Anyone who likes school is not valid. Everything about school is awful and pointless.
say it louder for the people in the back
I liked school. It was a hell of a lot better than working and paying rent. The bad part was my parents being mad at me for being bad at it, but at least I could yell at them without being fired.
So. I made this post because yesterday I was really bitter that school started back up again. Most of the time school is just annoying at best.
My opinion of school as a concept though is a lot more complicated than that, though. The basics of it is that school is a really great idea, but the way it is run right now is fundamentally flawed and disadvantages anyone who doesn’t fit into a very narrow box, and I don’t think that’s fair.
But yeah. I just made this post yesterday because I was really annoyed and couldn’t imagine any more of it. I probably will end up missing school (because it’s easy for me) once I get out. But at the moment? I really can’t wait for it to be done.
Instead of making fun of people who do things at an older age that are normally done younger ( like getting their diploma or GED, learning to drive, even learning to read ) how about you:
I had a dream I went to class but only a few people were there. When I asked one of them (a guy who was just staring blankly at the chalkboard) where the rest were, he only said “they’re all awake”.
When I woke up, I realized I overslept and missed my first class.
Purgatory class is in session
Honestly gifted programs shouldn’t fucking exist because all they do is put a ton of pressure on kids especially when they’re way too young for that and it’s just unfair to kids who aren’t labeled as “gifted”
ALSO gifted is a SHITTY ASS TERM just to start with like
What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.
What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’snot merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.
also: the way “gifted” children are taught largely just rewards them for already knowing things or having a specific skill come easily to them, and thus not only gives them severe anxiety about asking for help or not knowing something right away for fear of disappointing those adult mentors, but also actively discourages them from learning HOW to learn things and pick up new skills, thus sabotaging any life they might try to pursue outside of that institutional career.
^^^^^^
Wouldn’t think the phrase “You should know this” is any big deal but it did shut me up for a long time. I thought, why even speak if the words I say are wrong or worse, betray my lack of understanding something simple? When you’re designated as “smart” or “gifted” people expect a lot from you but it’s hard to deliver when you personally don’t feel like you’re those things.
I was always labelled as ‘gifted’. The school wanted to allow me to skip from 1st grade to 5th but my parents worried about my emotional maturity so instead I was put into the gifted program at 9yo. I was expected to be better than my friends at anything academic unless they too were ‘gifted’. I once asked my mom if I could take regular classes instead of the advanced ones and she told me no, because if I took the advanced classes I could get a B and it would be the same as an A in a regular class but if I took regular classes and got a B then I was just being lazy. She honestly expected me to either take the advanced classes and do “the best you can” or take regular classes and make straight As. I was 11. All I wanted was time to see my friends, time to play sports without having to worry about if it left me time to do homework.
But since leaving the program meant focusing MORE time on schoolwork to make sure I never got a B I stayed in…. i still played sports but it caused a lot more stress that way. By the time I was 16 I was taking college classes through my high school, taking AP classes if offered, honors classes if they werent. I maintained a 3.75GPA through high school, I gave up sports because classes took too much time. I was making my parents proud. My senior year, just after I turned 17, I ended up having a full mental breakdown. I was having panic attacks and anxiety attacks so bad that I couldn’t even leave the equipment closet in the JROTC office. Why? Because I decided that year to not take ANY advanced classes. It was my senior year, I had worked my ass off and was 11th in my class, I deserved an easy year. My brain couldnt handle that though because I had been pressured so much into being the best… and so it snapped.
That year I received my first D…. my parents were pissed. But I couldnt find it in me to care…. my brain had broken down, it had given up.
I am 29 now. I struggle on a daily basis to ask for help, I struggle to not be the “know it all”, and I fight against years of pressure to acknowledge that sometimes I dont have to be the best. That its ok to fail. THIS is the legacy left to the ‘gifted’ and I vow never to make my child feel the way I did.
I have a post queued (for June) about not being in high school and oh boy I can’t wait to for it to post
When you understand that kids and teenagers being salty about literary symbolic analysis comes from a very real place of annoyance and frustration at some teachers for being over-bearing and pretentious in their projecting of symbolism onto every facet of a story but you also understand that literary analysis and critical thinking in regards to symbolism is extremely important and deserves to be not only taught in schools, but actively used by writers when examining their own work to see if they might have used symbolism unintentionally and to make sure that they are using symbolism effectively:
That’s the perfect reaction gif.
I think the root of a lot of kids (and tbh, some adults) frustration with literary symolism is that is IS very important and interesting and much like math and history and p. much every other subject taught in public school, IT’S TAUGHT REALLY FUCKING BADLY.
One of the root issues is that it’s usually taught in high school when kids are typically at their most contrary (because they’re flexing their critical thinking skills) and also when teenager’s cognitive development is ALL OVER THE PLACE.
At 16, when I had “The Scarlett Letter” lobbed at me, I was still struggling with transitive property on a dang gramatical level. The bit about in the first chapter about the rose being there to
“symbolize some sweet moral blossom,” really got up in my grill because I was big into Georgia O’Keefe at the time and was furious about the frankly juvenile way that critics sexualized her work where it likely wasn’t. My brain was on the “Authorities Sometimes Lie For Weird Reasons” stage of Critical Thinking development, AKA Step 2 of 251562093846 in Critical Thinking Development.
Hence, my bullheaded adolescent self wasn’t going to belive some white old bastard who seemed weirdly pro-purity culture about intertextual sybolism EVEN THOUGH HE WAS THE AUTHOR.
I was a real dumbass at 16.
The real failing here was that my English teacher was freaking about the upcoming standardized testing and was rushing the cirriculum so when I asked him, the (admittedly frustrating) question of “It’s a ROSE it doesn’t give a shit about arthorial intention HOW DO WE KNOW ANYTHING MEANS ANYTHING??” his response was to tell me:
“Just write it down on on the test, ok?”
My point is that Kid’s frustration with literary symbolism is really frustration with the haphazard and authoritatian way a lot of schooling is conducted, and ALSO quite possibly frustration with thier own (percieved or real) lack of mental development to keep up with what’s being asked of them.
I realize I’m largely rehasing OP’s point but maybe this version will be helpful for someone.
All valid commentary on how we’re teaching kids to just blindly pick a conclusion and find evidence without actually contemplating and formulating their own opinions and personal preferences, an example of how the standardised curriculum quells creativity and real critical thinking to cater to a letter grade
ifesbob 