Since I enjoy talking about myself as the narcissistic person I am, it is time to talk about the school system in America and how I "enjoyed" it. As you may know, I am a bit of a nerd. My IQ is about 130, which basically means that my logical thinking is ahead of about 98% of my peers. Thus, I was pretty nerdy. My love of the computer, anime and electronics, however, pushed me over the edge into Nerd-ville. Even though my brain was okay, the American school system pretty much failed me.
I grew up in Florida where I moved many times and went to many different schools. Because of that, I saw many different ways of teaching first hand. None of them worked out very well. My first school was a Christian private school. I believe I was four when I started kindergarten. My birthday was right at the cut off date, and my mother was too busy to take care of me. So, she sent me to school right away. I was too young to understand religion, so I wasn't aware that the day a person went to church mattered. So, when my teacher handed out a worksheet where we would have to put in what day our family did certain things, there was some issues. Six of the tasks were things that my family never really did such as cleaning the house and cutting the grass. The last was what day we went to church. In my family, we went to church on Saturday, so I wrote in Saturday. The last six were lies since my family never did the other things. However, the teacher marked the "Saturday" wrong since the affiliated church went on Sunday. It's funny, because that's the only time she ever spent time to help me with my work. Teachers in all the schools I went to would not even speak to you unless you asked them. And even then, sometimes they wouldn't be able to answer your questions. I once missed a few days of school in 9th grade and asked my math teacher what the negative before the squared symbol was and how it affected the equation. He said that I didn't need to know.
When a pretty girl says she is being bullied, teachers generally don't care and neither do your parents. Even if you are harassed daily, they are always brushing it off like it is nothing. "He just likes you." "She's just jealous." You could come home with bruises and they'd just say "boys will be boys." Traumatized at a young age by kids that the teachers deemed as "innocent," my bubbling and outgoing personality became plagued with phobias such as social phobia, claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Because of the phobias created by the initial events, I was bullied even worse in the future. After all, predators can sense fear and always attack on the weakest. It didn't matter what school I went to, though. No matter the school, the teachers never did anything to prevent or stop bullying. If there were no physical wounds, teachers would pretend there was nothing going on. Even if you asked a teacher to change your seat because a bully, they wouldn't even bother. This one bully would push my desk into the middle of the front of the class during a lecture, and the teacher wouldn't say anything. After all, "boys will be boys." When I did the same thing when we switched seats to get him back, though, I got detention. The more pretty you are, the more discrimination you get. If your family was relatively well off, however, a pretty girl could be popular.
In America, evil girls are supposed to be pretty. All the television dramas will have the most evil girl be what they refer to as the most beautiful. Being brainwashed into such things, people don't really believe a pretty girls' words as easily. Most will say "a pretty girl always gets her way" and treat her rudely. Let me tell you something, I've never gotten out of a ticket or out of any trouble. In fact, I would get into trouble for the smallest of things. I would get detention just for forgetting my homework. I passed a note by tossing it to my friend when I was on the bus, and I got detention for "throwing things." The other kids would do it all the time and I never heard her give a detention to anyone else for anything. I'm not even kidding. Because of the media, pretty girls are often treated as idiots.
When I was at the end of first grade, there was my first end of the year test. This test basically told teachers what class you should be in. If you should be in a class with smart people, average students or with remedial students. Unfortunately, due to my mother not believing me when I said I was sick, I puked all over the test. I never was able to retake it, though, as I was then sent to home school. Home school is basically for when parents would teach their own children. However, my mother was too busy to check our homework. And, after 3 years, I was pretty far behind due to lack of a teacher. Luckily, my IQ was good and I was able to successfully pass the end of the year tests by guessing.
When I went to another Christian school for 6th grade, after begging my parents to send me to a real school, I was treated like a retard. I was immersed in remedial studies where the teachers treated me like I had the reading capacity of a five year old. I was still getting F's in most of my classes, though, as I didn't learn a thing for three years. The teachers were of no help. They sent us about twenty worksheets a night, and I would get detention if they were not all turned in on time and completed. The detention consisted of cleaning the classroom, so I would have no time to complete the homework that was to be turned in the following day. Thus, more detentions. Because my mother was too "busy" to check my homework and sign it, so my grade was also lowered about 10%. After all, if the mother doesn't sign it, it is seen as if the child just didn't show it to their parent.
After a half semester of being treated like a moron and being bullied for being "stupid," I convinced my mother to let me go to public school. My mother is one of those christian mothers that were brainwashed into thinking that public school would corrupt their child, so it took a long time to convince her. However, I found that a Christian school just prevented myself from believing in Christianity. I went from failing in a private school to getting an average grade in public school. I guess that really speaks about the quality standards of the public school system. Truthfully, I'm still amazed that I wasn't held back. However, because I was originally thought to be a stupid person in the eyes of the teachers, I was never able to get rid of that stigma. I was stuck in the class for slow learners for the most of my school career. In high school, the honors teacher for English had taught me previously when I was still catching up, so she denied me entrance into honors because of my past. Even though I was acing English by 9th grade, the stigma of my ignorance a few years prior was still valid. Because I was constantly stuck in boring classes, I would sleep through them and still pass. I had to beg my teachers to let me into more challenging classes. However, due to my need to challenge myself, I was taking college courses at my local community college instead of high school classes by my last semester of high school and doing very well. I hoped that English teacher found out. She would've been embarrassed to treat me like a moron.
There was a test that showed that Americans were becoming more intelligent over the generations. However, I think that's a lie. The standard tests are a joke. I have a pretty good memory, so I would remember questions from the standardized tests. They frequently repeated the same stories and questions. Even the math problems would have the same exact pattern to them. It's not we that are getting smarter, but the tests getting stupider. When I did the standardized tests, I spent most of my time contemplating whether I should put in the same answer as last year or not. Most of the time I just put the same answer from last year.
All in all, American schools are bad. No matter how smart you are, they will fail you. Once you are labeled, the label will prevent you from succeeding unless you are aware of what is happening. The American school system doesn't announce publicly which classes are for remedial students so that there isn't any embarrassment, but the classes will go into your records. Those classes will decide the curriculum you are roped into. If you are ever forced into an American public school, beware of what classes are for what students. They will try to force you into classes that don't challenge you, and then (because the classes made you fall asleep) they will force you to continue on that same curriculum path. If you can ace a class without touching the book, you need to ask the teacher if there is a harder class. If not, you will end up working for minimum wage the rest of your life because the school didn't teach you a thing.
PS: Don't eat the food. I've seen roaches, caterpillars, hair, and other random objects in their food. When you complain about it, the staff just cover it up. Even if its' not in your food doesn't mean it wasn't picked off before it was served.
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