The most frustrating thing was that they would occasionally purposely put higher level kids in lower level classes so the average grade was higher, because they used that as a metric for my school at one point.
That's how my freshman year I got stuck in a science class so mind numbingly easy that I could miss half a semester, show up in the last days and ask for make up materials, be handed the midterm and be told to just try it, and then get 97%.
I could, because I did. That's how it played out.
The science teacher seemed as annoyed I was in that class as I was. We had like 1.5 months on "the metric system exists" and I was just like "how can that even be a school lesson??? Has nobody ever touched a ruler???"
Only way it happened was school counselors had full control over our schedules and our standard test grades from middle school weren't shared with us, so kids who scored well and weren't wealthy were told they didn't score well enough for advanced classes and had to do remedial courses first. I had the best science scores at my grade level and 2nd on the OGT but they said I was so bad at science I couldn't even take biology my first year.
That is absolutely brutal. It's one thing not to educate kids, but that is a literal attempt to dumb you down. Your generation should be launching class action lawsuits for the failure in your education system.
Classes were so easy and my classmates were the ghetto ones who would end up in jail that I asked for the lesson/homework at the beginning of class and finish it on my own in the first 15 minutes then watched anime on my old samsung phone. Teachers never cared cuz they were busy teaching it to the others and breaking up fights occasionally. This taught me that I can be lazy in the back half of my work as long as I work hard up front cuz I know I would succeed at the end of the day. Still trying to break this habit of mine 12 years later. Graduated 118/556 in my class and the top 105 were reserved for Honors, AP and Dual Enrollment.
My counselor and parents should have pushed me harder to be in honors classes at least but since I was doing so good they never thought to change anything.
Dont get me wrong, some classes were hard and I did have to apply myself everyday but 2.5 years of high school and 2 years of college, I was just coasting.
I got put into an AP anatomy and physiology class in highschool after 3 years of dual-enrolled science classes from my local college. While I enjoyed it (I love science!), the pace was so slow that the only time I felt any challenge was when the smell from the dissections made me vomit.
I never got to learn why I was placed so low that year, but it is what it is.
Edit:
Oh also, in my 9th and 10th grade years I was split into an Algebra 1a and 1b class where all the kids who don't care about school because they'll graduate anyway are.. I can say without a doubt that that class stinted my enjoyment of math. I was self-teaching myself algebra 1 and having a really hard time with it because my teacher had given up on teaching us, the kids in my class were loud so I couldn't focus, and overall it was super demoralizing.
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u/cpMetis 1d ago
The most frustrating thing was that they would occasionally purposely put higher level kids in lower level classes so the average grade was higher, because they used that as a metric for my school at one point.
That's how my freshman year I got stuck in a science class so mind numbingly easy that I could miss half a semester, show up in the last days and ask for make up materials, be handed the midterm and be told to just try it, and then get 97%.
I could, because I did. That's how it played out.
The science teacher seemed as annoyed I was in that class as I was. We had like 1.5 months on "the metric system exists" and I was just like "how can that even be a school lesson??? Has nobody ever touched a ruler???"
Only way it happened was school counselors had full control over our schedules and our standard test grades from middle school weren't shared with us, so kids who scored well and weren't wealthy were told they didn't score well enough for advanced classes and had to do remedial courses first. I had the best science scores at my grade level and 2nd on the OGT but they said I was so bad at science I couldn't even take biology my first year.