See, that's what's so strange for me. My high school had almost none of the usual cliquish crap and bullying going on. Hells, nerds basically got along with jocks just fine, cheerleaders weren't stuck up bitches. Wasn't until maybe my senior year when a wave of bad apples from the sophomore newcomers that I started to see anything turn remotely sour.
I will say that elementary school and middle school were most certainly hell though. And this was all within the same school district, so I'm not entirely sure why it played out that way.
Well, I mean aside from some more obvious variables. (IE, very much a middle-class suburban-mildly rural demographic, far fewer broken homes in the state, exceedingly low crime, etc etc).
This is the problem you and others have, you think "Well my high school/university was absolutely fine so I don't see what anyone else is on about" which yeah, if you had that experience, consider yourself fucking lucky. Many people who have this attitude towards education though are either frankly old, or have been insulated big time from what everybody else has had to go through. Staying away from university was one of the best decisions I ever made, it's also kept me debt free unlike a lot of people my age who fell into the trap, no sense going with the skills I'm learning.
It is not a stretch to write that many of these places actively put students in harms way when it comes to physical safety depending on how bad things get too.
Well, the other flipside too is that parents are not infallible either.
Without divulging too many details, a friend of mine was homeschooled, while being raised by a bipolar and nearly psychotic mother. Now I think he would agree that in most regards, he came out of the homeschooling experience just fine, but I do wonder if he might've had at least had more opportunities to get away from the insanity now and then if he was able to turn towards a public school for a few hours a day.
Not that I put much faith in the state or the Feds, and can certainly imagine a wide range of scenarios where even that could've played out worse for him, but even so, I think there's at least a few parents who are just straight up unfit to teach their kids, my own included.
Unfortunately, public schools today are not even remotely fit to teach kids.
Oh absolutely but my counter point would be for every psychotic and abusive parent the ratio against abusive teachers and students is not even in the slightest.
On a personal note, in the end my public school teaching was near non-existent to the point I didn't know my times table by the time I was 8 and I had to be rescued by a private tutor in that area anyway. Now people know to some degree some of the many reasons I utterly despise school teachers.
I'm still fucking angry at them over what they did to me and I don't think I'll ever get over it because I see them pulling the exact same shit with students now even with other subjects like basic literacy. They made me think I was too dumb to learn maths because I was frequently dumped in the low achiever groups, now I'm learning algorithms and code and I'm deploying the weaponised autism against them.
There are certainly some pretty terrible and abusive teachers. I was fortunate that I didn't actually have any myself, but there were a few names that were recognized by the entire student body, known for being utterly unhinged bitches whose only goal in life was to cause and spread as much misery as possible.
I was damn lucky to have some legitimately good teachers. And I honestly feel a bit of guilt that I haven't done more with my life, given how fortunate I've been. And I won't make any excuses for myself. I was a lazy and perhaps spoiled screwup. Probably still am.
I had trouble with math too. Still do honestly, but in my case I couldn't really blame the teachers. Well mostly. I will say that their general approach to teaching more complex and abstract subjects like that does tend to be absolutely terrible, and has only been getting even worse.
Like you, I've had more luck trying to learn that and coding on my own, at my own pace, in more practical situations that offers more useful and motivational insight than I could ever get in the classroom.
See, that's what's so strange for me. My high school had almost none of the usual cliquish crap and bullying going on. Hells, nerds basically got along with jocks just fine, cheerleaders weren't stuck up bitches. Wasn't until maybe my senior year when a wave of bad apples from the sophomore newcomers that I started to see anything turn remotely sour.
I will say that elementary school and middle school were most certainly hell though. And this was all within the same school district, so I'm not entirely sure why it played out that way.
Well, I mean aside from some more obvious variables. (IE, very much a middle-class suburban-mildly rural demographic, far fewer broken homes in the state, exceedingly low crime, etc etc).
This is the problem you and others have, you think "Well my high school/university was absolutely fine so I don't see what anyone else is on about" which yeah, if you had that experience, consider yourself fucking lucky. Many people who have this attitude towards education though are either frankly old, or have been insulated big time from what everybody else has had to go through. Staying away from university was one of the best decisions I ever made, it's also kept me debt free unlike a lot of people my age who fell into the trap, no sense going with the skills I'm learning.
It is not a stretch to write that many of these places actively put students in harms way when it comes to physical safety depending on how bad things get too.
Well, the other flipside too is that parents are not infallible either.
Without divulging too many details, a friend of mine was homeschooled, while being raised by a bipolar and nearly psychotic mother. Now I think he would agree that in most regards, he came out of the homeschooling experience just fine, but I do wonder if he might've had at least had more opportunities to get away from the insanity now and then if he was able to turn towards a public school for a few hours a day.
Not that I put much faith in the state or the Feds, and can certainly imagine a wide range of scenarios where even that could've played out worse for him, but even so, I think there's at least a few parents who are just straight up unfit to teach their kids, my own included.
Unfortunately, public schools today are not even remotely fit to teach kids.
Oh absolutely but my counter point would be for every psychotic and abusive parent the ratio against abusive teachers and students is not even in the slightest.
On a personal note, in the end my public school teaching was near non-existent to the point I didn't know my times table by the time I was 8 and I had to be rescued by a private tutor in that area anyway. Now people know to some degree some of the many reasons I utterly despise school teachers.
I'm still fucking angry at them over what they did to me and I don't think I'll ever get over it because I see them pulling the exact same shit with students now even with other subjects like basic literacy. They made me think I was too dumb to learn maths because I was frequently dumped in the low achiever groups, now I'm learning algorithms and code and I'm deploying the weaponised autism against them.
There are certainly some pretty terrible and abusive teachers. I was fortunate that I didn't actually have any myself, but there were a few names that were recognized by the entire student body, known for being utterly unhinged bitches whose only goal in life was to cause and spread as much misery as possible.
I was damn lucky to have some legitimately good teachers. And I honestly feel a bit of guilt that I haven't done more with my life, given how fortunate I've been. And I won't make any excuses for myself. I was a lazy and perhaps spoiled screwup. Probably still am.
I had trouble with math too. Still do honestly, but in my case I couldn't really blame the teachers. Well mostly. I will say that their general approach to teaching more complex and abstract subjects like that does tend to be absolutely terrible, and has only been getting even worse.
Like you, I've had more luck trying to learn that and coding on my own, at my own pace, in more practical situations that offers more useful and motivational insight than I could ever get in the classroom.