katyanoctis:

meximeximan:

carpediemtomorrow:

rustboro-city:

svviggle:

kastortheunlockable:

stunningpicture:

My 7 year old son was shot down by his 1st grade teacher

The american public education system in a nutshell tho

My third grade teacher actually had a conversation with my mom that I was reading to well and told her to stop having me read at home

My first grade teacher said that it was problematic that I was reading ahead of the rest of the kids in my grade and asked my parents to stop letting me read Harry Potter.

My fourth grade teacher thought it was wrong for my dad to be teaching me complex math because it fascinated me.

My elementary school music teacher hated the way my piano teacher taught me, and how I was more advanced than many of her students, and so told me, in front of my peers and my mother, that I was not good enough to participate in the state solo festival. She would not give me the form. We had to procure it from the district instead. She also hated how I excelled at reading and playing music for the recorder, and so she refused to give me my “belts” (colored beads to signify our level) and humiliated me in front of the class repeatedly.

My eighth grade algebra teacher used to fail me on take home tests because I didn’t solve problems exactly the way she showed us in class; I used methods that we had learned for other types of problems that also applied to these. She took points off my tests because I didn’t bring a calculator even though I got 100% without it, because I was able to do it by hand. I had to call my father, who is an engineer, down to the school to shout her down and give me back my A in the class.

My 10th grade Spanish teacher yelled at me in front of the class numerous times because she didn’t like the way I took notes; she thought that since I didn’t write every word off the slide, I wasn’t getting it all down. I had to explain to her that people who have taken advanced courses, like AP or IB classes, know that in a fast-paced learning environment you need to take quick shorthand notes that contain the necessary information rather than wasting time writing every word. She almost gave me detention.

My 11th grade English teacher gave me a poor mark on my first short essay because she believed that I was looking up unnecessarily complex words in a thesaurus to try and get better marks. The phrases in question: “laced with expletives” and “bombarded”. She wouldn’t hear any defense from me.

My 11th grade history teacher failed me on an essay about the 1950s because I misread the prompt. Except the prompt wasn’t words; it was a political cartoon. One of the figures was clearly president Eisenhower, but the other I couldn’t place. My teacher would not tell us who it was. I labelled him as the governor of Little Rock Arkansas during the integration period, and wrote an essay about that subject. My teacher said that no, it was Joseph McCarthy, and that there was a small picture of the man in our textbook and therefore I should have recognized him instantly. Half the class, apparently, did not.

The American school system is not here to educate us or to encourage us to learn; it’s here to keep us in line and silent. It’s here to keep us from deviating and being our own people and forming our own ideas. Don’t let it win.

The cursive thing literally happened to me!!!!!! My dad taught me how to write my name in cursive and the teacher made me change it back to print.
Wtf.

Before I got to Pre-K, a lot of places called me a prodigy because I learned how to read and understood phonetics incredibly well before the age of 3. My school still wouldn’t accept me as a student until I turned 3, though (my birthday was in December), so I had to wait another year. So I learned addition and subtraction. I got in trouble countless times in Pre-K through 4th grade for “being too smart” before I lost interest a bit and my grades began to drop a little in 5th grade.

When I reached high school, a lot of my friends knew how to play an instrument, or dance ballet, or karate, or do something extra-curricular. My parents couldn’t afford to get me a teacher for any of these things as a child because we were always kind of short on money. My version of my friends’ extra-curriculars was learning and drawing, but school punished me for both of those, so I held myself back.

I still believe to this day that I, and hundreds of other people, would have been more intelligent and excited about life if the education system didn’t demonize learning.

My parents transferred me from the public school on my street to a local catholic school purely because my second grade teacher refused to give me harder work (after my K and 1st grade teachers had done an amazing job of challenging those of us who were smart; my first grade teacher had those of us who could read well start chapter books!). Not only did she cause a huge stink with the principal and mocked me often, a school counselor told my mom that she was too pushy and I would end up anorexic. And I was the one saying I was bored in class.

The catholic school principal was aghast when my parents told her the story and I was placed in classes that challenged me. Hell, my 8th grade teacher got me a separate vocabulary book when I asked for something harder since I had done the one she was teaching already and gave me my own tests for it and everything.

There are plenty of amazing teachers who go the extra mile, in public or private schools, but it’s very sad and pretty mentally dangerous when teachers like those mentioned above not only refuse to do so but tamp down creativity in various ways. It sucks :/

My third grade teacher, during parent teacher conferences, told my parents about how I would often pretend to be an animal, particularly a cat, and how it evidently disrupted the school environment. Her exact words were “his creativity bothers me.”

When my parents asked her if she had asked me to STOP, she replied that she “didn’t want to upset me.”

I only learned this stuff later on, of course, but I’ve had my fill of the education system, frankly. I can tell you stories about the hell that was my middle school. There’s a reason whenever I pass by said Middle School, I always whisper, “Oh look, there’s the hellmouth.”

Although to be fair, the problem with that one was the other students and the administration. The teachers were great.

Except for the speech teacher who turned out to have child porn on his computer. I am frankly quite pleased I didn’t end up joining the lessons of his I had evidently been recommended for.

(via katyanoctis)