Yeah, if you're not getting challenged at all in your classes you're not doing much of anything. It'll be that way forever unless you find a subject that you really like and have the patience to make your way up to high-level studies in college. High school in the States is daycare with drugs and fucking.
In my high school I was noticeably bored all of the time and it got to the
point where I had the university that owned my school bending over backwards to keep me from going postal. After flying through basically the first half of a math degree with As I basically knew that they are assuming stupidity of amazing degrees and you're killing
yourself if you let that be the end of what you go through. If you're near the end, finish up and try to survive; if you've got another year or more to go, enroll in any local college that you can and start killing prerequisites and core curriculum as fast as you fucking can if you're going to college because there's no way to survive an education system that wants to turn you into an MTV zombie working a 9-to-5 as an office decoration if you're not willing to do your own thing and tell anyone who stops you to fuck themselves with a cattle prod.
Jeff
you make some valid points, but you exaggerate a little. Having experienced two very different education systems 1-8 in romania, and 10-11 in the states, I can say that some classes in a romanian middle school are more intensive than math classes in an american high school. I'm talking about math and physics. Last year i was in the highest level math for an underclassman avaialble and i aced that thing sleeping in class and never opening the math book except for doing some homework that if not done would jeopardize my grade beyond recognition. I am now in precalculus, and this requires me to do my homework, but still sleep in class to ace every test. To take comparing math here and there further, in romania no one has expensive ti83 graphing calculators (no one affords 100$+ calculators where the low middle class families make as a total around 800Euros a month). We did everything by hand. Some of my colleagues in my math class were amaized that I could graph a parabola by hand, and do hella multiplication in my head, skill which i now lost due to doing lots of things on the calculator. 6 through 8th grade i had to do physics and learned about electricity, arhmide's law, pressures, wire tension, accelerations and all that shit that most underclassmen at my high school don't know. Here yo are required to take physics for one year, which i will take next year. So I can't say about it. However the romanian educational system is equally shitty, but on different things. We learn there lots of useless shit, and overburdens students to hell and back, and teachers don't give a fuck about students due to their miserable pay (200$/month for a middleschool teacher)
In America english language and literature and social sciences are taught incredibly well with competent teachers. Much much much (can't underline how much better) better than romanian language and literature was taught back at home. I loved learning american history (1754-present) in history, and reading and analyzing 10 books so far this year in language arts. I actually gained a skill that I will be able to use everywhere and in any language: to write good essays. Also the amount of reading done made me less ignorant, and expanded my vocabulary quite a bit.Tech ed is done much better higher, although high levels of stupidity are assumed by the curriculum.
Chemistry and biology are also taught well here, but so are in romania.
that was my comparison of 2 education systems, my point being that the system in US assumes high levels of stupidy like Jeff said, but not on all fields IMHO, and it won't turn you into an MTV whore in most cases as long as you don't allow it.
A person's education is not all achieved though going to school. Parents play a very important role. If you think that if you pack your kid a lunch or give him 5$ to buy lunch, send him to school, and yell at him to do his homework and ground him when he gets shit grades, then your kid is most likely to be an MTV whore or a brainwashed faggot. Parents need to talk to their kids about society, what is right and wrong (not the christian bullshit things), teach their kids tollerance and acceptance. Such things are not part of the math or English curriculum. Also parents need to promote openess kindness, pragmatism, and encourage reading various novel and take their kids on trips outside the US, have them visit the world, and by that I don't mean going to the beach in hawai (which is part of the US) or some exotic place, but taking them with them in restaurants, museums, and places where they can experience the different society, so they learn not to go eeewww when exposed to a slightly different culture.
Conclusion: there are lots of factors deciding how educated a kid is going to end up, and the education system isn't the only one, but a big part of it.
sorry for the huge rant
