So here’s the thing about public school- it sucks.Every thing was fine for me in elementary school, but going to middle school was like a slap in the face. Suddenly my friends were hormonal monsters with cracking voices who could burst into tears at a moments notice. Bullying increased, people were more likely to abandon their friends for dumb reasons, and eating lunch became a terror filled game of musical chairs- except empty chairs can suddenly be “already taken” by anyone who isn’t you. Which is fine, because this is just part of growing up and learning to not be a jackoff. The problem is that this is supposed to happen in a controlled environment of learning. The only teachers I learned from had to go practically bankrupt in order to let us get what we needed. They spent their small pay buying better textbooks that we still had to share because our classrooms were overcrowded. They had to buy their own paper, pay for the copies we made at school, and most even had to spend all their effort finagling time for us to use computers that didn’t crash in the middle of everything. When the end of the year came around we would cry for all the good teachers who were fired. Every year our band teacher would get another pink slip, and every year the whole band would attend meetings with the board of education to get it revoked. We lost science teachers who finally helped kids understand what it was cells were and not to touch that container of acid because acid is bad. And every year, you know who would be safe? The old teachers.
The teachers with tenure who didn’t want to teach anymore. Who actually- and i’m not even kidding- spent their time googling the answers to state standards because they didn’t know them. We didn’t have computer class, we had “problem solving” time because if we couldn’t use the software our teacher was told to teach us, well we couldn’t get help from them because they didn’t know it either. It was the most enlightening three years of my life, middle school, because I finally saw through the facade and saw my teachers for the jokes and superheroes they were. I learned most of my english usage from my band teacher, and passed math because of my friends in Seminar. Which is a horrible thing. Seminar was originally a great way to separate kids by how much smart they were so they wouldn’t get held back or lost, but it devolved rapidly into favoritism. It’s a great idea to separate kids by their learning ability, but the problem is that by high school, kids that aren’t in seminar are behind. Seminar kids get the superhero teachers who actually teach them, and everyone who wasn’t a genius in elementary school is now screwed. We could never catch up, because our teachers didn’t know a tibia from tilapia. It became a game of “who’s the best at googling things our teachers never taught us”.
By the time I got to ninth grade I was done. I had given up. I have never had more incompetent teachers. From teachers who were too shy to shush the class to teach, to the teachers who literally just gave us practice sheets and time to find answers in textbooks from 10 years ago, I lost all hope in the education system. Which is a terrifying thing because it’s all that stands between you and not getting employed. You go to your counselor for college advice and suddenly find out you can’t go places because you missed classes you didn’t know you needed to take. You get an A in the class only to find out that pre-algebra is a 7th grade class anywhere else in the world. If you had dreams of having a career in STEM forget about it, because if you didn’t get good teachers- reserved for seminar kids only- theres no way you have a chance of passing a basic engineering class now. And so I checked out. Public school’s incompetence didn’t bother me anymore, because I was already screwed. I went from stress eating overweight to depressed losing weight fast. I ate less, gamed more, and honestly only did my homework in the ten minutes before class. My grades plummeted, and I couldn’t walk past knives without thinking about slitting my wrist. Everything in the world seemed so scary, and I was clearly unprepared.
One day, my dad played “Waiting For Superman” a wonderful film about charter schools and why exactly it was ok for my teachers to be buffoons. That was the first time I had heard of charter schools. I remembered everyone talking about High Tech High, and I had a friend who had gone there. I friended her on Facebook, heard some great stories, and entered the lottery for acceptance all on my own. Eventually my parents found out I was on the waiting list, and I have never seen them so intense. My mom, a writer, wrote letter after letter, offering to come in and teach for free, donate books, do anything to get me in. For the first time in a long time they started to see the old me. I came out of my depression, and managed to, in a month or two, pass all my classes so I could go. I cannot express how grateful I am to charter schools, and the people who believed in them enough to make them. Without them, I would not be alive. Learning things is my life, and going to a school where I could finally learn things was a breath of fresh air. I saw a video of these ducks who had never swam in water before, but who were released in a lake and had the time of their lives, and I felt like that. It took a while for me to figure out being social again, I was a jerk to a lot of people, but I made friends quickly. I felt close to my teachers, and bonded with them through a love of what they taught. It’s weird writing all this down, after not really telling anyone what was going on, but I need to get back on track.
This year in school we watched “Waiting For Superman” again, and again, it sparked something in me. I realized how less than a year ago i had been suicidal and surrounded by idiots, so I decided to make it my goal to fix public school. HEY! GOVERNMENT! Hate to break it to you, but when your school system makes kids want to kill themselves, it’s no good. And teachers union, the hell is wrong with you? I’m all for teachers protecting each other, but you’re costing the kids. We’re supposed to be the future of America, and we are being taught by people who not only don’t know anything, but aren’t willing to learn. People have tried to get programming introduced to school, advance science textbooks beyond “this is a cell, it makes things”, to how to work with arduino boards, to NO AVAIL. Because the teachers refused to admit they had no clue how to do this stuff.
Listen, and listen close, because this is the most important thing I will ever type.
YOUR SYSTEM DOESN”T WORK. YOUR TEACHERS ARE BAD. YOUR UNION IS PROTECTING THE VERY PEOPLE WHO ARE HURTING US. It’s not about our education anymore, it’s about idiots getting a steady paycheck. If the efficiency of the school system was a computer, NO ONE WOULD BUY IT. So why are we?
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