For people who are really good with words, middle school is when you either get the passion beaten out of you like this, or you encounter a teacher who is a Difficult Person, but they like you and you gain their powers
Their powers of being a difficult person?
I once got a C- on an essay, but for extra credit we could submit that paper to a state essay contest. I was a state finalist in that contest, with my only revision from the class-submitted version being spell checking Britan->Britain.
Fuck you, Mrs Wickham.
Ah essays. The most bullshit part of school because they just cannot be graded objectively and never are.
I mean, few things in life can be graded objectively so that’s not really the best standard to hold education to. There’s a lot of value in learning and practicing the skill of taking in information and then rearranging it into your own words, creating and supporting arguments from the knowledge you’ve gained.
But the subjectivity of it DOES mean that occasionally teachers will need to set aside their egos. Those who legitimately want to educate the next generation usually can do that, but some just enjoy having power over children and absolutely will not units forced to do so (and doing so will just create a new grudge against that student).
Well of course nothing can be graded 100% objectively but maths for example. Your answer is either correct or not. With essays the teacher can just decide they don’t like your argument and you get fucked. I my 4 years of secondary school none of the 8 guys in my class ever got the best possible grade on an essay. Even after we got a less demanding teacher the grades barely improved.
Wow that is bullshit. Reminds me of the teacher who failed a student for drawing a digital clock in a square that prompted ‘Draw a clock showing 4:30 pm.’
Kid wasn’t wrong at all. Poorly worded question.
Further, please enjoy my own bitching about bad teachers all the way up into college:
I had a college professor for Political Science give me a shit grade for only one of the multiple papers required of the class.
Why?
I referenced US Army soldiers out right stating, on video, and with legit newspapers covering this, that they were being instructed to guard opium/poppie farms in Afghanistan, back when even liberals were pretending that was not happening. It was a paper on conflict goods, such as blood diamonds, and she pretended I was a conspiracy theorist.
Next year I had an Econ professor give my group and I got a crap grade (got nearly 100% on every thing else) on a report and presentation about Iceland’s response to the Financial Crisis of 08.
Why’d he do that?
Because Iceland’s actions and the subsequent effects on their economy did not fit into any of the possible policy choices (send all the corrupt bankers to fucking prison) and outcomes that his macroeconomic paradigm allowed to be possible, and functionally disproved it, as according to the model he was teaching us, this should have resulted in basically a total collapse of their economy. (There were some short lived negative effects, but faaar from what we should have expected)
I got a BS in Econ and a BA in PoliSci, double majored in 4 years, and what I learned was the only way to excel in either of these fields is to pick some kind of ideology to pledge your allegiance too, suck up and kiss ass and you’ll go far.
Your last point is pretty much the most likely way to excel in life too, unfortunately.
You’re lucky if you do actually like the person you have to suck up to.
Too bad I am autistic and can’t even pull that off the few times I’ve tried.
Oh well.
That is an unfortunate reality. People don’t want innovation, unless it affirms their existing beliefs. Hollywood has done the world such a disservice in portraying this ideal that if you’re right, and persistent, that you can overcome this type of bullshit. That’s romantic, sure. Everyone would love to prevail the impossible. But life doesn’t work that way.
Actually, it’s not Hollywood that’s at fault. It’s parents’ fault. Parents teach little kids that if they tell the truth, work hard, dream big, and all of this other fluffy stuff, then they will be successful. That they can be anything they want, if they want it enough. That, and, Santa, Tooth-fairy, Easter Bunny, “I don’t have a favorite child” are all lies we tell our kids; in the guise of protecting them from the harsh realities of the world, when I. Reality we are all selfishly trying to relive some innocence we lost many years ago.
If we really wanted to protect our children, we would teach them young what to expect out of life, and how to traverse the fucked up societal highways to be successful. It’s not about doom and gloom, but teaching kids to recognize the power structure of whatever situation they’re in, and how to work it to their advantage (e.g., working with the grain, versus going against it) would do them well.
Anyway, I’m ranting now. My apologies. Carry on.
It goes deeper than parents being nostalgic. The veneer of meritocracy is load-bearing to neoliberal ideology, especially post-WWII. If we, as a ~society~, acknowledged that no matter how big kids dream and how much they work they’ll probably never make it more than maybe one or two steps up the social ladder, our entire social model would collapse.
At its most fundamental level, that’s what the war against “wokism” is. It’s the privileged correctly identifying and targeting the existential threat that is the mere acknowledgement that we do not live in a meritocracy.
Checks out
It is a widely known word. All greentexts are always 100% true.
I like how the definition is that it’s meaningless
May I just point out the elephant in the room?
“Gook” is a nasty slur for asian person. This word literally means ‘unintelligible like the nonsense languages of asians’
Let’s just let this word fade away like so many other bullshit slurs, thanks.
Had an English teacher do kinda this to me once. We presented our research paper to the class, teacher tells me the birthday of the dude I’m presenting on, I correct her like; “bitch, dis my mf research paper! I know my dudes fuckin birthday, it the one damn slide I memorized!” (Paraphrasing, but the meaning was there, expertly and subtly disguised of course.) She then proceeds to tell me I must be wrong and failed my whole project, my magnum opus of eighth grade.
P.S. Frank Lloyd Wright was born June 8, 1867 in Wisconsin, not 1701 like some cranky, funny smellin old English teacher insists upon
Wtf? Didn’t Wright do most of his most famous work in the 20th century? Did your teacher think he was a vampire?
Frank Lloyd Wright (1701-1959). Frank Lloyd Wright was an omniscient demimortal techno mage who took up architecture in the late 19th-century at the age of 186 after discovering the eldritch art of soul drafting. He began designing and building structures across the United States with the intention of harnessing the psycho-emotional energy of the US population. Many of his architectural plans plainly display the geometrical interplanar-harvester elements, in comparison to architects such as Ivo Shandor (cult of Gozer) who felt the need to obfuscate the intent of their structures. [1]^ Wright’s final design was commissioned from archmage Norman Lykes, who trapped Wright’s life force in a soul stone embedded in a Mission-style rocking chair. Wright’s legacy was commemorated by logistical clerics in a postage stamp in 1966 and in 1970 by Bardic duo Simon & Garfunkel.
citation needed ↩︎
…she was wrong by MORE THAN A CENTURY AND A HALF and failed YOU on that basis??
That’s the kind of self-righteous incompetence you’d expect from a Republican politician, not someone who’s enduring crap wages and constant vilification from bigoted parents out of the love of passing on knowledge!
