Imagine bullying someone because they read a book.
They should be thankful the school didn't punish the class for not doing the assignment.
Fuck you, I didn't even read your comment, you literate poopiehead!
I was home schooled,* and occasionally I wish I had gone to public school, because I missed out on a lot of cultural touchstones, but then I'm reminded that kids are fucking horrible to other kids at any sign of differentness, and I was a fat, nerdy, gay bookworm, so, yeah, I'm good with the way things shook out. Haha
*Got a great education, not a religious nutjob, was not raised by right wing zealots.
As a homeschool survivor, you're the exception not the rule
I am very aware. I'm sorry :(
Home schooled kids on average are smarter. Public schools tend to lower their standards to get a certain percentage of students to pass.
Plus I bet your teacher was hot.
Considering half the home schooled kids are kept for indoctrination and/or abuse purposes, I doubt it.
Considering they won't even hold kids back a grade here anymore, I could see it. But I wouldn't be surprised if the curve of home schooled kid intelligence has two peaks, one corresponding to parents who make their best effort and another corresponding to the ones you're talking about.
Yup
Homeschooling: A comprehensive survey of the research, Robert Kunzman, Milton Gaither Other Education-the journal of educational alternatives 2 (1), 4-59, 2013
"A final consistent finding in the literature on academic achievement is that parental background matters very much in homeschooler achievement. Belfield (2005) found greater variance in SAT scores by family background among homeschoolers than among institutionally-schooled students. Boulter’s (1999) longitudinal sample of 110 students whose parents averaged only 13 years of education found a consistent pattern of gradual decline in achievement scores the longer a child remained homeschooled, a result she attributed to the relatively low levels of parent education in her sample. Medlin’s (1994) study of 36 homeschoolers found a significant relationship between mother’s educational level and child’s achievement score. Kunzman’s (2009a) qualitative study of several Christian homeschooling families found dramatic differences in instructional quality correlated with parent educational background. "
That's why I added all the stuff in the footnote. Haha. When I was a kid, we did home schooling because the area we were initially living had a lot of trouble of with knives and guns in the school, and then we started moving around so much it wasn't feasible to really get a decent education at a new school ever several months.
But the books that the state of Virginia told my mom to get ended up being a beka books, creationist nonsense. When my mom realized what they were she started getting me text books from library (we had settled down to only moving within the Hampton roads area by then). That indoctrination and shitty education is so rampant within homeschooling that even the state has given up on recommending decent material.
All that said, my mom (who, just to throw it out there because of comments downstream, did not finish highschool) was an amazing teacher. She instilled a love of learning in her kids, but honestly the most important thing I got from my education was learning how to learn. I feel like other kids learned how to pass tests, I learned how to absorb information and retain it, and how to actually find the information I need.
I also didn't take summers off, so I finished 12th at 14, which was, frankly, really fucking awesome. Lol. I used to get through an entire day's worth of course work before noon, and then I got to what we called free research. Which was basically "you can use the computer until 5pm, but it has to be at least tangentially educational." My God I read so much Wikipedia.
I wish I could be a proponent of homeschooling, because I know how fantastic it can be. But I can't, because the bad parents make it so, so much worse than anything that should be acceptable. We used to go to homeschool clubs, and even group teach (basically a class run by one of the parents with 15 or so kids, mostly as a way to get the other parents a few hours of free time), but had to stop because I would get in trouble with the other parents for saying things like "evolution" or on one occasion how condoms are a great way to prevent STDs. It sometimes felt like we were entirely alone in having a decent education in that system. We weren't, we met many, many other families with decent homeschooling techniques and actual science classes. But the ones who weren't? They were absolutely the loudest.
Plus I bet your teacher was hot.
Funny story, my dad was a carnie for a brief time, and then I acted a good bit as a kid in those true crime shows from the late 90s and early 00s. On both occasions I had a tutor/teacher instead of genuine/standard homeschooling. I got a shittier education both of those times, but both times I had the fucking hottest teachers. The first I didn't realize was a gay crush, because I was too young, but the second I was old enough to realize what the feelings were, but not out enough to myself to actually admit them to myself. But my God, so sexy. I definitely understand the "crush on teacher" thing haha
Imagine bullying someone because they read a book.
Because anon was different. He was the only one who read the book. That's why.
And that works with everything:
It literally doesn't matter what the metric is, if you're different, you'll be punished.
Who says they didn't.
I'm sorry anon but they probably were gonna bully you regardless
It's Anon's parents fault for not teaching him how to deal with bullies.
~~You should talk to them and explain that what they are doing hurts your feelings!~~
Yeah no, fuck up the next guy who calls you ass-worm, bite and scratch if you can't knock them down, make sure they remember that fucking with you bears consequences. Push a stick to their asses while you scream "ass-worm, huh?!"
Yup. Took my kids to an anti-bullying session at the local karate school, and while their presentation was a bit more mild, it had the same impact. Basically:
This applies as well if you see someone else getting bullied. The main goal here is to scare the crap out of them so they leave you alone.
You okay bud
Yeah if someone called me that I’d just accuse them of being too stupid to read and then talk real slow to them.
This happened in my art class once. Our kooky art teacher invited an ex-student in without any prior warning and we were supposed to ask him questions on his art (he did book covers).
Silence, no one was having this shit. Out of pity I asked him questions on some tiny details I noticed on the spot. More silence, I ask about different tiny details. And so forth.
I've realised that there's a large portion of the populace that are perfectly comfortable in excruciating silence if it's not at their expense.
Just imagine this with the books I had to read in school. Yes, I would have read it, I'm a fast reader, so a bad book does not waste too much time. On the other hand, I would have no problems with grilling the author over the shit he or she wrote. Because basically every book we had to read for school was crap. There are so many good books, books that would spark interest and passion for reading more, but somehow they had selected the worst of the worst back then, aimed at making children reel in horror when they see books and vow never to touch a book again after school.
Part of it is also what they make you do to the book. I remember one exercise involving a book of our choice and of course I selected one I already liked at the time. The analysis itself tends to make a book a lot less fun.
Huh. I guess my experience was better I remember reading My Side of the Mountain and The Giver, among other things. Usually pretty decent reads though.
Kids suck
I mean it’s literally a story about a kid being good.
A story about a single kid being good while many other kids were shitbags.
Yup. On the whole, the message is "don't be good because you'll get bullied." So yeah, kids suck.
But only because of his high regardation.
You're a good person ass-worm
Ugh, can relate. I love to read; I used to go through two books per week as a kid during middle school and high school. Not even just fiction, but non-fiction about topics that interested me like space and aviation. I even read books on my Palm Pilot PDA, well before e-readers were a thing.
So as you can imagine, I had an exceptional vocabulary compared to classmates. This had some annoying effects as well. Whenever I did written assignments for a new class with a different teacher, they’d always accuse me of either cheating or plagiarism. Because I was using way more ‘difficult words’ than classmates. A two minute conversation usually cleared it up; they quickly found out that I did in fact do the work and understood the assignment.
I don’t envy teachers today. Reading comprehension has declined sharply, and kids just don’t like to read as much as they did when I was young. Despite the fact that books are now way more accessible to them. I fear it’s going to result in an illiterate generation…
I read everything I could get my hands on (and still do), except the shit they assigned us for school.
I get "historically relevant" classics are a thing, but students don't want to read most of them because they're brutally formal and none of them can relate to them. It's a chore primarily because the curriculum is all old and because burying 500 layers of symbolism into a story isn't how people write any more (because it sucks).
If more reading assignments were stories written to actually entertain kids and just asking the kids to put themselves in the character's shoes and "what would you do", maybe they wouldn't hate reading so much.
At some point I started dialing up the symbolism interpretation up to 11 but somehow they didn't like that either. I came to the conclusion that they want you to validate their particular interpretation of a work even if it put too much thought into it compared to the author, not put too much thought into it yourself.
I remember my teacher being upset about "official" interpretation. She called it out as over the top IIRC and then still taught it to us, because it was required on exams.
Maybe not illiterate.
But I run into a lot of people who are incomprehending, and too proud to ask for elaboration when they didn't get what you said or wrote.
If this happened at my school people would thank op for making the assembly less awkward
Good job anon. No good deed goes unpunished.
fkn worth it
Middle School sucks ass for everyone who's not a rich kid.
~~Middle~~ School sucks ass for everyone who’s not a rich kid.
Sounds like a win
Worth, 1000x over.
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