, all the requirements and the way the system picks which books to give us (the information in them is barely ever checked, and they pick the cheapest ones). but most teachers have good intentions and are doing their best, and the environment exposes you to things you may not have seen or learned about on your own.

philosophically and spiritually, if i were to redesign the school system, it would be radically different. the very first thing to change would be that no child would be encouraged to learn to read before they were seven years old (any earlier gets your brain in the habit of associating every word with it's spelling instead of it's emotions, which can, as you'd imagine, have effects on compassion and work the logic side of your brain more than it should)... anyway... the point is, yeah, ideally, there are things to change, but school is a great opportunity. you don't have to go, but the only alternative is living in the real world... i guess school just makes the transition easier or something...

 

Some kids aren't physically developed to the point where they can learn to read before then Prismatism. Thanks for bringing that issue up. And when they try and fail at an early age leads to a defeatist mentality (which leads to misbehavior) Who is to say they aren't worth bothering with...it's not true. I don't think we should give up on those that can't progress at some artificially set standard of accomplishment.

What happened to the results of studies that showed that handicapped students become more valuable contributors to our society when mainstreamed and involved with the rest of society.

We only seem to be interested in pushing our own children or interests now a days at the expense of leaving others behind. When you do that you lose compassion for those that may be different.

You can study philosophy and shit forever, but if you don't have compassion for other lives you end up shallow and only interested in your own success at the expense of others.

Want to know what causes violence in schools, it's because some are held up as superior to others.

 

I promote staying in school and finding out who you are first Prismatism. If you leave early unless you are very strong you get caught up in the dynamic that kills the most creative aspects of most of us. You have to earn a living. You comprise your ideals, you give up your free time, just to make ends meet and feed yourself. Making money to meet those ends becomes the most important thing if it means survival.

I am glad you have done so well so far, but for the lower class the struggle is becoming even more difficult these days. Many aren't as strong as you appear to be.

 

i will never understand grades. i've spent years routinely going to the principal's office, talking about why i am "failing" when i'm "so smart" and get such good scores on tests... it doesn't make sense... if i'm smart, why can't i keep learning? if i've been learning the same things over and over but for whatever reason am incapable of doing the assignments (lack of materials, chaotic homelife, personality traits and disorders, feeling like nothing they do is good enough to put up to scrutiny... there are so many things that can keep a kid from being able to finish or hand in homework even when they understand the material), then what am i gaining by being stuck in those same classes indefinitely? and i'm a perfectly "normal" and "capable" person, who "shouldn't" have any problems operating in this system.

i don't understand why the judgment has to be involved at all. i think as long as you're attending, you're bound to soak up some information, which is better than being forced to drop out or relearn things you already know. and if these things are so important later on in life, and we don't take them seriously now, that's something we'll have to deal with ourselves, then. but not being able to recite a poem by the end of a week, or not writing a paper on hydrogen, or what have you, shouldn't doom you to never being able to support yourself in a job you are fully capable of doing.

and i agree that the way we treat and think about disabled kids is just... horrible. at my old school, they were treated like dogs. i don't mean that in the metaphorical way, i mean, they were talked to the way you would talk to a disobedient puppy. and i knew most of them on a personal level, and they were capable of so much more, and had so much more to offer than that.

are we providing information or are we evaluating the quality of individual humans? how did we come to the conclusion that there are people who are worth nothing, and should have opportunities restricted to them? and basic opportunities... fucking basic rights of life...

that said, this is how it works presently, and if you're able to pull yourself through it and get those good grades, you'll have more opportunities open to you and can make change. i couldn't, because i can't understand math for the sake of math. there is a mental block that just cannot keep track of a row of numbers, cannot assign them a value, and because of that, i was cut off from learning anything else about any other subject. what's funny is, i'm not bad at math, if it's math that has a point... but they teach by the book, and the book's sole purpose is to exist as a book to be taught from, and nothing more. which means problems like "dylan's house is 5 and 1/54th kilometers from jill's house. if dylan walked half way to jill's house 5 and 3/4th times, how many times would dylan have to walk to have walked back and forth from jill's house 26 times?"

 

i definitely and completely agree. i tried my hardest and was told to leave repeatedly until i gave in and left, and while i wouldn't say it was a bad decision, it's not something i'd reccomend...