Week Three: Thoughts On The School System.

A friend of mine asked for suggestions on how his English teacher could improve her teaching. Well, it kind of evolved into this rambling reply regarding my first few thoughts on the school system.

Here is the massive message I sent, totally unchanged from it's first draft.

My thoughts on the school system are MANY AND VARIED, but my viewpoint boils down to this:

Firstly, compulsory education is kind of bullshit. No matter how old you are, you should have the right to choose if you do or do not want to do something.

Secondly, all educations should be set up like college is: if you want to go, you go. If you don't, you don't.

Thirdly, regarding college: There should be no "required classes". If I'm going to college to get a piece of paper that says "Yes, good on you, you know lots about maths", then why should I be required to take an English class (and vice versa).

Fourthly, testing is not, never has been, and never will be an accurate way to measure if learning has taken place, or if you have knowledge of a certain subject.

Fifth, (and this is more of a collective social consciousness type-thing), there needs to be NO STIGMA AROUND WHAT CLASSES/SCHOOLING/COLLEGE/LACK-THEREOF YOU CHOOSE. On the flipside, there needs to be a general consensus that if I'm home/un/private/public schooled, that does not mean that I am anything other than a human being. Do not assume that I am a genius, or that I have no social skills, or that I am stupid, or that I have no thoughts of my own, or any of those things.

Sixth, respect. Now, I'm not talking about the mouth-shut-listen-to-me-while-I-am-talking kind of respect for teachers, but more along the lines of I-am-a-person-you-are-a-person-respect.

Seventh, safe space. Create one, enforce it. If someone's breaking the safe space, get them either A: spoken to about it or B: removed from the space.

Really, there's only two of these that your teacher-person can do anything about, and that's the last two. I'm going to go into a bit more detail on each of them now.

Respect: the thing is, I think a lot of teachers think that the students should respect them purely on the grounds that they are The Teachers. In reality, all this hierarchy crap is just that, crap. If you are expecting respect without wanting to give it back, that's just not going to work. I seriously doubt that in a teacher's personal life, they expect respect without giving respect in return. Bottom line, your students are people, same as you, no matter what age they are. Treat them like you want to be treated. Don't be an ass based on age or supposed classroom hierarchy.

Safe Space: this kinda falls under the umbrella of respect, but since this is super-crazy important, I'll say it again. Please, if you ask your teacher to do any one thing, ask her to make sure that her classroom is a safe space for everyone, including and especially lgbtq+ students. If she can educate herself about making sure she's not making unintentionally hurtful comments, and if she can make it damn clear that anyone who does is going to be spoken to about it, and that she won't tolerate that kind of crap, all the better for EVERYONE.


~Whimsy

School

I want to start out by saying that I know that I'm really behind with replying to comments. I litterally have had no time at all.

But enough excuses, let's have a proper blog post.

Since it's getting to be that time again, shall we talk about school? I think we shall.

When I was really young, I didn't really pay attention to the fact that school was starting up again. It was simply something that was keeping me from seeing my schooled friends, something that meant that I couldn't see my friends in the middle of a weekday.

As I grew older and began to pay more attention, back to school time became weirder and weirder. I distinctly remember one day, while grocery shopping with my mom, I looked around the store and saw that there was nobody my own age in the store. You don't know how weird it is to suddenly look up and realize that you're living in a world without any children. It's unnerving.

As the years went by, the annoyance with the fact that my friend's school was cutting into my social life combined with the fact that (once you hit a certain age), people sort of look at you funny when you say that you're not in school.

They begin to think that it's okay to ask you some really rude questions. Yes, I know that most of this is from being misinformed, but yikes. I've had people ask me what was wrong with me, if I was stupid, or more often than not, just sort of nod and go "well, how 'bout that".

Now, I don't mind being asked questions, but it's when people start to blatently judge me is when I can't handle it.

As I grew older, there was one thing and one thing only that made me jealous of my schooled peers. School/office supply shopping. I know that sounds silly, but it's true.

I could spend hours in office supply stores and be perfectly happy.

This would not be weird if I liked shopping, which I most certainly do not.

Anyway, it's strange.

I'm off to eat soup, talk again tomorrow!

~Whimsy