Negative School Experiences

My high school experience was fairly valuable in certain areas and a waste of time in others. The improvements to my writing and critical thinking were invaluable. Most of the specific knowledge ended up less so. I had a number of great teachers. My school had an enriched program that allowed teachers to get an elite class that they could teach towards and had the added benefit of vastly reducing behaviour problems and bullying in those classes. I think US schools are unusually dystopian compare

I was one of the calm and orderly boys in school. However, this was because merely being at school where I didn't want to be made me mostly lethargic. I didn't have any energy left to make a scene as I was busy counting hours until the day ended. To be precise, since the first week of the first grade I practically counted days till the end of high school when I knew this suffering would end.I did get good grades not because I was interested but because school was way too easy. I nev

My kids almost never do what I tell them unless they can see the point in it themselves.To me, it sounds like the school is either bad or the match with where your son is right now is wrong.I've always been curious, also as a kid, but I do remember most of the class mates spending most of their time staring blankly out in the void. The only reasonable conclusion is that those lessons were wrong.Just like if you design a UI and 70% of your users can't use it. Then we blame the

Very much agree with this. I often (day-)dream about using a time machine to tell my younger self a few words that would have changed the whole experience drastically. The main advice would be: stop trying to care. You, my young friend, are not the stakeholder in the institutions you're forced to attend. The system doesn't have your well-being and your benefit as a first priority. The interests of the faculty, parents, and in some cases future employers, are much more important, and yo

Whoa. Your story is pretty... well, unpleasant, I suppose. Especially at such a young age. It's all too often that people give up on education just because the school system sucks.At my school, I'm branded as a "nerd", often because I don't think I've joined that group of people who have given up on intellectual curiosity just because the school system is inadequate. What bothers me, though, is that such an attitude is pervasive through a very large portion of my school, even though it is an

School is terrible, similar to a labor camp. I was lucky to find a subject that was interesting and easy enough to where I could cruise through, yet demands enough respect to get me interviews.

I just spent 20 minutes typing out a massive response explaining how utterly terrible my experience was with school. But I realized no one cares about my life story and there is no way I can fully capture my experience in this discussion post. But in short, the structure and expected rigor involved with school often made me want to just quit and eat lead. It was by far the worst time in my life and I went to a very good college prep school.The teachers and most of academia only car about the

Interesting perspective. I had the luck, in hindsight, to have ridiculous amounts of freedom until the age of 16. I was homeschooled with my brothers (and eventually two close friends of the same age) and a fresh-out-of-teacher-school 'teacher' who wasn't very good, but was our friend. We had school at her apartment and then all had lunch at my house.Then from age 13 on I was allowed to work at home, where I would usually either skip my homework or use the answer booklet to do

Vested interest in education? That's not how I'd describe my relationship with it. My feelings towards education has more to do with "vendetta" than "vested interest". The one-size-fits-all style of education I was exposed to was more akin to torture than learning. It's not until now that I'm actually learning anything from my teachers. My teachers never understood me, they thought I was trouble when I was really the only kid who actually wanted to learn something, the one kid who did not want t

I was in high school 4 decades ago was chronically absent. I absolutely hated school and it really only provided unmanageable stress for me. I was entirely focused on getting to college. I was able to attend an art school which seemed to have a high population of un-teachable students.I loved college and was able to learn. I didn't get great grades but I was participating in the education process.