ARGH!!!!!! I CAN'T TAKE THIS BULLCRAP AT SCHOOL ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!

[Race4Peace]

Education is a mediawhore. School is the same as prison, and students are smarter than teachers *DUH*. The school "library/media center" is flooded with books on bush's group (supporting them*DUH!*) and a rack full of conservative mag's. "Flashcards" are a waste of paper and time, as well as it's a load of bullshit. I don't know if any fellow student DUers out there reading this have something where one part of school that you have a class where you are supposed to be doing homeworkor5 something, but I do. The assignments treat teens like fuckshit(I'm 13,and yes, it got me pissed), such as an asignment I had today:

A book about home remodeling:loveya:Adultx(

A story of teen movie stars:boring:Teenx(

A story of a dirt bike race:loveya:Teenx(

A story of a rock group's travels:boring:Teenx(


<snip>

[displacedtexan]

1. Don't let the bastards eat you!

I taught for 25 years, and I retired early because I was sick to death from watching 'teachers' (aka paycheck pocketers) suck the life out of kids.

Do the crap assignment and read everything you can get your hands on! You'll be a better person for surviving the crap you're going through now.

Now, do your homework and watch TV! That's an order!

PM me if you need any more pep talks!

[Race4Peace]

2. for Hwk and TV: done and done!

[Fenris]

3. Oh, man...13...I don't remember 13

I'm pretty sure I was on something for that year, which isn't a great way to go through school. Chemicals are nice, but man, they really bring down your GPA. But no, you're right. That's an awful time to be in school. Middle school is just a powder keg of hormones and anger. High schools similar, but it's better than middle school.

Here's a word of advice: take AP or pre-AP classes. You'll meet smart people, the teachers are not total fuckwits, and you'll actually learn something. Not to mention that you get college credit for those classes. Those come in handy...trust me. You don't want to take core classes in college. They suck, and the people are braindead. Get that shit out of the way.

Remember when Bart had to go to military school and Lisa saw the discipline and wanted to go too? Marge, in her infinite wisdom, told Lisa that she didn't want to go there. "This is just a prison for children."

Yep. School is just a prison for children. But there is a purpose. Aside from making you more aware of just how fucking dumb some people are, it prepares you for the Hell that is college academia and "the real world," the place where your parents toil.

Which brings up a good point. Enjoy your youth. That sounds dumb, but the "real world" is about 1000X as shitty as school. When you think about how much you despise your parents (which we all inevitably do), remember that they spend at least 40 hours a week working a job they probably don't like so you can eat and have access to the internet and go to a good school.

It gets better, man. Just hang on. Everything is gonna be okay.

Neil

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

4. Well i'm 16/17 almost

and yeah school's a bitch but it's required. when you get out then you really will start learning...

for example, i'm in the process of midterms right now. Wednesday is my math midterm. It's actually a Trig midterm. Do you think I learned any of the Trig in class? God no, I had to teach it to myself because my teacher is horrible. You know why that is? Standards. No Child Left Behind.

my brain is fried. sorry if that made no sense. it will later.

[Fenris]

5. A shining example of No Child Left Behind

...and it's discontents.

:hi:LPFF!

[LeftPeopleFinishFirst]

7. yeah

i spend so much time trying to learn what's required that there's absolutely no time to learn what i really would like to learn.

[htuttle]

6. The most useful thing I learned in High School...

...was how to deal with arbitrary, insane and malicious authorities. Everything else I learned on my own.

You've got the internet nowdays. Take advantage of it. Educate yourself! (learn how to program, learn about history, learn about music and art, etc... YOU decide). It makes school easier to put up with.

My $0.02

[madrchsod]

8. go to google

type in- "the student as nigger" a 60`s take on schools. i still have my copy.

[rockymountaindem]

9. I graduated last year

and I can certainly sympathize with what you're going through. There was this one teacher who was so conservative and just awful. Just my luck I was in her class during the 2000 election debacle. All the other history teachers I had later (liberals, yay!) just shook their heads in shame every time any of us students mentioned this aforementioned loser. She was like the village idiot of the history department.

A word of advice... put up with their crap and act like you enjoy it. Once you're a high school upperclassman they won't give a crap (most of them). I was in a school of 1500 students, but the International Baccalaureate Programme was only 28 of us at the very end (out of 450 in my graduating class). We all knew the teachers and they knew us really well. We spent hours in their offices just hanging out and eating cookies. Just be charming and talk with the teachers. Agree with everything they say that isn't of relevance. By the time you graduate they'll think you're Mr. (or Ms.) Cool.

On edit: I remember this one time I fooled my English teacher into thinking I had read Crime and Punishment because I had watched about 1/2 of the A&E movie about it three years before. It was awesome and she had it coming! They're always impressed if you can comment on things they like. If they ask any follow-up questions, evade, agree and change the subject. Good times... (holy crap, am I nostalgic for high school already? AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!)

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Eighth grade is one of the lowpoints of life

I had a geography teacher who literally didn't know where anything was, and he kept coming back to the three soil types found in Russia (chermozem, podzol, and loess, in case you're wondering), no matter what the topic at hand was supposed to be.

In gym, I had one of those teachers who thought that she could punish and humiliate kids into becoming physically fit.

My science teacher was okay (as well as being Kevin Sorbo's father). He kept snakes and other interesting critters in the classroom.

I have completely blanked out on my English class for that year, but I remember that it was so boring that we passed James Bond books and Mary McCarthy's The Group (with its famous Chapter Two) around and sat with them in our laps.

I hated math on general principles.

Chorus consisted of three days of singing idiotic songs that no one ever heard of ("Well hidden in shadows the cool mosses grow/They share the rich beauty that simple things show" and "We are a crew of shanty boys as jolly as can be..." were two of the worst) and two days of music history by a teacher who knew nothing about music history. (I knew more about music history than he did, just from taking piano lessons.)

This was about forty years ago. Eighth grade is something that has to be endured. Ninth grade isn't much better, but things start to look up slightly by tenth grade. College is terrific by comparison. Hang in there! Five years may seem like a long time when it's more than 1/3 of your life so far, but it will go by fast.

[Race4Peace]

11. thanks for all the advice!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

[ellie]

12. I have to add my two cents,

however helpful or unhelpful. I hated school. I hated the fact that I had to be there for x amount of hours in a day. However, I did really well and never studied by giving the teachers what they wanted. This advice will be especially useful in college as well. Good luck, don't let the bastards get you down, keep the real you hidden and uncorrupted, question EVERYTHING, and act like you are playing the game. It will serve you well for life as an adult.

[Jack_Dawson]

13. Only classes I remember: Typing and Spanish

in high school. I remember nothing else, even from college. Scary.

[hobbes159]

14. Never let your schooling interfere with your education

I was bored out of my skull from about 4th grade on... Learn as much as you can in what you are interested in!

[kath]

15. We homeschool so that our kids can *enjoy* learning, learn about what they

are interested in, and not have to put up with the *incredible* amount of bullshit that schooling entails. Schools tend to treat teenagers like absolute shit --"the student as nigger" is a very apt term.
There used to be a great t-shirt in the Northern Sun catalog -- a cartoon type drawing of two adults in this bleak-looking structure. One says something like "why do we need another prison, I thought we already had one." The other one replies "this isn't a prison, it's a high school"! Unfortunately, I couldn't find it when I looked on Northern Sun's website just now. DANG -- I'd been wanting one of those!

Read "The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn. Maybe you could talk your parents into letting you leave school-prison. This book would give you some ammunition.