I'm homeschooled, but I go to a high-school Japanese class and the other students there go to public high schools. They have no home training. They just joke around and don't take it seriously. I heard a girl loudly bragging about how she skips class, and frauds notes from her mother.
The class is only one day a week and it's optional. But they act like the teacher is asking so much of them. Whining about homework, tests, and talking too much. This type of behavior hinders the progress of the other students.
When I went to take the PSAT , my mother had been harping on me about studying for the test for the past year, even though it's just sophomore practice.
But when I took the PSAT, I was shocked to see people sleeping during the test. They just don't take these things seriously at all. This type of behavior is such a bad influence. I remember a time when I probably would have been influenced to act just like that. But thankfully, I wasn't around that.
@Princess563 public school isn’t all that bad, depending on where you live and what school you go to. I don’t know anyone who’s skipped class, and I didn’t see a single person sleeping during the PSAT. I live in a very affluent area (median income of the specific part of the suburban city I live in is 160k), though, so that may be part of the reason. It really helps one develop a wider worldview when one attends public school. You learn to deal with all kinds of people, including idiots and people who are a lot smarter than you (like those people who got a 2400 on their SAT as a sophomore and take 4-5 hard APs a year and still manage to do amazing ECs)–things you’re going to have to deal with in the real world as well. The more frustrating things to me at my school, really, are the people who sign up for AP/honors courses and don’t get the coursework, therefore dragging the entire class behind. Personally, I wouldn’t send my kid to a private school (uh, no–I’m not going to have them grow up as a bratty rich kid of the types I’ve seen either transferred to my school after eighth grade or at academic competitions) or homeschool them; I’d go with public.
The only thing that truly bothers me, is the number of students in a classroom. It’s very difficult to connect with a teacher when there are 35 students in the classroom. Especially when the teacher becomes easily distracted and focuses more on those that are not paying attention, rather than teaching to those of us that care.
When people stereotype private-schoolers as “bratty rich kids.” Yeah, there are some of those (even at my own high school), but I’ve been in private schools since pre-K because I live in a subpar school district that’s going downhill every year. Half of my friends are on close-to-full, if not full, scholarships to the school; without the help, they’d be enrolled in high schools in two of the worst districts in the state. Yes, we have the kids going full-pay whose parents live in huge houses and buy a new Cadillac/BMW/Lexus/etc. every other year, but we have plenty more kids who take the public bus both ways to school five days a week because their parents work multiple jobs each. And even among the kids in the former category, most are at least semi-down-to-earth.
@ThatPurpleKoala most of the private schools in my area cost around 40k a year (non-residential, by the way). Almost none of the students are there on scholarships. I’ve been to debate tournaments and stuff at these schools, and they’re (mostly–there are some really nice people too; I know some really nice people from private schools) reallyyy rich and realllyy bratty (as in, they look at you disgustedly and roll their eyes and all-around think they’re better than you). That’s not to say I don’t have friends who go to private schools, but the stories you hear (for example–a girl asked her parents to drop her off two or three blocks away from school because her dad drove a Honda) are sometimes… disturbing. You almost never encounter scholarship kids at the private schools where I live.
That’s not to say we don’t have bratty kids at my (very affluent) public school. We do. But as a general thing, most of the people are down-to-earth. I think it also has to do with the fact that you have to be at a certain academic par to enter a private school.
No but when they’re like “You’re Hindu, right?”
Lololol.
I don’t really have the “Indian” problem at my school (lol our school is like 30% Indian), but religions -_- Nobody’s ever heard of mine.
So many people have asked me what Asian ethnicity I am. (1/2 the Asians at my school are Chinese, the other 1/2 are Korean) Does it really matter? Also, I’ve been called Mexican before, but I’m not…
@topaz1116 40k! I thought my school was expensive, but it’s like, 1/2 the price!
Most frustrating thing about high school… when those “less grateful kids” (kids who take their education for granted) start smack talking about my favorite teachers >:c
And it’s always about how they “assign too much work” or how they called the kid out WHEN THE KID WAS THE ONE TALKING WHILE HE WAS TEACHING. You’re not ready for college. Grow up first.
((Sorry, I just needed somewhere to vent, heh…))
@topaz1116 The only benefit of public school you have cited is the wide diversity of people. Um…Okay.
I just think that being around people who don’t care about their education could be a bad influence. It makes me sad to hear people say:
“I wish I cared about college earlier.” OR “I wish I hadn’t gotten a C in that class. It’s too late now for my transcript.” OR “I wish I hadn’t partied so much in high school.”
These are the words of a person who wasn’t taking there education seriously while it mattered. Now they have to live with a less than steller GPA because they bowed to negative peer pressure.
So the options:
Public school in the wealthiest district you can afford to live in.
Good, non bratty, Private School
Homeschool
Of course I am biased towards the third option, But is there really any difference between rich public school kids and rich private school kids?
Oh also when the entire curriculum for an AP class changes and no one in the entire country really has any idea what is going on and we’re all going to fail in May. Like for APUSH.
AND people who lower your confidence because he/she is the president of ten different (useless) clubs and is bragging about them all the time and then you begin to panic because all you want to do as a 17-year old is just learn, gain some exposure to the world around you, gain life skills and enjoy your time in high school but he/she is going to get into a top college and you are not. And then you start to not believe in yourself and start to think you are dumb even though you are not. Rant over. Peace.
@silverdrop yep They actually discussed it in our sixth-grade history book for like a page and everything in there was wrong. Like, Wikipedia was a thousand times more accurate than that textbook (according to my friends, they got a lot of stuff wrong for Hinduism as well). Lol but I think my school has like 3 Jains in my grade (a class of 530-ish)? So no one really knows about it, except for my friends (and I guess) the friends of the other two Jains.
@Princess563 I suppose I’m also biased towards the first option; but there’s a difference between your parents affording to live in a million-dollar house and them affording 40k a year for private school. I’ve found that most of the people at my school are really down-to-earth; all I’m saying is that public school isn’t as bad as you make it out to be. Almost everybody (except those pseudo-popular kids who aren’t even really popular) at my school cares a lot about their education.
@Princess563 Not all parents can afford to homeschool their kids, though. More importantly, there’s a very small percentage of students that are “rich”. Lucky you.
As a middle class public school kid, I’m lucky to have academically motivated kids (who focus on their education because it’s the only way to ensure a decent income in the future) around me every day. It’s tough working at a pace that’s not necessarily your ideal, but it’s an excellent experience and we get to help each other out.
They actually discussed it in our sixth-grade history book for like a page and everything in there was wrong. Like, Wikipedia was a thousand times more accurate than that textbook (according to my friends, they got a lot of stuff wrong for Hinduism as well). Lol but I think my school has like 3 Jains in my grade (a class of 530-ish)? So no one really knows about it, except for my friends (and I guess) the friends of the other two Jains.