<p>High school is beggining to appear nostalgic, a waste of time. I feel time passing me by, simply consuming the life out of me. High school being a joke, leads me to be a procrastinator, highschool being merely a phase of my life, an extreme tedious phase. Why does my teacher treat our class like crap, since 1st period was a drag to her, why do I have to face immature people who discriminate merely because of your looks, origin. I am sick of it.</p>
<p>^ Same here!! High school is like this obstacle course that you must pass through in order to be an adult and in order to gain freedom.</p>
<p>high school is a waste of time. Just enjoy your time with friends. If you're intelligent enough you'll do well anyways</p>
<p>Besides the blatant and poor attempts at brainwashing and conditioning(a kid in my class was actually threatened for being a Republican. Yay, New Jersey. By a teacher, by the way,) the emotionally damaging faux society most akin to a prison, the immature attitude of the young citizens, the aura of suspicion of the adults, and the sense of entitlement that both groups have, there must be something good.</p>
<p>I'm sure.</p>
<p>Something.</p>
<p>Half the class gets drunk on the weekends because they're just so happy, I'm sure of it. </p>
<p>Also, if your teachers ever complain about their pay, don't let that slide. Not only is money largely irrelevant at this point in many states(not all and not all regions, but many) as it just gets siphoned by unions and administrators, but in many places(the Northeast, especially) they make very good pay.</p>
<p>Case in point:
Teachers in New York City, working nine months a year, have a higher annual salary than an officer of the NYPD.</p>
<p>The average administrator's salary is greater than $100,000.</p>
<p>That's absurd and should not be tolerated. </p>
<p>Don't fall victim to their own self-victimization and feel pity for them.</p>
<p>They are not underappreciated, they have entirely unearned power over hundreds of young citizens and a free forum to not only air but impose their views, are almost all part of the single largest union in the United States, and are the most powerful organization of voters save, perhaps, the AARP.</p>
<p>High school is not a joke. It's far more serious, damaging, and terrible than that. </p>
<p>America does it the worst, we've recently been beaten by Cyprus, putting us at the dead bottom of the industrialized nations for education. </p>
<p>Cyprus, for those who don't recall, is neigh divided in half by conflict between the Turks and Greeks.</p>
<p>Our despotic consideration of students, oppression of those who chose a different path, and blind admiration of our "educators" is sickening.</p>
<p>You pay them, recall, and not the other way around. Treat them as politicians. Worse if necessary.</p>
<p>Sorry for the bile and rage, but I'm so tired of day in day out going to school to be taught how much money I should be paying them in taxes when I can vote. I'm tired of being treated as a criminal when I walk into a building.</p>
<p>I read the Supreme Court decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, and see that Constitutional rights do not end at the schoolhouse gate, but I am never taught that. I am insulted for staying, criticized for saying, and damned for leaving. </p>
<p>I refuse to give them my soul any longer. It's sickening, that I am yelled at for speaking or not speaking, as though I am their serf. But I pay them!</p>
<p>At home I am free, away I am free, at school I am not citizen nor criminal nor even serf, but "student" not worthy of being human.</p>
<p>And I just want someone else to look at the way the system runs, without consent or choice, ingrained daily by people not capable, in many cases, of getting another job and who want to do nothing but manipulate.</p>
<p>Perhaps I should apologize again for my ire, but I fear it would be insincere.</p>
<p>But worst of all, I'm too cowardly to say it anywhere but in anonymity.</p>
<p>I'm not a rebel, though sometimes I wish I were, but I am not.</p>
<p>^ Very emotional. Seems somewhat poetic in a sense. :)</p>
<p>Terribly emotional. I couldn't maintain my train of thought.</p>
<p>It's like the Waste Land, but without changes in first person(how scary would that have been?)</p>
<p>I've been dealing with that rage for 12 years, but I'm a very calm person and rarely speak out, so it's a bit of a release, but that makes it wild.</p>
<p>Or perhaps, if poetic, Wilde?</p>
<p>My high school isn't perfect, either, but I've yet to encounter an institution that is. Does anyone have any ideas for positive reforms, or is this a complaints-only thread? At the moment all I get is the impression that some people on here don't get along well with their teachers and peers.</p>
<p>"They are not underappreciated, they have entirely unearned power over hundreds of young citizens and a free forum to not only air but impose their views, are almost all part of the single largest union in the United States, and are the most powerful organization of voters save, perhaps, the AARP."</p>
<p>Really now, this is borderline melodrama. Why don't you just blame the Jews while you're at it?</p>
<p>Our despotic consideration of students, oppression of those who chose a different path, and blind admiration of our "educators" is sickening.</p>
<p>Blind admiration? Where on earth do you go to school?</p>
<p>"I refuse to give them my soul any longer. It's sickening, that I am yelled at for speaking or not speaking, as though I am their serf. But I pay them!"</p>
<p>Your parents do.</p>
<p>"Or perhaps, if poetic, Wilde?"</p>
<p>I hope to goodness that you're being facetious here.</p>
<p>*My high school isn't perfect, either, but I've yet to encounter an institution that is. Does anyone have any ideas for positive reforms, or is this a complaints-only thread? At the moment all I get is the impression that some people on here don't get along well with their teachers and peers. *</p>
<p>My reforms are school choice and homeschooling. I could give you a rant lasting hours(and I have,) but for brevity I will simply cite that Sweeden, one of the top nations in terms of education(and really everything) in the world instituted school choice under a conservative parliament in the 80's. The government was ousted in favor of a much more socialistic one in 92, and eliminated every reform they could from the 80's, but were unable to revoke school choice because it was so well loved. </p>
<p>Homeschooling, I like for more personal reasons.</p>
<p>And I get along very well with my teachers. As I've said, I'm a coward, and would never say these things around their ears.</p>
<p>*
"They are not underappreciated, they have entirely unearned power over hundreds of young citizens and a free forum to not only air but impose their views, are almost all part of the single largest union in the United States, and are the most powerful organization of voters save, perhaps, the AARP."*</p>
<p>*
Really now, this is borderline melodrama. Why don't you just blame the Jews while you're at it?*</p>
<p>One, it is extremely dramatic. Not borderline. It was meant to be overly powerful for the purpose of drawing attention to something that the vast majority of people (where I live) take without question. </p>
<p>I like most of the Jews I know, although like most people I'm sure there are some who have done terrible things too. I don't see why I should blame them for a democratically chosen system, when they are a minority in the united states, and a vast minority of the world. </p>
<p>Could you enlighten me?</p>
<p>Or were you just trying to compare me to a reactionary neo-Nazi?</p>
<p>*
Our despotic consideration of students, oppression of those who chose a different path, and blind admiration of our "educators" is sickening.*
*
Blind admiration? Where on earth do you go to school?*</p>
<p>Public school, in New Jersey, a terrible place.</p>
<p>Perhaps in your state there are those who criticize, but here to even suggest a teacher is not worthy of worship is blasphemy.</p>
<p>I've heard, far more than I think it warrants, "Teachers are the most under appreciated people in society," so many times that it actually angers me to hear it.</p>
<p>But perhaps you live elsewhere.</p>
<p>*
"I refuse to give them my soul any longer. It's sickening, that I am yelled at for speaking or not speaking, as though I am their serf. But I pay them!"*</p>
<p>Your parents do.</p>
<p>I pay at least a bit towards them. Yes, most comes from property taxes that I don't pay, but it's the attitude of it that annoys me so very much. That I am indebted to them for some reason. </p>
<p>*
"Or perhaps, if poetic, Wilde?"</p>
<p>I hope to goodness that you're being facetious here.*</p>
<p>I was joking? </p>
<p>I ended saying that the thing makes me wild.</p>
<p>And if it made me poetic because of my train of thought losing control, then perhaps "Wilde."</p>
<p>Wilde was a poet, his name sounds like "wild," it was a play on words. Not meant to be self-admiration.</p>
<p>I don't really see how that has anything to do with the rest of the topic though.</p>
<p>But, if it is necessary to be constructive, and I suppose it is:</p>
<p>High schools are drastically innefficient, specifically in the United States, and exist solely as a means of containment during a preset period that Americans have chosen as being capable to operate in the specialized post-industrial society.</p>
<p>The means used to supress this segment of the population are both brutal and genius.</p>
<p>Specifically they keep all citizens until the age of sixteen bound in "schools" wherin they charge teachers, whose purpose is stated as education, but is truly to maintain some amount of disipline. They instilled patriotism, and the skills needed to be a good employee.</p>
<p>This was in 1850, under the leadership of Horace Mann, who wished to emulate that Prussian and German system that created what he saw as the perfect society.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, or fortunately, or truly both, throughout the decades since its inception the education system has again, and again been found violate of a document far more sacred and written by greater men: The Constitution.</p>
<p>With each case, Tinker v. Des Moines, TLO v. New Jersey, and a million more, the teeth of the system, modelled after a militaristic training camp, were removed.</p>
<p>What remained was, however, not reformed. Perhaps because it was still wanted, or perhaps because no other system was known by the times these reforms came, the system was allowed to limp on, a wounded and dying beast, but a giant.</p>
<p>That is where we are now. We use the psychological tactics to turn friend to foe, to instill fealty, but we have not the means to enforce it. Furthermore, the society it was meant to emulate has fallen and is despised. The system now runs without a head, in its own unknown direction.</p>
<p>It crushes spirits but provides no boost, and builds a false society where there is no way to go up but by pushing others down. There is no money, and all are equal but hated. So all become soldiers, finding ways to reach the top by petty means. The lion's mentality is so strong that though the top and bottom are equally meaningless, it is a fight worth fighting for, and in some rare cases, killing and dieing for.</p>
<p>And the teachers have accidentally been lionized. They are given free reign to control the minds of a hundred students, a thousand, all together neigh every mind that walks American soil is tainted by there will. To resist is to fail, and by the system to fail them is to fail life and be damned. Minor punishments, the last teeth of the beast are doled out to ensure some semblance of obediance, but not to the rules of the law, for they are irrelevant, but to unknown laws reserved for poor deposts.</p>
<p>Suppression of speech, of thought, of possesion, sometimes of life itself. All things Locke, Jefferson, man himself have held sacred are cast aside by innefficeint autocrats hoping to maintain their small kingdoms. </p>
<p>And this is where we are.</p>
<p>But there is, perhaps, some hope:</p>
<p>Homeschoolers show, in many states, tremendous educational advantage to those who are schooled conservatively. </p>
<p>Still, they have such terrible stigma. 60% are homeschooled because of religious reasons, and thus to not join the system is to be labeled and lost. Until very, indeed very, recently states would violate their own laws to crush the opposition of the system(New Jersey did so until 2000, when it was pointed out they had not one law that condemned or constrained homeschooling, or in fact schools at all.) All this was done at the behest of the beast, made manifest by the NEA and school boards, that though toothless commanded votes, and was though dying a giant.</p>
<p>School choice too, has been denied in this country.</p>
<p>We buy houses now to escape the poorest schools where children are shot and ignored because they are not white or cute or rich, and those who cannot afford to leave are told that they do it for some unknown greater good.</p>
<p>90% of minorities, however, support vouchers. </p>
<p>Chile, like Sweden, instituted such a program while under the control of a true despot, Pinochet. Once disposed, each of his reforms was systematically undone. Save for vouchers and school choice, which were so loved that the democratic government could not go through with it.</p>
<p>Save few, most West European countries offer school choice of some type, and they are much better off for it, as any testing shows.</p>
<p>Imagine that groceries operated as schools, that if the milk at your store was rotting and there was the smell of asbestos, so that you had to leave to another, that you had to move your very home. That the clerks treated you as criminals and that talking to your spouse would result in jail time, and likely being forced apart forever. That should you have any device not approved, you were jailed again, and had it stolen.</p>
<p>And the clerks were given medals for their deeds.</p>
<p>That is the education we have now, for we cannot leave the ones we are at by law. </p>
<p>A rich town near where I live would not allow other towns to use their schools, for fear of poor minorities coming in. Said aloud at meetings, it was rephrased in press as "not abandoning our public schools."</p>
<p>But are our schools temples? Should the brains of innocent children be plastered on the halls to appease the angry gods, the administrators who make more money than the police who protect them?</p>
<p>Abandon the schools, if they have failed. Find another method. Homeschool. School choice. These will work.</p>
<p>This will not.</p>
<p>Um...some states do have school choice.</p>
<p>I live in Southern California (LA County to be specific), and if we can find a way there, we can go there. I myself do not go to the school that I live down the street from (literally, my street dead ends into a high school), but instead chose a school a 15-minute or so drive away where I knew I would be happier.</p>
<p>It sucks that you guys are so limited, but you can't judge the whole system off of your individual state. Never forget the power of the state. What is true in Jersey is not necessarily true in California.</p>
<p>Also, I'd like to point out that you get out of high school what you put into it. If all you're doing is worrying about grades, OF COURSE you're going to be miserable! Go out for a sports team. Join a choir. Audition for the musical. Do something to show you that school is about more than just good grades. These are supposed to be the best years of our lives.</p>
<p>True, but it is also the same in the other states I've lived in(Arkansas, Tennessee. Furthermore, most voucher programs have failed due to intercession on the part of the NEA and other organizations.(Florida, Colorado, NYC's might)</p>
<p>However, I admire your state's governor, who stands up for what's right and not what's said by teachers.</p>
<p>If he could be president, comrade, I'd vote for him.</p>
<p>I might anyway. As I've mentioned, I live in New Jersey, my vote doesn't count.</p>
<p>There is nothing at all about school. In my last school, I could go to dances and see the mosh pit of kids having sex. I talked to kids bragging about their abortion count.</p>
<p>Any who resisted were systematically destroyed.</p>
<p>I go to a (much) better school now, by some shocking action of my state towards limited but disguised choice, but have no real events to go to. In any case the people hate me.</p>
<p>If these are the best years of my life, I think I'd embrace Thanatos. At least then I wouldn't be afraid to speak my mind, just once.</p>
<p>I like my high school and think my teachers are paid way to little. At first I wasn't so sure about my peers but now I see where they're coming from.</p>
<p>I was an unpopular cynic in middle school, but now I'm a relatively popular one. Haha.</p>
<p>high school is a pain in the butt</p>
<p>Public high school in NJ is not the worst in the country. It's not like Corzine's in some back room spindling his fingers and laughing maniacally as he formulates a plan to put metal bars on school windows. Seriously. </p>
<p>The reason we have governors like Corzine (who is neither phenomenal nor incompetent) is because we have a core base of party-line voters (like every other state), but very few voters who vote based on the politician's ability to do his job efficiently, rather than on social issues (a rarity everywhere, again, but seemingly moreso in NJ; for evidence, recall all of NJ's election ads over the past 3 months). You seem to be a person who thinks. Yet you believe your vote is worthless. The status quo remains. </p>
<p>"There is nothing at all about school. In my last school, I could go to dances and see the mosh pit of kids having sex. I talked to kids bragging about their abortion count."
No one's pushing you to do any of that crap--I don't, and neither do most of my friends. It's a lifestyle choice, not something that only NJ has.</p>
<p>In New Jersey, for federal purposes, my vote is entirely worthless.</p>
<p>How can I compete for the electoral college when my vote will be thrown out in favor of someone dead in Hudson county?</p>
<p>It's hardly worth it. Locally maybe(I doubt it, I'm sure they throw out all non Democrat votes from people below the age of fifty as a mistake.)</p>
<p>And I don't mean to say I do any of those things. Just that there aren't very many(if any?) people who don't.</p>
<p>At my school, I suppose, there are some. But they don't much like me(However understandable it is, it makes it rather hard to do anything.)</p>
<p>But that's irrelevant anyway. I'm not a criminal and I'm tired of being treated like one.</p>
<p>At least in high school there are some choices as to what you want to do, what you want to learn. Elementary school and middle school were a complete waste of time. 8 years of learning some basic stuff that shouldn't take any more than 3 or 4 years.</p>
<p>Not in my school, almost entirely a core curriculum.</p>
<p>But I'll take it over the:</p>
<p>A. Expensive private school where teachers have been arrested for molesting and hiring students as phone prostitutes.</p>
<p>B. School where kids more or less party. And party. And party. And party. And party. And party. And graduate. </p>
<p>C. Neighboring public school which is like B but the kids have BMW's.</p>
<p>There are so many logical fallacies flying around I don't even know where to begin picking them apart.</p>
<p>My reforms are school choice and homeschooling. I could give you a rant lasting hours(and I have,) but for brevity I will simply cite that Sweeden, one of the top nations in terms of education(and really everything) in the world instituted school choice under a conservative parliament in the 80's. The government was ousted in favor of a much more socialistic one in 92, and eliminated every reform they could from the 80's, but were unable to revoke school choice because it was so well loved.</p>
<p>For starters, what objective method are you using to rank nations in terms of education (and really anything)? You don't cite anything, which leaves us with the burden of discerning from where you've drawn your conclusion. Second, you can't compare two societies (Sw*e*den and the US, in this case) and make a claim that "Aspect X of Society 1 is better than Aspect X of Society 2 because of Factor Y" because there are a plethora of variables that can affect Aspect X. There are numerous differences between Sweden and the US, and school choice is just one of them.</p>
<p>*One, it is extremely dramatic. Not borderline. It was meant to be overly powerful for the purpose of drawing attention to something that the vast majority of people (where I live) take without question. *</p>
<p>A tip regarding pathos in rhetoric: sometimes less is more.</p>
<p>Or were you just trying to compare me to a reactionary neo-Nazi?</p>
<p>It's an expression, bud. A neo-Nazi, no. A reactionary... well, you are portraying teachers as brainwashing students for political motives, and with little evidence to support you.</p>
<p>*Perhaps in your state there are those who criticize, but here to even suggest a teacher is not worthy of worship is blasphemy.</p>
<p>I've heard, far more than I think it warrants, "Teachers are the most under appreciated people in society," so many times that it actually angers me to hear it.*</p>
<p>This appears to me to be less a criticism of education in the country than of societal attitudes in your part of New Jersey.</p>
<p>*I pay at least a bit towards them. Yes, most comes from property taxes that I don't pay, but it's the attitude of it that annoys me so very much. That I am indebted to them for some reason. *</p>
<p>Well, teachers pay taxes too, so in a purely financial sense they are contributing as much to your education as anyone. </p>
<p>And I know very well who Oscar Wilde was, thank you. He was a master satirist who skewered the cultural attitudes of his society. It's not a large stretch to imagine you comparing yourself to him. I'm pleased to hear you weren't.</p>
<p>High schools are drastically innefficient, specifically in the United States, and exist solely as a means of containment during a preset period that Americans have chosen as being capable to operate in the specialized post-industrial society.</p>
<p>I point out this sentence as a grammatical nightmare, not because I'm a pedantic, but because I cannot figure out what "during a preset period that Americans have chosen as being capable to operate in the specialized post-industrial society" is supposed to mean.</p>
<p>blah blah blah jarring shift into past tense with no explanation blah blah okay I am not even going to attempt to address the rest of this section. You don't substantiate a single argument you make, and the piece in its entirety reads like a Dickens knock off.</p>
<p>*Homeschoolers show, in many states, tremendous educational advantage to those who are schooled conservatively. *</p>
<p>Biased</a> sample - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>I was midway through refuting the rest when I noticed you don't specify why school choice (by which I assume you mean implementation of a voucher system, sicne you never specify) would fix any of the problems you're describing. When you're done philosphizing and ready to get to the point I'll be happy to debate the merits of public education, but right now I haven't been given anything off of which to go.</p>
<p>Didn't read all these long posts, but now that I am a senior I am just going through the motions. I'm trying to just graduate at this point, I could care less about the school or anything. These days I don't really care about anything anymore.</p>