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I had my 'bahaviour grade' lowered by two points on a six point scale for being 'too assertive'. You know, not bullying or smoking, rather occasionally telling a teacher that some other student had rights, or quietly reading when I was done with the material. Looking back at the past decade and all the standard abusive sexual situations I was able to say 'no' to and demand my 'no' is heard I would say we really, really need young women to be 'too assertive'. Crushing the ability to stand up for yourself in young people is kind of criminal.
I was punished for trying to get a student who was bullying others and sexually harassing me removed or therapied. Nope! It’s your fault-a 12 year old girl. Ruined adults for me for a long time.
This is so bad! I encourage my students to read (not very many do) but I'm not allowed to. I'm suppoed to "keep them busy" until it's time. Even if it's 5 minutes before the bell rings
Also! Most school punish both people if they get into a fight even if it's just like someone punches you and you shove them away. You both get suspended for the same amount of time which is literally teaching kids that you need to sit back and take abuse until and authority figure decides oh yeah that's not okay.
it is crucial so ppl don't stand up to authorities like the government and their bosses. I see it in a friend of mine who never says yes to us with ease but jump over backwards when her boss calls, even though is not work hours. it is a really smart system if you ask me.
I had the same thing happen because I seen kids start to go outside and we were being kept in for a bit a I got that evil yellow card for being to excited and eager to go outside
Just been forcefully reminded of being made to kneel on the floor so a teacher could check your skirt reached the floor.... as a person with shockingly long legs, this never went well for me. Also making young girls kneel on the floor in front of their male teachers so they could inspect their skirts??? Questionable
I can't even understand why we have to wear skirts. Why can't we wear trousers? Boys do, so what's the problem if girls would have an option to wear them as well?
@@cdko That'a kinda fucked. I was allowed to wear trousers at my secondary school, and guys were allowed to wear skirts, you just had to follow the dress code for it. Like fuck I'm going out in winter and autumn in a skirt. You can do one.
as from a country where school uniforms are practically non-existent, I can't comprehend why you have to pay for your uniform when the school was only one who wanted it. as if you go to some job and they force you to buy their uniform? my brain is melting.
"Imagine if it was around race" In the US, black children and teens are regularly forced to change their hair(specifically, to cut their dreadlocks) in order to attend classes and significant school events. The justification being that they look "unkempt", whether or not that is true. It absolutely does extend past class.
@bort: exactly. Yet, in the US, in 2020, a highschooler w well kept dreads was kept from participating in graduation unless they changed their hair. And that's just the instance that made the news!
This really makes me think about the difference between US schools in different areas! My previous high school in South Florida had around 2,500 students, was in a very low-income area, and what others may call "the hood". It is primarily made up of Black, Hispanic, and mixed races, so this situation never, if not rarely, happens. Here, you can wear a crop top with spaghetti straps, a mini skirt, sandals, a hoodie; practically anything you'd like and nobody would stop you. You can wear your hair in any way you see fit, including having fully dyed hair of any color. It's a shame that your school has these restrictions and goes to show just how racist and uneducated the curriculum is. We can't stand for this behavior any longer.
Bruh I had uniforms AND a strict dress code to show how you had to wear the dang uniform (which I’m sure other people have gone through as well, not trying to one-up anyone) I barely got by wearing boots in the winter!
The most toxic lesson school taught me was that "nobody in authority cares about your problems". I was bullied and these days I can't even think about it without being angry at all the adults who managed to teach me to remain quiet/compliant and then failed to notice I was in constant distress. I was academically strong so they also left me utterly unprepared for dealing with failure and with my self-worth tied entirely to my grades. I'm in my 30s and I'm still learning basic lessons on how to human.
i relate to that so much! I had good grades, so my teachers, many of whom I had had for three years at that point, failed to register my crashing mental health, even as I went from being chatty and annoyingly active with my friends in class to staring at the classroom wall in complete apathy or sleeping in class. They gave other students a stern talk when their grades started slipping too much, but mine never did so I had to be ok. At the age of 20 I still have nightmares about school :(
This guy bullied me in middle school and I got detention for pushing him away from me, meanwhile whenever I reported him to the teacher he would at most get told to stop. And then of course the next day he would know I had reported him, which didn't help anything.
@EHnus Lover696 it's not a good mindset for young boys or men to have either, and is part of the reason that men are less likely to seek help for mental health issues than women
@EHnus Lover696 no mindset is inherently natural or unnatural, it's learned behavior. People learn values as kids and those values change as they grow older because their experiences have taught them to have a different outlook. It's not propaganda or mind control, it's life. You change the world every day through every interaction you have, whether that change is large or small, and you can change what impact you leave on the world. If one of my bros comes up to me and needs someone to listen to them, I'm not going to be a dick and say no.
@@orikiedu1833 Individual teachers, though noble, cannot institute the wide-scale educational reform necessary. One more good teacher won't end the institutional abuse. Also I don't like kids lol
Yeah it kinda is. I do think education itself is needed for a good society but so much both could and should improve about it. At the very least we should be discussing how to improve the schools
I got told by a FEMALE teacher when I was in school (16 at the time) that she felt bad for all the male teachers at the school because girls skirts tended to be quite short. 1. Yes, some would roll them up to be short. However, she was talking to me because I’m 5’9” and the skirt I had was fairly short on me because it was clearly made for a smaller height. 2. I felt so shit at the time. Like, I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable and I was very insecure about my body and wanted to hide it. But now?? I’m 19, almost 20. I’ve worked in a school, as a professional for training. 16 year olds ARE children. If male teachers can’t look at a student in a non sexual way, no matter the length of their skirt, THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED AROUND KIDS, much less work in a school. Crazy. I’m bi and much closer in age to a lot of secondary school kids, but you know what? Never has it even crossed my mind that I should be uncomfortable over a child’s school clothing. Don’t shame children, get rid of creepy predators. Great video by the way, I loved what you had to say and agree with you. Adore your channel! 💗
Ugh, that's such a horrible attitude! There's one thing in particular that I hate with all my being about the whole poor-men-who-have-to-see-girls-who-are-physically-attractive-but-not-legally-and-morally-attainable narrative. It's that the situation is painted in such a way that it's a kid's responsibility to handle it. Very young girls, often not even teens yet, are expected to learn and understand what stimulates men and then manage their look and behaviour accordingly. So young children are obligated to understand men's hardships and make effort to lessen their burden. When it's should be exactly the opposite!!! I heard so many lectures as a child and the worst part was I often really couldn't understand what exactly I was doing wrong - my parents were happy to help me learn about the human body when I hit puberty, so I knew what sex was, in great detail actually, but it was a sheer biological knowledge, I had no idea how sexual attraction works in practice, and it certainly didn't help that I'm on an asexual spectrum so even in adulthood it doesn't exactly work for me that way. But at least now I can tell the difference between sexy and pretty, in my teens I really couldn't. If it wasn't red or black lace it was normal and appropriate in every situation. Still, it was my job to understand that I may arouse men and not do that. I had to spare adult men's feelings. When every bit of reason and logic in the universe screams that said adult men should be the ones to make some effort to not make kid's life miserable.
Our school recently had scandal about Male teachers sexualizing my schoolmates, we thought they'll lose their job but no 🥴🤡 They're still teaching in our school ffs
@@Sluppie Agreed. For one, men should give themselves more credit. They really aren't as easy to manipulate into seeing someone as attractive as they like to believe. It's actually pretty hard to make a guy notice you if he's not interested, just as hard as making the guy not focus on you if he is. What I mean, the fact that a guy likes someone ultimately stems from within him - his preferences etc. There's no code that women can just learn. Even if there was, it would be immoral to demand of us to go out of our way every day of our lives to honour it. But the truth is, there is no such thing. It's not possible for us to predict what will ignite a guy's interest. And that's for grown-up women. Don't even let me start on teens.
This might be a US thing but does anybody remember the “permanent” record that would “follow you throughout school”? Imagine applying for college and being rejected because one time you were sent to the principal’s office in elementary school for pushing another kid during recess.
Boy was I annoyed when I realized that was just some b.s. my mom kept saying. I wasn't even the type to misbehave (or stand up for myself) anyways so what was the point?
Wait is it not actually permanent? I'm going into senior year and thought that the one time I threw a crumpled piece of paper at my desk-buddy in 3rd grade would haunt me when applying for college.
GOD YES!!!!! This was instilled in me from a very young age - if i got a single bad grade or a single detention, it would apparently be saved on my record for all eternity and affect my chances of getting into college or getting a job in the future. I didn't know that college admins and job hirers don't actually give a flying fuck about your elementary/middle school grades or detentions until late high school. Wish I'd known that sooner - I got such horrible anxiety and fear of failure from this message being drilled into me. As a "gifted" child that was constantly praised and never failed at anything in elementary school, it felt like my world was ending when I got to middle school and everything got so much harder, and there were no rewards for doing well either. I remember crying for hours the first time I ever failed a test in seventh grade. Had a panic attack the first time I got detention, too. It only got worse in high school - I'd end up hiding in the bathroom having a panic attack about once or twice a month (usually due to test anxiety). It got to the point where the teachers expected it - they just sighed, dragged me out to the nurse's office, and called my mom to take me home. High school killed my work ethic and motivation too. There were a bunch of kids kids taking all AP/advanced classes plus a ton of extracurriculars, while I struggled just to pass regular classes. It just felt like all my work would be pointless in the end. Now I'm failing community college and my mental health is still shit :)))) please kill me
Remember kids, its healthy to rebel. Skip class at least once. Especially if the teacher is a wang. Take a little mental health break if you need it. Got caught and now facing detention? Who cares. Detention isn't prison. They'll either have you do homework or pick up trash around the school. Not a big deal. Got suspended for some bogus reason? Free vacation time babyy. Grades slipping? Take it easy. Stressing over grades isn't gonna make them go up. It ain't healthy. I'm not saying blow off school, stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Whether you're branded by the school system as a gifted kid, demoted gifted kid, troublemaker, slacker, whatever. You're gonna be alright, take care of yourselves. Do what you need to do, just do YOU.
I taught future PE teachers for a semester, and learned that because the sportiest people - who love competitive sports - are the ones who want to be PE teachers, they tend to think a competitive, sporty environment is the most fun and effective way to get people moving. When I tried to convince them that it’s actually traumatic and damaging for a significant number of students, I don’t think I got through to most of them. :(
I agree! I found PE really horrible too, mostly because I wasn't "sporty" and was a bit chubby so not only were my classmates more likely to leave me out of their team or make snarky comments, but the teachers were also really patronising. I think they were going for encouraging rather than patronising, but it came across as very fake because they didn't speak to me with the same respect and intelligence as the sporty people. For that reason, I grew up thinking I hated sport and exercise. Turns out, I absolutely love sport and exercise and I'm incredibly active now I'm in my mid-20s. I sometimes wish I could become a PE teacher just to be the kind of PE teacher that I never had growing up.
I also know of the curriculum of pe teaching trainees (in Germany). They learn to put students into categories like shy Emma and lazy Paul and how to basically shame them into running or jumping or doing whatever stupid exercise was to be endured that particular lesson. At uni, I always found that the p.e. Trainees were a lot less knowledgeable about pedagogy and nobody cared, really. But I also found that speaking to those trainees about how p.e. was traumatising was like talking to a wall. I think schools (or universities when choosing students) should not focus on pe teachers being sporty (why anyway? They're not competing at the Olympics, they're supposed to teach!) and instead hire/admit those who found their love for sports despite being disadvantaged or having a shit teacher at school. But honestly, I just think pe should be completely dropped. Instead, have children really learn to play sports WITHOUT GRADING THEM
I 100% agree, and I was actually lucky enough that my last year of high school i had a couple days a semester where we did get to choose what we wanted to do for gym individually and it was everyone’s favorite day, the typically “bad” at PE kids got to have more choice and control and the typically competetive and “good kids just banded together and had a good time too. I really think that having most PE days, if we have to have PE at all, be like that would work sooooo much better and have happier kids with way better relationships with moving their bodies.
I really like your idea of restructuring PE to have it not be competitive and instead be focused on what the student is interested in learning about. I would have really liked PE more in school if it had been that way. Also I want to ban the practice of picking two people from the class and having them pick people one by one to be on their team. Being picked last or next to last, and on a regular basis, really lowered my self-esteem back then.
I literally didn't even know that happened in real life. I thought it was just a movie/tv show cliche. We were always just divided by subgroups by the coaches and we stuck with them for the whole year or semester, and that would be our team for every game. I guess I was lucky. Edit: Actually I remember three occasions where were did choose our own teams in 6th grade and 8th grade. One time it was for a jump roping unit we had where we get into teams and do a jump rope routine (which was actually pretty fun, but I'd understand why some of the less athletic kids wouldn't have liked it) and twice for our dance unit for the end of the year, which was basically like the jump roping routine thing but for dance. I don't recall any other times though. However, it wasn't in the cliched "each team takes turns picking one person at until we pick the last person" sort of way. It was just that we go into groups the normal way.
@@mynameisreallycool1 my teachers only did that for volleyball (which I hated from how overly competitive my teammates were). But besides that, what op described is true
Same, I was always picked last or almost last, the worst part is that I used to love sports such as soccer but always being picked last and being laughed at by my classmates just eventually completely killed my enthusiasm. One particular event I remember from high school (the fact that I remember it to this day goes to show how shitty it felt) was that I was playing in a soccer tournament in my school, and I heard someone from the opposing team say "Oh, [my name] is in their team? We don't even need to play then, easy win" and I just felt like crap, so much so that I never played competitive soccer with kids my age anymore, I started playing with people one or two grades below me and surprisingly I actually fit in with them way better, they were a lot nicer and less toxic too. Gah sorry for this random rant, I just had this locked in my chest for so long ;-;
"It's much more character building to be bullied for what you've chosen to wear rather than what you've been forced to wear" Holy shit this is such a good point, wish I'd thought of that in the endless school uniform debates they used to make us do
Seriously, how many times did we have to debate school uniforms in a classroom, knowing that whatever we said didn't matter because it's not like the teacher or school would consider what we say seriously and change things?! I'm just realising how that sets us up for a life sharing opinions passionately but passively on social media, instead of campaigning to the people with authority and working with them towards real change.
Except of course that for lots of kids they don't choose their clothes either When you're still young it's your parents and whatever they can afford to buy you either way.
One of my primary school teachers told my mom at a parent teach conference that I ask a lot of questions and my mom's response was "Isn't that what she's supposed to do?". Yeah, some teachers aren't fit to decide who the problematic vs bright students are.
I too was in this group for the majority of my school years. We were constantly told we were “Guinea pigs” as they tested new teaching methods on us. Being placed in this class did give me cool opportunities... but it also gave me poor motivation as I had the mindset that I was already at the top so why try. This really messed me up when it came to university
I think the main thing is that so many people are wrongly placed in gifted classes. Gifted students are actually closer in behavior and needs to autistic students and deal with oversensibilities that they need help with. However, people/parents/teachers make it a little gold star if you're gifted. Imagine getting placed in special classes for dyslexia, autism, etc and not actually needing it! That would definetly mess a lot of people up because the student doesn't get what they need in that class. I don't think the answer is removing classes that people need, but actually educating teachers on what it means
Yeah being a kid that was seen as gifted meant I never tried I thought I'd already made it and I even already knew Latin before I entered school so school literally held me back because they didn't know what to do with me. Get to my A-levels, I start dropping grades left right and centre and I'm depressed until 21 because I have no idea how to apply myself at uni (amongst other things).
As a gifted and talented kid in elementary I passed everything easy, but when it came to middle, school hit me like a train. I'm now in GT 2.0 called IB
@@naenee6012 lol never heard anyone call IB gifted and talented 2.0. I wanted to do that but I didn't get to cos I ended up somewhere where they didn't offer it.
for us in the US it's always the revolutionary war and ww2. we focus on those things too much. the only reason i knew anything else about history before i hit high school was because i was an avid reader and read everything i could
Every. Single. Year. Since grade 7 (?) every year it was a topic at least once. Not only in history. Also in subjects like german, art, politics, etc. Obviously I'm German as well
As you pointed out, school can also be genuinely awful for neurodivergent kids - not having any escape from bad sensory experiences, being punished for a lack of attention, being punished for asking sincere questions which they view as talking back, etc. I relate a lot to what you said about being so tired after school that you just wanted to sleep - school entailed so much more work for me than most kids and at upper school it was just exhausting. Teachers often know almost nothing about neurodiversity and often what they do know is stereotypes and research that has since been proved wrong, so they can't help undiagnosed kids towards a diagnosis, or help the kids who have been diagnosed in meaningful ways. Also fun fact my first middle school based the grades partially off postcode. love that
I almost failed PE bc I had so little attendance, my teacher told me she couldn't grade me since she literally only saw me like 4 times per semester (lol😂). But of course, I was just a lazy teenager, not a kid with a severe undiagnosed and unmedicated mental illness who could barely function anymore 🤷♀️ One of my friends who has ADHD once said that being neurodivergent or mentally ill in school will traumatize you
I had such a similar experience, I used to have to take a nap after school everyday becuase going to that school with autism was just exhausting. Then after that I had to all the homework on top meaning most nights I didn't stop working till about 2 am. My school just had so little understanding of neurodiversity, a few small changes could of helped me massively. At least is nice to know I am not alone in this experience, thank you for sharing.
I wasn’t allowed in the “talented” program because I couldn’t focus. That was their words but decided I couldn’t have ADHD because I wasn’t failing. I wasn’t impulsive enough. Even when I got my diagnosis, I was told I couldn’t use those “special accommodations” unless I was failing. The worst thing for me was learning that asking for help with my mental illness was failure. That my A+ plus days are me being neuro-typical and only when I was failing could I pull out “I have ADHD and need accommodations.” I went all through life trying my best to not use my medicine or ADHD tips since I thought it would label me a failure.
The good news is that graduate programs for teachers are spending a lot more time on neurodiversity than they used to (at least in the USA). Different learning styles were discussed in almost all of my classes. My class on learning disabilities taught us about the history of disability law, the ADA, how to write an IEP, and even apps and websites that can help kids with specific issues.
Somehow, despite being autistic and only getting a diagnosis for it at age 25, I don't remember ever having much trouble in school and actually being something of a teacher's pet in a lot of subjects... *University,* however, hoo boy. I mean I did a language study that actually worked out well for me because I was genuinely interested, but last year I tried to go back to uni for a different degree that might help me get the kind of job I actually wanted (something within movie production) and there I just crashed *HARD* because I simply *could not* keep up with all the theory and the analysis of stuff and the thousands of pages of curriculum they *demanded* that we read... I did not even last one full semester. Halfway through it the stress was already entirely too much for me and I just gave up. ...Then again I guess Aspergers is decidedly different from ADHD and such things in that regard.
Me and my friends were talking the other day about how WEIRD it was that we couldn't just go to the bathroom and that we couldn't eat or drink in class. Looking back now, they were literally breaking human rights and letting students go dehydrated and with low sugar levels. I only got after school detention once and I didn't have to go to it because my mum rang up saying "I'm a full time worker and a single mother. If you want to give her detention, bring her home yourself." (Because I took the school bus so if I had After School I would have no way of getting home). And they cancelled my detention because they were not willing to take me to my house afterwards 🤭 I actually can't relate to quite a few of these points. So I guess I got lucky at my school.
This one has always shocked and horrified me too. We were never allowed to bring water bottles into class unless we had a doctor’s note saying that we were sick enough to need it. Like... what the hell? Everyone needs to be hydrated in order to be healthy in the first place, and there wasn’t really ever enough time to get a decent drink from the fountain between classes either. And don’t even get me started on how messed up it is for a teacher to tell a student that they can’t go to the bathroom yet “because reasons.”
That's crazy! I'm a Primary School teacher (in Australia) and I always insist students bring water bottles to school and keep them on their desks- I also always allow them to go to the bathroom haha I know it seems silly and annoying that students still need to ask, but it's all due to Health and Safety regulations, in order to keep track of where everyone is. It's hard managing a class of 25-30 students under the age of 10.
School is a hellscape meant to discipline you into being a perfect factory-working robot. Learning is not its purpose- in fact, the information taught is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is that you do EXACTLY as you're told and repress any and all social feelings and human necessities as much as physically possible for an extended amount of time. It was LITERALLY created as extended training for working at a factory, and in modern times, it has developed into its own factory of suicide, a system that encourages and perpetuates bullying. Nothing about the school system is even remotely okay, not only morally but also biologically, and the modern schooling system should be scrapped entirely, and replaced with an entirely new system of teaching, that ACTUALLY cares about helping children develop and grow and learn.
Sadly people tend to stick to tradition regardless of if it's ethical or not and they have had 100 years of brainwashing for students. Now we don't even question or try to change it's just "well that's just the way it is."
the subtle ableism. I had been cornered by two teachers, literally put against a wall in a corridor during class, because i wore a hoodie. I wanted to be left alone that day as I hadn’t slept in two days and was so sensitive to stimuli, especially light and noise, so I tried to make my field of vision smaller with a hood and I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I had a male teacher raising his voice at me, making aggressive/stern/angry facial expressions at me and mocking me for how I responded to this confrontation. He yelled at me for not responding to his rhetorical questions and then when I did respond, in a defensive/snappy manner, he yelled at me more and mocked me for being emotional. I quote, ‘you clearly aren’t ready to have a mature, adult conversation’, as an autistic 14 year old with anxiety who was feeling quite literally threatened and vulnerable in that situation, I knew I didn’t OWE anyone a ‘mature, adult conversation’, so I got extremely aggravated and cussed him out before storming off. What is it with adults trying to force children to mature so quickly, yet when we take interest in ‘adult’ topics, they want to infantilise us again? Either way, I later got moved to a college for ‘gifted children’ where there was no uniform, school started at ten instead of nine, they celebrated holidays with themed lessons and costume days, the classes had no more than seven students at most, you called the teachers by their first names, phones were allowed and you could listen to music during class etc etc etc. I do so much better there and made friends who were similar to me, my mental and physical health improved extraordinarily, I started engaging in lessons and even began learning things at home of my own volition. In conclusion, I was given extreme freedom and privileges in my education for the simple fact that I ‘had potential’
@@azurequeen_of_doggos6976 england, its a very difficult college to get into and i'm very grateful I was given the opportunity. the course is usually only offered to students with severe mental illness or disabilities who struggle to attend public school but the staff still deem intelligent and worthy of extra help. its quite expensive for schools to send just one student to the college so the classes are small and most students dont attend a full 5 days a week. there are never more than 8 students in my class and we do all the standard lessons alongside enterprise, cooking and arts and crafts. the college also has connections to organisations for mentally ill/troubled or disabled youth and a lot of the staff are lgbtq themselves or lgbtq inclusive. i think the college sets a perfect example of what more schools can and should be offering their students :)
I understand the logic behind uniforms but it's kind of pointless because once you leave school and move on to college/work etc. you're going to be choosing your own clothes...and people can still wear flashy brands as adults. Teaching kids to express themselves through clothes at a young age is important
Agreed! I realized when I got to college I had no idea what my personal style is other than throwing on a t-shirt or hoodie and leggings or jeans. I had to wear a uniform all through high school
I also feel like the whole rewarding good behaviour of not talking back was very negative for me as an adult. I was a quiet kid and it made me not practice speaking out loud when I had a different point of view. It made me learn to stick around when I disagreed with what was going on and that has so many negative consequences for adults. It’s only now that I have actually been practicing and feeling comfortable with sharing my disagreement out loud and I so wish I could have practiced this before my 30’s.
Yes!! Living in a very conservative part of Florida, I had to deal with teachers CONSTANTLY spewing crazy conservative shit and would be reprimanded for speaking up. Now, as an adult, I'm having to teach myself that I don't have to keep quiet when I disagree with someone, nor do I have to stick around and listen to crazy talk every day.
I have this deep ingrained anxiety of talking to adults and authority and I can't feel sure about my own opinions since regurgitating my teachers opinions is all I've ever known. (Also protip for students - if you want to get good grades, listen in class and regurgitate your teachers opinions, they drop so many hints as to what will be tested.)
Another thing to add, in my school we weren't even allowed go to the toilet during lessons, you could ask but they would usually tell you no. You also had to ask to have a drink from your water bottle or to take off your jumper in the summer. I went to a public school that was rates 'good' by offsted, these are the standards of a 'good' school in the UK and personally I think it's disgusting
This was me at primary school with a specific teacher. I managed to get around it though by just saying I wasn't feeling well or had a stomach ache. Then she would let me go to the toilet!
@Chloe Valentine That is horrible and unfair. I'm glad my school wasn't mostly like that, except one time when a substitute wouldn't let a student go. Didn't make any sense, given he needed to go, she wasn't teaching anything.
My mom straight up said this the other day after I told her about our experience - she said - "the satanic education system has destroyed all of the childrens' minds and wellbeing"
I grew up being treated as a "gifted kid" and it completely destroyed my mental health. I often associate my grades with personal value and have a really hard time at failing things. You can't succeed/grow without failing and this is something I'm working to accept more. I can't even imagine how kids that doesn't get good grades often feel about how others treat them, considering that many of them could do amazing things if they had a system that works for them.
I wish you'd have mentioned how you get praised for sitting quietly in school. But just sitting quietly at work doesn't get u anywhere. Nobody wants to work with the boring quiet person. They want to fun, charismatic person. That is who gets all the opportunities and promotions. I do have a fun, & interesting side, but I'm so shy as a result of seeing kids getting yelled at everyday for talking.
We had ‘gifted and talented’ at my school - but it literally didn’t involve anything. Like no different lessons or tutoring or anything. Nothing. So we were basically told some kids were ‘gifted and talented’ and some weren’t and that was it. So weird.
We had it at mine as well. For elementary school meant leaving the class for an hour a couple times a week to do extra enrichment work with a teacher hired for that purpose, and it was mainly a way to let the students who were more mathematically inclined pursue that in peace (especially for the girls). For high school it was basically a class offered as alternative to home ec that involved us doing self-directed projects.
we had a once weekly meeting and we did little extra things that were just fun stuff along with a few extra opportunities. other than that, nothing different. i was apart of a small group of students who went to the next grade up for reading but that's cause we didnt have honors classes in elementary school, but that wasn't apart of the gifted program. i just was an insanely good student in elementary school.
I was a "talented" student but what it amounted to was kind of skewed. I still felt very awkward learning I was being singled out like that. We also had this Society in sixth form which was definitely training people up for Oxbridge. The teachers made a massive point of going round the whole year group with special "invitations" to the society. Apparently they'd watch University Challenge after school and discuss "deep" topics etc. I wasn't picked although I'm very pleased I wasn't. It helped made me realise just how toxic the Oxbridge environment was and got me to stop aiming so unrealistically high for getting a place.
@@TheRogueDM I remember feeling awkward as well - especially as some of my friends were picked but others weren’t. That ‘special invitation’ society sounds so messed up as well. It baffles me that schools want to give high performing students more teaching and support than other students who might benefit from it just as much, if not more. I know there’s usually support in place for students who really struggle - but what about the bunch in the middle? Surely they should be given the chance to excel too? I feel like if they’re going to offer anything oxbridge-focused or extra tutoring then it should be open to anyone who wants the extra challenge.
The class divide in schools in the 21st century: - what PHONE you have (this is a massive one, I got teased for not having an iPhone) - what sports shoes you wear (gotta be Nike kids!) - not sure if this is a thing in other countries but in Australia, we have Bring Your Own Device policies which is like bring in your laptop/tablet to assist in learning - how you get to/from school and I could go on!
Flippin highlights. If you had highlights then you were well off in it school (although almost half of the student body was under the poverty line so no one really got bullied for not being well off)
In the school I went to most people older that 14 years old generally didn't give a dime about the clothes of phone one would carry, the again, more than 90% of the student body was middle-class and a large amount of people from academic parents or farmers. Shoes were more a thing to just casually show off with or something you'd use to make conversation. The students that were under or on the poverty line could be counted on one/two hand(s). Bullying did happen, but was surprisingly indiscriminate of wealth and materialistic stuffs. (as you know, basically everyone was able to afford good looking clothes, but we had a non-uniform policy with still strict regulations regarding lengths of skirts, prints, jewellery and make-up ==> (American/Japanese/bands or artists)Brand clothes are basically almost always not accepted) (==> no ac/dc shirts to find fellow fans of your genre) Cheating in relationships, sexting mistakes, being a dick/pretentious person or just general violence(ADHD/ violent autism) were the main causes of bullying. One of the divides that was most prominent is the divide between students using their bicycle or public transport. One meant that you were able to cram in the morning on the bus, the other meant getting wet/dirty in the rain and having to do more work at home. (though this divide was only really a problem in the first two years to find people to get along with, as birds of a feather flock together.) Oh, and this is in a Belgian school just FYI. (politics is a mess here, but schools are fine I guess)
BYOD is so useful in school but it’s also not because what if you don’t have a device?? My school provided laptops to certain students but I don’t know the criteria and not every school can provide devices to students without them.
i got bullied for wearing sketchers by my “friends” in 9th grade...when they cost the same as nikes :( they were cute literally just had the sketchers logo. still makes me sad to think about
It's SO GOOD. I've been memorising the facts and then being * that person * when there's a lull in conversation. 'Hey, what would you say is the average....'
When Leena talked about “gifted” students I immediately thought of Tiffany’s “Previously Gifted” thing she does! So wild to see her comment after my brain made that connection. This makes me also think of one of the first things that made me love sociology, our teacher made us learn and think about that whole thing of dividing kids into gifted and not gifted students. She helped me realize the bias that goes behind it, she also tied in race with that study of that one teacher that taught kids how bias works with race (I can’t remember her name, but I think it’s Jane something). And you’re so right, some kids would do extremely well if they didn’t have all the outside factors of home life and each person having different socioeconomic stressors.
I read this comment thread before taking the quiz so I guess I knew I couldn't be too cynical and got 61% right hahaha, kind of tempted to do this quiz with my Year 10 class during form time to see how they view the world
What bothers me really is when teachers would put you in groups with people you either specifically requested *not* to be in with or that the teacher knew you disliked for whatever reason (whether it may be just them never doing their part or just straight up bullying) bc "you won't be able to choose who to work with at work in the future". Like, bro what? WTF. Also our school having you require a laptop/tablet and ms office with out providing any of those in order to (successfully) attend grade 11-13 and graduate (I live in Germany btw)
I'm a teacher and I stopped giving homework years ago. Studies show that homework doesn't work to help kids learn. So totally agree about homework. But I have so many parents ask about homework. Our school does uniforms so we can get funding etc. But I was listening to the spiel of the lady selling the uniform and man they are shady snake oil salesmen. "No Karen I can't see the superior stitching because that isn't superior stitching." We got rid of the classroom switching etc and yeah it made a huge difference. Besides switching to lots of different subjects makes students generalist instead of letting kids be experts in something they are passionate about. One of the best students in my class is literally doing only things related to art. I really enjoyed this video and you are spot on. And schools are changing but we get a lot of flack from people because change scares them. I wish they could watch this.
I'd be worried about the kid doing only art because they wouldn't be learning other "important" things like biology... learning biology is good for being able to weed out misinformation about health as an adult in the modern social media world. Also, being able to use logic is good... I imagine math would be the closest to teaching that, but perhaps we should just have a logic class. And a human body / health / biology class instead of the standard bio.
I don't know about younger kids, but homework for 13+ is a great way to encourage kids to do the right sort of revision in their own time and prepare them for future studies/managing work. I don't think kids should be punished for not doing it, but do think the importance of independent learning (even just giving something a go) for absorbing information (and sadly passing exams) shouldn't be ignored. I think the real question should be why are we presenting learning cool things in a way that makes inherently curious and smart kids hate that journey? Probably more of a problem?
Some other things that might be purely American: -school lunches. Uniforms are very uncommon here, and while clothes are a point of class divide the thing I had the most trouble with was lunch. The rich kids could afford the extra things, the ice cream bars and the better drinks, double servings of the one good thing on the menu, etc. Or they brought their lunch, but it was super fancy. Not quite Claire in the breakfast club level most of the time. But like that. Middle class kids just ate the regular lunch, but us poor kids had a couple options. You were either on free lunch, which was handled differently by the lunch day ringing you out so everyone knew, you brought your lunch but it wasn't the glamorous shit the rich kids had so everyone made fun of you, or you just gambled on whether or not your mom put more money in your lunch account or not. If you lost this bet and shit didn't, once you got to the til the lunch lady would make a HUGE scene about how you should have known better, makes you throw the entire tray of food away, and hands you a sandwich that consists ONLY of white bread and American cheese. That's it, thats your whole lunch. Couple that with the fact that breakfast at school usually cost extra, IF your bus got you there early enough for it, and a lot of us didn't have breakfast or dinner at home, that cheese sandwich could be your only food for the day. And you could feel the rich kids mocking you with every bite. -college. Everything is about college, college, college. Every choice you make for your entire childhood is supposed to get you into a good college. Gotta take those honors and ap classes, gotta get perfect attendance (another grievance on its own), gotta get into those extra curriculars, gotta already know what you're gonna be for the rest of your life at the age of 14. And its always college and never trade school. People here look down on plumbers, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, etc but they're SO important and actually make really good money. But every kid is pressured to get an office job, be a doctor, you can do better than that. Its so toxic. -home ec, woodshed, autoshop, etc, all classes that teach you basic life skills, and would breed an interest in trade jobs, are GONE -attendance. You're expected to come to school every. Single. Day. Whether you're sick or not. I remember in idk maybe 6th grade this girl getting an award in front of the entire school for NEVER missing a day since kindergarten. I highly doubt that girl never once caught a cold and brought it to infect her classmates. Couple that with whats happening now... yikes. I'm sure I'll think of more but this is already really long and no one will read it so tldr: burn it to the ground, start over Edit: I thought of another thing. The real thing we have instead of uniforms. Dress codes. Oh my god dress codes. Where a 5th graders shoulders are too sexual to be seen, you get written up if your bra strap falls down and can be seen, all skirts or shirts have to be finger tip length even if you had a huge growth spurt that year and haven't had new clothes bought for you yet, where if your jeans have holes in them you're committing a Sin. I had a friend who got sent down there multiple times a week cuz she had 3 pairs of jeans and 2 of them had holes from being worn for so long. Basically every rule was geared towars girls. When I switched schools, I wasn't allowed to dye my hair weird colors because The Sout, and the new one allowed you. There was this punk guy and his hair went from ginger to blue and I commented to him on it like "whoa they let you do that here?" And the next week when I turned up with purple hair the 2 punk girls he hung out with decided they had to bully me for the rest of my time there, existing in the same net of friend groups, because I was a "poser." All because I found out the dress code was different. Some schools had a "no pajamas" rule, that wasn't enforced if you were a popular sport team girl wearing your school sweater pants to class, but if you wore the SAME STYLE of sweat pants with a cartoon character instead of the school logo as a poor kid who wasn't on a sports team you got sent to the office.
Okay, yes, thank you. From Canada, but functionally identical w.r.t. your comments, and holy shit were dress codes a nightmare (and I'm a man, so it was way easier to avoid running afoul of them). I was trying to remember writing another comment here why discussions about uniforms kept popping up like weeds, and it was in large part because of difficulty navigating dress codes, which were in place since I guess they figured teenage girls were all exhibitionists or something. I know there were excuses made about "distracting the boys", but I was a teenage boy once, and even in that testosterone-addled state I could focus around the girls wearing spaghetti straps. Sure, for a short while I'd be a little distracted, but after 10-15 minutes teenage me got used to it and stopped really thinking about it. I only gave a shit as much as shit was given by rules or teachers or anyone else acting like there was something wrong. As for College/University vs trade school, I saw a shift in emphasis following the 2008 crash, but by that point I was 2nd year at uni, so my highschool experience was very much about grades and university. Granted, I also live in an area with a huge amount of residential construction, so there's a more direct path for a trades career here.
American schools are so wild. I probably wouldn't survive if attendance was important like that at my school. I suffer from chronic migraines and have an 80% attendance at best.
The "cheese sandwich" was BULLSHIT, yes, in a sense it's better than starving but like, couldn't they have at least heated it up and melted the cheese to make it a grilled cheese?
Omigod yes so true. My school had woodshop, metal shop, and home ec classes, however, there was a very clear gendering of them. The shop classes (and similar trade classes) were considered good to have on transcripts, with some having AP or higher level versions. The sewing and cooking classes, aka the ones our society deems feminine, were considered "easy" classes that you take to fulfill a credit and usually had teachers who weren't kind or very helpful towards students.
I wanna talk about how, because I was quite academic and performed well in most subjects, teachers totally overlooked the fact I was actually having issues because my grades never suffered. This was despite me being known to the school as a 'looked after child' with teachers having to provide a report for my social worker for my care review meetings. From about year 9 onwards, I was basically either drunk or high for most of high school, I'm not talking, teehee I had a WKD on break, I'm talking I used to bring in straight whiskey in an apple juice bottle and drink it throughout the day. I was drunk for all of my Year 9 SAT exams and I came out in the top 5% of the year group. Not sure if that's a good reflection on me or a bad reflection on the rest of my year group, but it meant that as long as I kept turning in work that was good enough, nobody bothered to notice or challenge anything I did (smoking on school grounds, skipping classes, selling pirated porn dvds, defacing my uniform, swearing, amongst other things, as well as, you know, being obviously drunk/high) or consider that maybe I needed support. One thing I *did* get pulled aside for: I had a French assignment 'write an essay, in French, about what you did last weekend', to then be marked by the person you sat next to. I hated my French teacher, he hated me and my friends. He made French tres ennuyeux. Because French was boring and I knew my best friend would be marking my work and she'd find it funny, I wrote a fictional essay about how I'd been to a Greenday concert and afterwards got invited backstage and hung out with Billie Joe and now we were dating. It wasn't explicit, I didn't write about us having sex or anything, I think it was like, Billie Joe is very cute, he asked me on a date and now he is my boyfriend' type thing. I got pulled out of class the next day by my head of year, who sat me down and stated 'A few of the teachers have expressed concerns about your sexuality'. I challenged it and the head of year asked me 'Well, who is Billie Joe?'. My french teacher had shopped me in over the assignment I'd written and because he's a fucking idiot, didn't even realise (or bother to check) that the lead singer of the very popular band Greenday, was, in fact, a dude. I called him out and stated that even if I was gay, I don't see why that would be a concern of his or any of the staff as it's my personal business and has nothing to do with school and that actually pulling me out of class to ask me about it was discrimination. Head of year didn't have a response, muttered something about offering support, I stated that if I wanted to talk to someone about my sexuality, a male teacher is probably the last person I'd want to talk to about it, he fumbled some more, said it didn't need to go any further and dismissed me. So, to summarise: Being drunk - noone notices or cares Being potentially gay because your teachers don't know the lead singer of Green Day is a fucking dude - get pulled aside and confronted about it, by a male staff member, within 24 hours.
Same! I was getting smashed in the morning before school for years and was homeless year 11 - 12 as well. No one took it seriously at all because my grades usually the highest in class. Everytime I tried to ask for help I was brushed off. I kept getting in trouble for only wearing the sports uniform and not the formal but it was because you would get detention if the formal wasn't nicely ironed and I didnt have a fucking iron cause I was fucking homeless. I'd get in trouble for charging devices at school but once again I didnt have anywhere else to do that. If you tried to explain peoples eyes would just glaze over.
EXACTLY. PEOPLE ARE DEALING DRUGS, SMOKING, BULLYING OTHERS, AND BEING HOMOPHOBIC AND RACIST, ETC AND THE SCHOOL DONT DO NOTHING. THEY TURN A BLIND EYE TO IT. BUT SOMEONE CHEWS GUM OR DOESNT DO THEIR HOMEWORK, WE GET IN SO MUCH SHIT LIKE HOW THE RUCK DOES THAT MAKE SENSE
As a teacher we cant assume anything. We wait until you speak up because it causes misunderstandings if we assume. Some misunderstandings are racist and all I got to say about that is I'm sorry you had that experience. Not all teachers are the same.
@@snowvampire101 I was known tot he school as a looked after child. A member of staff even used to attend my 6 monthly care reviews. They knew I was troubled, they chose not to acknowledge it because my grades were good and the school was failing.
I was one of those kids that was high achieving and "always on my best behaviour" and holy shit what you said about always needing external validation was so true, and has in fact followed me into my twenties. I've started questioning why I pursue creative hobbies like writing and painting. Do these things actually bring me joy, or am I attached to the praise I got from my teachers, or the top mark I got in class.
I have the exact opposite problem, I was never encouraged in anything in school, never given validatin for anything, so now that I'm out looking for careers or hobbies I'm so scared to be told I'm not good at it that I'd rather not try anything at all.
@@prettylittlewords7162 That's completely valid. Seems as though school can create a dependency on external validation either way. I know this may not mean much, but I really hope you find a pathway that brings you joy
straight up going from secondary school to college, that's exactly what happened i don't go to class if i'm late anymore because of the instant anxiety from getting in trouble
It really sucks when the reason you are late is something you can control. I took the bus to school every day, and my bus was very unpredictable (because stuff happens). It was suppose to come every 15 minutes, but sometimes you wouldn't see a bus for an hour, then three buses would come at the same time. Now couple that with the fact that I also had to take my younger sister to school every morning did not help. It was a 25 minute bus ride to her school, then a 15 minute bus ride back to my school. Wait time would vary, but on average, it took me an hour to get to school. I would normally get to school just five minutes before class started, but then one day, the school decided to change their schedule and start 10 minutes earlier. This obviously sucked because now I had to leave the house much earlier, pray to God my bus would come on time, drop my sister off at her empty school (because she'd end up arriving at school before the campus even opened), and pray to God again that my next bus would come on time, all to get to class earlier and avoid detention. And I still got a lot of tardies!
Exactly! Students at my school in america get more punished for being late than missing class entirely, so honestly if u wake up late, just dont show up at all.
I got detention for forgetting to have a test signed three times in a row, even though I got perfect scores on the test. My parents were flaky and never home, so fun rule :)
God, I hate that. Both of my parents have been retired for a long time but I had friends with single parents who worked and just busy parents in general, it's so stupid to put that on a kid
My uni: work life balance is important Also my uni: gives so much work it’s impossible to have a work life balace and forgets that we also need time to like, cook, do the dishes, do laundry
My uni: You need to understand that some of the students you're teaching come from disadvantaged backgrounds Also my uni: Why do you need to work? Ask your parents to pay your fees
Loopy Kitty This is perhaps one of my biggest gripes with universities. I did a drama and performance degree which meant all our modules, except written modules, were group projects aka performances of some kind. This meant we had to arrange rehearsals amongst ourselves but when almost everyone in the group has a job this is nearly impossible and you’re lucky if you can manage a 3 hour rehearsal once a week. My university would also do random lectures and we’d be notified maybe a week before, 2 if we were lucky, so anyone with a job would suddenly find themselves scrambling to arrange cover at work. Often this wasn’t possible and they’d have to miss the lecture but as a consequence get some nasty, condescending email about how their degree must come first. Clearly they didn’t understand that it was people’s jobs that allowed them to live and study in the first place!
My uni: gives us a 15 minute spiel during induction about maintaining our mental health during these times of * gestures broadly * Also my uni: immediately after this assigns a project brief all about covid that will mean we are all focussing intensely on * gestures broadly * for 30-60 hours every week (depending on how "dedicated" a student you are)
@@woodnymph01 Ah that's so aggravating! I had the group project issue as well, one year we did a 4 week project with a group of 4 and the only point all 4 of us could get together was for the presentation 😅 Fortunately we were all in the same boat so we understood one another, as we had to mark eachother on how well they worked in the group
How messed up is it that dress codes are so strict and send girls out for bra straps or showing shoulders or high socks etc but the things they make you wear are actually pretty dodgy too. Ours was a white shirt that was slightly see through, definitely don't want anyone spilling water on you, A skirt that was probably a bit too short (quite above the knee) etc. But sooo much trouble for the most basic of things.
I can confidently say that school is partially responsible for my social anxiety. I developed a fear of teachers, authority figures, and generally anyone older than me after a substitute teacher screamed in my face for five minutes straight after getting up to throw away a tissue in the first grade. She freaked out, saying that she had told everyone the day before not to get up under any circumstances unless told to by her, and got even more mad when I explained to her that I had been out sick the day before. What teacher, substitute or not, tells a seven year old that its their fault for not asking their friends about the substitute teacher's new rules before they came to school, and accuses them of skipping school because they were lazy.
Yep! This one science teacher had this whole "out to get me specifically" thing to the point where I've been out of school for 6 yrs and I only had her for 1 school year and I'm STILL dealing with the consequences of the trauma she put me through. I burst into tears when my superiors correct or question me, which frustrates them, and me! I don't want to react like a toddler being told NO, but I'm still mentally/emotionally stuck in being 15 and hiding under a table having a panic attack bc the teacher my mother threatened with a lawsuit to never speak to me again came into my new classroom to "speak to me privately". I hate it! I was a good kid, I was a chatterbox but I did the work, liked the subject, engaged with the lesson, and always had my equipment! I never skipped a lesson ! Why did she need to have beef with me like I was sleeping with her husband ? I was a child!
I had the same fear of authority triggered by my fourth grade teacher who screamed at me when I started crying because I had to write an extended response. I cried every time those two words were even brought up, and he was usually very nice about it but one day he just snapped. looking back on it now, I just wonder why no one sent me to a guidance counselor or anything. I had a fear of failure and am bad with time constraints, but I had to figure that out myself instead of the adults doing anything about the 8 year old with a clear anxiety disorder
"imagine telling kids not to come out or they'll be bullied" I don't need to imagine, teachers and schools do that. Happened to me once, to my friend Rosa who was being bullied anyway and was told by her head of year "well I'm Christian so I don't believe in being gay" and "I'm straight, I don't have to come out, you don't either, it'll make both of our lives easier if you don't". When it happened to me it was a more general thing of "no need to push your views on to other people!" after I'd gotten in to an argument with both students and a teacher about how being gay is not a choice. This also happens with race with the dumb hair restrictions that target black people specifically.
Im 17 but one thing I've been thinging about recently is how ablelist attendance and attendance rewards are! Since my sister was born I've always thought about how it's such a shame that she'll never have the chance to receive an attendance reward for being in school ever day of the term. She has Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and because of this she often misses school for appointments or sometimes just a bad CF belly day. No matter how passionate she is about school or how much she wants to be in she'll be punished by way of no reward for her condition! This promotes such a terrible mindset to push through illness to come in and to punish those who can't push through. Not only is this bad for mental health and risks spreading illness to others, it creates so much unnecessary pressure. I remember feeling ill one night but trying to ignore it and make myself better but i couldnt and i threw up. I remember crying for so long, not because it was horrible but because i had ruined my perfect attendance I'd had since year 7. If that's the way it made me feel, there is no way that pressure isn't damaging to others especially disabled students or students struggling with mental health!
Yes I have terrible allergies to one of the plants near my house and would get sick every single springtime. I would feel terrible for missing school, even though me not staying home or over working myself would often turn my allergies into bronchitis. One time it turned into walking pneumonia. They really make it seem like missing one day is the end of the world and that you can never catch up. It's awful to put that much pressure on kids and made me super anxious.
@@meganmahoney9270 Gosh that sucks! It's insane how devastating it can be to feel you won't be able to catch up. I remember thinking if i had to be off i would make sure I'd be off for as little time as possible so i miss too much, that pressure to get better quick and to not get ill is awful. Especially because it's something you can't help
I've had a whole complex about standing up to bullies which has followed me into adult life, some teachers would tell me "Ignore them, be the bigger person and walk away" and others would say "stand up for yourself" or "if you're a bystander you stand with the bully", I've always hated confrontation and was scared of getting into trouble so I'd always let people walk over me. Only now at 21 have I started being able to stand up for myself and set boundaries but it's still something I struggle with
Crushing bullies is always the best course of action, all of the time. I chose the passive route and I survived lol, but I also lost my backbone and self dignity. On the day of my death bed, I will regret not living honestly and always being polite all the time. I think massive wisdom and cunning is required to know when to crush and when to fold.
ironically, your point about how communication should be taught at home just doesn't work with modern school systems. they take up majority of your day, there's no time for self-reflection and personal wellness. i'm in high school right now, and i've often found that even during online school, i just can't find a balance between self-care and school. i've really want to reflect on my own behavior and origins but i just can't because of my assigned workload that plays a part in my future apparently.
I left a strict Catholic high school for an independent artsy high school and it changed my life. We were allowed to choose activites in PA and wear whatever sporty clothes we thought was okay. We could eat and drink during class, so we could actually rest during the breaks instead of stressfully shoveling down sandwiches. I remember when our strictest teacher sought out a student and apologised to him in public for yelling at him the day before. Each student could choose a patron teacher they trusted and turn to them if they had trouble getting bullied by peers, abused by a teacher, or if they felt they were falling behind with their studies. It blew my mind and it worked incredibly well. I'm still in contact with several of my teachers. I avoid everybody from the Catholic school like the plague though.
As a former valedictorian who won my school a bunch of academic awards, the system that perpetuated academic competitiveness and constant anxiety over my academic performance directly and completely fucked me up. I didn't have an identity or personality outside of my grades all throughout high school because constantly being praised as clever and receiving boatloads of validation for it tricked me into believing I was o my valuable because of my academic performance. And because I went to a private school my administration was monetarily invested in maintaining a toxic academic culture because the more students they could say were Top Cambridge students the more prestige they accrued. I'm still struggling to value myself outside of academics and it's so hard because I spent all of my adolescence being told it was the only valuable thing about me and crafting an identity outside of that is so hard.
I was also a high academic achiever until I got sick and failed my AS Levels. I had to do AS and A2 in one year, and did so badly that I felt I had lost the Intelligent™ identity. Ever since then there's been a hole where Intelligent™ used to be.
Same. I'm still looking for my identity ever since I graduated. Should've spent those years knowing myself more instead of learning a bunch of shit that I don't even remember anymore
Woof what a mood. I went to a liberal arts & sciences magnet school and it seriously fucked me, and all my fellow students, up. Everyone was constantly competitive and no one really felt like a real "friend." Everyone was your competition for rank/internships/scholarships/college admissions. The worst was bullying. Kids wouldnt bully each other in the classical sense (physical violence or commenting on your appearance/money/etc.), they would bully you for your grades & class rank. So if you got B's and C's (me!), you'd get called dumb and stupid a whole lot. It led to a lot of self-loathing and shit depression thats lasted me for years. It took a long time for me to realize that getting B's & C's at this incredibly hard school didn't make me stupid (not to mention I had undiagnosed ADHD the entire time which def effected my grades). Its also the process of unlearning that your value/worth isn't based on grades.
Your experience is unexpectedly similar to mine in some ways even though I underachieved academically. I had almost straight Fs towards the middle of my sophomore year at the private highschool I went to. Where my experience maybe gets similar to yours is identity and self esteem. I did not feel as though school were meant to teach us anything valuable, but instead was just a factory to pump out robots whose only function was to make good grades and to be "smart." I was having a lot of undiagnosed mental health and neurological issues (ADD) that prevented me from performing at even an average level, even though I was a smart kid. I knew consciously that these standards were toxic constructs, yet the mistreatment I sometimes received due to my performance caused me to give them merit and contributed to a belief that I was worthless. I wonder if any public schools suffer from this sort of competitiveness, or if it's just some private schools... Thank you for sharing your experience.
@@scoopitywoop I had a very similar experience where I couldn't do my GCSE years for health reasons and I completely lost my sense of self. Thank you for sharing.
My sister trained as a PE teacher and gets defensive when people tell their traumatic stories from PE. The training they get these days is apparently much better. But my concern is that the retraining doesn't reach the older generation who are still teaching
Thanks to that older generation of pe bully teachers I only got into excercice well past 26...I truly Hope your sister's gen is better at helping kids not hate phisical activity.
I'm a teacher and I'm planning to switch careers when I get to a certain age. I've seen way too many teachers who get to a point where they aren't able to change anymore and you have to change to keep up with kids. It is built into my lifelong plan. But then I also retrain constantly but I agree we should encourage retraining of older teachers.
my pe teacher was old and wrinkly and left the year i didnt have to do pe anymore... out of all my teachers, she deserves punching in the face the most
I think PE teachers didn't need A-Levels to go to teacher training college if they were going to specialise in PE at one time. Probably not even the full set of O-Levels.
I think the biggest lie we're told about school is that it's supposed to produce well rounded, responsible (and in France "republican") citizens, when I think the reality is way less utopian and way more practical. We go to school so that our parents can be free to go to work. The basic function of school is social : society needs to put children somewhere while their parents go to work.... And since schools are underfunded (as you said) and curriculums are created by people who aren't teachers or even specialists in anything relating to children's development, the current state of research or general psychology and education (at least here in France) well....... the whole thing is a bit of a shit show. There's a huge contrast between what schools and formal education say they're doing and what's actually happening within the walls of schools and universities. That's the biggest lie, at least to me
I would even go so far as to say we go to school IN ORDER to be turned into obedient workers who are not keen on self-expression and try to gove above and beyond for their company because they somehow think they'll be rewarded for that.
That's so unbelievably fucked. Especially since the general BMI measurement system isn't an accurate way to measure the actual healthiness of a person. I'm so, so sorry for those kids and I hope they got the help they needed.
I always hated where they would check my weight, and then call it out. I am taller than many of my classmates, and I am an athlete, so I have quote a bit of muscle. Therefore, I weighed more than my peers. It always made me so insecure.
I remember dreading Sports Day every year, not because it was physically exhausting, but because, for me, it was 'Look at all these people who are more physically and athletically capable than you. Feel happy for them. They just ran faster than all the others, so you should be happy. If you're not happy about their success, you're not getting involved in the spirit of the event. You have bad sportsmanship.' Everyone made such a big deal about it, but I just found the whole ordeal miserable. I just really hated it.
Also I’ve just remembered how at school if your coloured bra could be seen through your shirt ,you had a letter sent home to buy some plain or nude ones.... Jesus Christ what was wrong with my school?
lia morrison my school did a very similar thing! when it became 'trendy' to wear neon coloured bras, the teachers caught on and all of a sudden they weren’t allowed. our student pastoral manager once gave an empty threat to us in year 8/9 if people came in wearing those kind of bras she'd instead make us wear a super itchy cotton vest instead....so bloody weird
I just had a really stark memory of it. It made me uncomfortable to think of why they insisted on it. Or indeed why teachers were ‘distracted’ by them. Sending an awful message 😓
We weren't allowed to wear a vest under our white polo shirts and they went see through when we got sweaty, so we all had to wear our thick wool jumpers in the 30ºC summers. Oh also the school raincoats weren't waterpoof but you weren't allowed to wear non-uniform ones and the woollen jumper and skirt took a full 3 days to dry and were so expensive most people only had one of each. Like what the actual fuck? Seven years later I am still grateful every day that I can wear clothing that is appropriate for the weather!
@@mouseluva I never got it...like 'you'll have to wear a uniform when you start work.' ...erm I worked at Waterstones where the CEO has insisted we didn't were them so as not to appear like faceless drones. Not to mention every office environment i've interviewed for since have more a 'smart casual' workwear... then again all my headteachers were ex-army/navy... :')
@@mouseluva same, the teachers would make fun of us for wearing our jumpers in the heat but we were always like?? The uniform shirts are literally transparent??
school made me so scared of authority or getting into trouble, that when I'm reprimanded for something not even that bad I get so anxious I feel like crying. it felt like if I wasn't a goody two shoes my whole school career would be at stake
Me too. As a person who seriously struggles with perfectionism, knowing that one mistake could get me screamed at was terrifying. School was messed up. I don't go to that school anymore, thankfully.
I agree, it was like that for me at home, and at school, and then when I went to work. I'm unemployed because my mental health is so fucked I can't work without having constant panic attacks. I'm so relieved it's not just me but it actually makes me angrier that so many people have been through this.
Same! I was so terrified of being late to class in middle and high school I would not use the bathroom for the entire 7 hours I was at school. I was constantly dehydrated and now even 2 years later I have lasting health issues because of doing that consistently for 7 years.
This video has made me realise that I was shoved into a gifted and talented group at the age of 9 in order to be sent to a grammar school in order to get into another higher-achieving grammar school which then convinced you your life was worthless if you didn't get into Oxbridge... for what? Serious self-validation issues and a problem with perfectionism that means I rely on external validation? Wicked. Now I'm paying £9250 a year to keep that pattern going...but at least I can wear my own clothes I guess? *cries in broke student*
Schools always want to “prepare you for the next grade / high school / college etc” yet they forget to focus on the things that you should be learning for your grade level and they just throw homework on you saying that “this is what you are going to be getting in high school / college etc” even when it’s an insane amount of homework
I live in the US and we have Common Core and that's the entire purpose of it Basically they take a bunch of third graders and teach them fourth grade material, doing the same thing for every grade and repeating the process every year until you're teaching kids material they fundamentally cannot understand and then telling them they're "not as smart as the previous grade" because of it
For me the worst thing in school is PE. I can't remember how often I started crying because I embarrassed myself in front of everyone for not being able to do simple sport tasks.
At my school we weren't allowed to wear leggings with our summer uniform unless we had a religious exemption, but I am literally allergic to the cold (I get hives and everything it's wild) and we switch to the "summer" uniform in March, so it's usually still cold. I got so many demerits for wearing leggings when I wasn't supposed to and they didn't care that I was literally breaking out in hives because I didn't have a religious excuse.
I like how they'll make an exception for religion but not for health. That's like making sure to have alternate options of food for kids who can't eat pork for Jews and Muslims or meat in general for Hindus, but then not caring to make alternative options for peanuts or dairy for kids who have allergies. It's good that they take religious freedom into consideration, I'm all for that, but it's weird that they won't make an exception for someone who will feel actual physical pain from it. That's just ridiculous.
Why do we need a religious reason to dress modestly anyway? Or even any reason at all? Why not just personal preference? I thought we were ‘distracting to boys’. A medical reason is also completely justifiable.
This just reminded me of how (when I went to in-person school) teachers would breathe down kids' necks for wearing a sweater (or anything really) over their uniforms. A lot of students at my school only had one or two t-shirts because their parents couldn't afford (or just couldn't bother) to purchase too much on uniforms. This resulted in kids getting detention or kicked out of class because they had a non-school garment on. Their reasoning was that if our uniforms didn't show, nobody would know if we were students or intruders.
Isn’t having a ‘head like a colander’ or a ‘brain like a sieve’ a good thing? You retain all the big important stuff and let go of the small and inconsequential things? Yo I’d take that as a compliment
@@leenanorms you could then add on with an analogy of making pasta. You WANT to drain the water out of pasta because if not the meal will taste bad and watery if you dont.
When I was in primary school I was the only girl who played rugby. The principal called my mum multiple times basically telling her how dangerous it was for a girl to play, but I was 100% sure I wanted to do it. It went absolutely fine. I played well, was at the same level as all the boys, and except for the sexism of 11 year old boys, it was really fun. I found out a few years ago that the school now has rugby open for both boys and girls; no questions asked. And it made me really proud!
I’ve found that schools instil very toxic mindsets of anxiety and fear. You will often get crippling guilt for having breaks, eating, sleeping, having fun/being happy, or even being sad/depressed.
I said to one of my teachers in tutor time when we where talking about Corona, that "If some children and teens are happy about a mass school closings during a pandemic, then the education system did something *very, very* wrong," The teacher just stood there shocked, and just carried on talking, and the answer was yes, there is something *very very* wrong with the education system rn, Best moment in my first year of secondary school.
I was diagnosed autistic three months ago at age 25. I remember when I was in Year 4 or so and learnt about having to change classes every hour in secondary school I started getting anxious about it. If there were points to be lost for communication/participation/interaction with peers, I lost them. PE was hell. I still have PTSD flashbacks and nightmares about PE. But I was in all the Advanced Learner classes and graduated second in my year with a scholarship and went on to the second hardest course in the country at the best university in the country, then had a nervous breakdown a year later and never graduated. School so clearly doesn't equip you for anything if you can be really good at school and fail so spectacularly at life. This video felt so damn validating, thank you Leena
I'm in the process of getting diagnosed with autism and the therapist I was talking to essentially was saying that if you're getting good grades you can't be neurodivergent and that bugged me a lot because it was saying that my problems weren't to be taken seriously and that if you're doing fine in school there shouldn't be any other issues. It sucks that school has become the marker of whether you're okay or not.
@@thegreendorito9095 You should probably start looking for a new Therapist. Your Therapist should be able to understand your feelings and he or she should never trivialize/minimize them. I just got diagnosed with ADHD- PI formerly know as ADD and I have been struggling since I entered high school. I was high functioning earlier on but still had struggles like being too slow when doing pretty much anything. My teachers never got help for me and my parents didn't do anything until it was too late. I told my parents that I was struggling with things at home and in school and that I was depressed. It took them 7 years to finally get me to a Therapist and it was only because my older brother told my Mom that depression is serious. I found out that I have 3 disorders and I now have a great Therapist :). Don't stop till you get the right treatment for you!
Ash the innovator, thanks for the concern and I hope that you're doing good now. On the bright side, that person isn't my regular therapist but the person testing me for a diagnosis and all that. My actually therapist is really great and deserve a freaking award for making the best of my endless rambling.
in regards to the 'no personal autonomy after abuse teaches bad boundary setting" - school is awful about it - the school system is basically telling children to 'deal with it', accept abuse from authority figures and worst of all - when you try to call out abuse the system will punish or ignore you I had multiple teachers who would yell or belittle students to the point of tears and the school basically supported them because 'They're my coworker or friend' 'they're actually quite nice as a person' 'you don't always like who you work with' --- like,,,,,, 'nice' people can be abusive, and this isn't just working with people you don't like in a group project it's a grown adult abusing their power over teenagers and still forcing those students to be in their classes,
At my school the whole year group was split in two halves-the “clever” and the “dumb” half. Eventually they had to stop because it was leading to bullying. Also many people just gave up on school because they were assigned to the dumb half. All based on SATs results! I really struggled in primary school and didn’t get good SATs results so I was put in the “dumb” half and yet I ended up with great GCSE and AS results. The system is stupid.
one thing ive always hated about school is how much people all u out? like a few days ago my teacher asked everyone to raise their hand if they didn't have a phone, you wanna know how embarrassing it is to be the only kid in your jr high class without a phone, that earnt at least two days of bullying for me
My best friend was a gifted kid, and one time while we were waiting outside the classroom for history. I began to explain why I thought the gifted groups were pretty damaging and deciding certain people are gifted and others are not, and she basically said I was just upset because I wasn’t in the group or I was just exaggerating. She’s now experiencing that post gifted group experience, and I hope she can get through it.
Honestly the whole thing with school preparing you for adult life, sometimes I think, "Yeah but adult life doesn't have to be like that" or "Sometimes adult life isn't like that so why we encouraging it in schools?"
And people, especially those of my age, tell me to “suck it up” as if we aren’t what adults call us “the future”. Whose future? Is it really ours, or do they want to pass on such a depressing mindset, therefore further leading us to a crumbling society of more depressed folks unable to live their lives in a way that makes them happy? They just love to make us think these things can never be in our control, and it never will be for as long as we believe those regurgitated words.
Ironically, one of my teachers abused me so badly that I severely struggle in any working/business environment bc whenever a superior corrects/questions me I burst into tears/hyperventilate, even when I'm not actually upset/the problem is a reasonable, easy to resolve/answer/etc. She did not prepare me for adulthood/my career, she prepared me to be stuck reacting like a fckin toddler to super common and basic issues. Thanks Umbridge! 🤬
Elementry/middle/high school is NOTHING like real life. It's not even anything like university! In university I could show up in a crop top, short shorts, deep v neck shirt, flip flops, a onesie, a bikini, topless, pjs, a full suit, impractical high heels...anything! And you don't get sent home. Magical how clothing stops affecting your learning when you're a uni freshman but not a high school senior. Also, you can just leave the class and go to the bathroom without needing to ask. You can make your schedule. I don't have to study french if I don't want to. Sorry this got away from me a bit lol
I'm in high school, and at my job I work kinda closely to the adult higher-ups, and it doesn't seem like school is what prepared them for their jobs. we get our tasks done but don't have ridiculously short time constraints to do so. and just being able to clock out and have no more work to do!!
Wow. That point about boundary setting. Wow. This is one I need to think about. The day I always think about is when I asked not to be sat beside someone who I really really really did not get a long with, for that reason and because she was very disruptive in class and I wanted to learn. I went up to the teacher after the rest of the class left and explained my reasoning and asked to be moved. She apologised to me and told me she put me there because she knew I was the only person the girl wouldn't talk to during class, which would make her easier to manage. My education and happiness was sacrificed because my teacher couldn't control the class. This actually happened a lot, but I never realised how intentional it was until this teacher explained it to me and apologised but didn't change the seating arrangement
That happened me to a lot in elementary / primary school in particular. I was the good student who wanted to behave and focus, so I was always assigned a seat next to the disruptive student because I was supposed to be a "good influence." I never realized how messed up this was until much later.
I was considered a “good kid” and often had the “uncontrollables” sat by me in order for me to either help them with their work or to try and keep them quiet. I also only realized it was happening when I asked if I could be moved because I couldn’t focus on the class. She said no, and I noticed it was happening in my other classes as well.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS. Because I was well-behaved there were so many occasions where a teacher would put a shitty student next to me or near me, so my learning was disrupted. They thought I was a "good influence" and therefore I would influence the shitty kid? This even happened when I boarded at school, so I didn't even get a break after finishing the day.
When I was in high school I actually wrote an in-depth paper of logistic reasons why I think mandatory homework should not be allowed / expected. My main point was that I chopped up the average high schoolers day into 24 hours. The average teenager actually needs more sleep than the average adult, and they actually closer to 10 hours of instead of 8 but averaged it down to 9. I also took out the time that they actually spend in school time that some high schoolers spend at an actual job and or extracurricular activities and time to be social and eat and all that stuff... Essentially I showed that with homework the average high schooler needs like a 32-hour day to accomplish everything important for a young growing person. I also made the point that if they're already doing well wuth their grades, and they do not need the extra practice then what's the point... It would be nice if homework was available as an optional study tool for those who need it. But right now we are wasting time in children's formative years for them to do busy work (that they don't even really have time for) and I still to this day as an adult believe mandatory homework is ridiculous and shouldn't be a thing But I also said some of the points you said here, such as homework being unfair as something contributed to your final grade because of economic status and stuff like that. If your parents are not wealthy and they have to be at work a lot you will have nobody to help you with your homework oh, well little Timmy's family is home all day and practically just does it for him I also personalized my reasoning by mentioning that I myself on average was a C-B student.... And that was mainly due to the fact that I often didn't do homework assignments because I didn't have the time or I felt incredibly unmotivated after a long day. And the worst part was that I already understood and grasped the material I was supposed to do homework on, so doing the homework wouldn't have served me in any way other than arbitrarily maintaining my grade in the class... Without graded homework assignments that affected My overall score I probably would have been a B-A a student
The abuse thing is definitely a big thing. I was systematically bullied and humiliated at school, and never really learned how to properly stand up for myself. I’m in my 50s, and I still struggle between avoiding conflict, and the rare occasions where I over react. I never felt supported at school, with the attitude always being “what are you doing to invite bullying?”. So I learned to not attract attention.
interestingly, a lot of what you mentioned doesnt apply to my experience (went to school in germany). One of my worst experiences for must have been group assignments. from 1st to 12th grade, into university. increasingly often we were asked to do an exercice or a project or a presentation in groups. to organise ourselves independently and to presrnt some sort of result without instruction. we would also be graded in groups. the teachers always said that it is supposed to teach us working in teams as this is a basic softskill and essential for our future work life. not only is this untrue for many jobs, including the job where I ended up (I am self employed and organize everything myself), all the group tasks did, is teach the following: Lazy kids get away with being lazy and doing nothing/little. Kids who care about their grades and who are motivated learn that they must carry the group and do more work than others if they want those good grades. We learn that group grades are unfair to each and every group member and dont represent anyone. I learned that if I want something done right, I besto do it alone. And that I couldn't rely my peers. also I find it lazy of the teachers. but group assignments are part of the curriculum. so its not their choice I guess. anyone who hated group assignments?? pls...
I'm very shy and I hated group assignments. I felt like I always ended up doing most/all of the work (which I actually preferred!) or none of it because I had a really hard time speaking up, especially in middle/early high school. One of my teachers actually helped me through this and let me come in before school to do presentations or gave me alternate assignments. It really helped prepare me for the end of the year, when we had a big project, and later because I had more courage to speak up. I still don't like group assignments though. They can be really unfair sometimes. Sorry this got so long!
I'm also from Germany and I feel you. Group assignments are the worst for several reasons. First of all I don't like working with people or people in general. Second the time I spend with organizing tasks within the group, telling the same three things to the same persons bc they don't care, etc is twice the amount of time it takes for me to do alone. Also most teachers don't give you a lot of time but excpect a perfect result. Ugh
Well, I actually liked group assignments, but that‘s because I was hella nerdy and awkward, and for me group assignments were a way to not get bullied, because other, more popular kids were obviously hoping that partnering would improve their grades and so that would stop them from being super mean to me, out of fear that I would not help them. I do see how that’s not an ideal situation tho.
I've already commented but I have a second point: the merit system. We had houses at my school, and I got bullied a lot by about half my form class, and I developed anxiety and chronic depression during secondary school. As a result, I didn't give a SHIT about "house pride" "the team" "form sports" etc and i got so much shit from my form teacher bc I didn't care about the sports day teams and never stepped up to help/volunteer for anything (anything being charity stall events, discos and like, mini sports days? We had Big sports day and like form sports days?) Like, 1. Why the fuck would I volunteer to do sports I hate and suck at, work a stall with someone I hate, or spend extra time with people who specifically make my life worse every. Single. Day. And 2. Why didn't my form teacher (who saw us every morning for 5 yrs for an hour, spent time with us on school trips every year, and taught all of us in various lessons) notice that I went from being excited, bubbly and social in yr 7, happy to participate, and then every year after that I hated everything, didn't want to do anything, and refused to join in?
The sports day thing makes me remember a girl yelling I'm my face because I refused to both run the 1500 metre and do discus. Decided that I would do neither We placed second anyway
Exactly! Why is is that teachers never notice when someone is clearly struggling or unhappy, but for something as trivial as chewing gum or sleeping in class, they don’t just notice it, they start yelling into our faces. Like bruh
@@jesusssugarbabyuwu78yearsa63 you aren't there to develop or be happy or be children, you are there to be "disciplined", like a dog that needs training. school are prisons
@@jesusssugarbabyuwu78yearsa63 exactly! I did my homework, always had my folder planner and pencil case, and (mostly) wore my uniform properly, so teachers just kinda ignored me bc I was “fine” (aka my mental health wasn’t getting between me and performing the school requirements) and never noticed I was getting chased home, harassed during classes, assaulted during lunch breaks etc (literally once got the shit kicked out of me on CCTV in school and was nearly suspended for....... getting beaten up. I didn’t land a single hit)
I want to share something I realized about mistreatment in families which also applies to schools in my opinion: Any behavior you as a parent/teacher/... show toward a child teaches them that it is okay to be treated like this. They will conclude that it is normal for anyone -not just you- to treat them like this. Would my father be fine with my boyfriend yelling and breaking furniture because I disagreed with him? No, absolutely not, but behaviors like these (which I experienced as a child) are the reason I felt like I wasn't allowed to tell romantic partners off when they crossed my boundaries. PS: Blouse F is really nice but I don't like ties or uniforms in general and fortunately German schools don't have school uniforms, "only" the other problems Leena mentioned.
Something I will always hate school for is the lack of actual life skills. They say it’s to help you when you’re an adult, but then all they do is stuff your head full of information that you won’t even use! I’m literally taking a Transition School, which is a school designed to help you to transition from highschool into an adult life. ISNT THIS WHAT HIGH-SCHOOL IS SUPPOSED TO BE. But no, just more useless math, more useless reading and more Bullshit. Also, the sexual education sucks. In Florida, the only thing we got was a video of someone giving birth and a video about periods. Which was an AD mind you. An Ad to sell products, which looking back, is disgusting. We also learned about how the male and female parts work, but that was it. Nothing about safe sex, or consent, or anything like that. I went to a new school for my senior year, and even THEN I didn’t get a sex education class. I got a health class, sure, but in that we just did this project on Human Trafficking. Which is a serious issue, for sure, but I’m still severely disappointed in my education when it comes to my own body and health. The school education system is fucked, and it’s going to take a lot of change to fix it.
If there's one thing that school taught me it's that it's this: Everybody is an asshole waiting to bully somebody. And my parents wonder why I'm so reclusive lmao
I always find it odd that I spent 18 years following all the rules and being really studious and Im now unlearning that in academia. Was told to "ignore the rules and follow your scholarly instincts" I AM NOT EQUIPPED!!
I'm a teacher in Canada. We just switched to "quints" instead of "semesters" because of covid. So every day we have one class in the morning from 9:10-11:50, and one class in the afternoon from 12:40-3:20 or something with a 10 minute break partway through. Anyways, it's really interesting how some things have flipped. Some students who were struggling before are really thriving with longer classes, but there are some that are struggling to focus on the same subject for half the day.
I’m also candadian, but we only have one class. They’re about to change the schedule but right now you’re going either Monday Tuesday and every 2 Wednesday’s or Tuesdays Friday’s and every 2 Wednesday’s. And we’re only doing a subject a week. It’s really bad for me.
I'm loving lock-downs because I know all our bullies (the ESTJ/ENTJ) are suffering for it, and we (the I***) are loving it. Its like nature made us to survive and strive in those times !
stop blowing my mind!! i get SO stressed picking outfits just for everyday wear and I'm 20. i genuinely think it's because of the pressure put on for non uniform days. I thought that I needed the ultimate outfit that showed who I am to all my peers in one outfit on one day... i still feel that way. Feel like I just had a therapy session.
I quite liked moving classes every period. It was just the activity I needed to wake me up for the next class. Because when I tell you I was tired, I mean it.
In my us schooling us history was always prioritized. World history was for younger grades, like the first grade after you changed schools, followed by several years of the same 200 years of us history for the next few grades
I go to an American school, am in 9th grade. We covered Ancient history in 6th grade, and other than that the only thing we have covered in history/social studies was from the 13 colonies up to the civil war.
That’s how it works in Australia. Y7 = Ancient Rome + Australian history, Y8 = medieval Britain + Australian history, Y9+ = Australian history + Australian history
Hehe yes i remember protesting about having to wear “skimpy garments” in front of all the boys for no good reason and i refused unless we were allowed to wear joggers! Win and im proud of small me
I'm a teacher and as per usual, I completely agree with all of your points 😂 I really appreciate you making it known that teachers aren't the (main) problem (there are problematic teaching practices/teachers). I am in the system and love conversations of reimagining school because it is necessary and past due. The school system is oppressive in many ways and I would love to work with a more of a learning community and self paced model.
This is so weird! In America, at my school, we were encouraged to have a book to quietly read if we finished with our work. It kept us quiet, lol. Sometimes if everyone was talking and it got too loud the teacher would be like "ok quiet time, get out a book, put your head down, or do something quietly.
I'm still mad (it was 20y ago) I got banned from the library for spending too much time there and they started for some reason locking its door, they said it was dangerous for a kid to be alone in the library. I remember there was a librarian, I don't know what they did to her for allowing students to actually use the library, true hero she was. Like what? for what reason? might I learn something you don't want? It only made me desire to learn more and to realize how ridiculous everything was when I was 10y old. So I think I got it, I'm not there to learn, but well, screw you, now I'm gonna be rebellious and learn everything I want to learn. I still remember the face of my teachers when I opened science/history/math books in the wrong classes, it was very funny, because I wasn't technically doing anything wrong, the only thing they could come with is "you are not paying attention", but still I could answer all their questions because I studied the subject and I was really ahead of everyone and had good grades (some of the highest), and they couldn't actually send me to detention for that. Some actually did try to send me to detention, that was actually not a punishment, like, that's what I want, I only had to perfectly calculate so I don't have too many absents, so I could pass to the next year. Despite all that, teaches were baffled by my high grades, so they couldn't expunge me from school. My parents would receive a lot of letters, but I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong, I had good grades to prove it, they had to work a lot and didn't have time for the bullshit in the school. Good thing they didn't need any stupid social benefit from the government, otherwise that would be tragic to me, so I was actually privileged, otherwise my family would have been locked in poverty forever, but luckily my father was an civil engineer and had already endured the bullshit system enough. If I decide to have children, I will need lawyers and psychiatry (for the child and for me) and I will die on this hill, you won't "discipline" us, I'm going to war over the system. I'll teach the children how to be a free thinker, like I learned and escaped the system, and I know they won't allow for home-schooling either, because they are losing the grip. Nowadays you can go to jail for not sending your child to school, at least in the country I live, I find it outrageous. I'm pretending moving to another country because of that. I was lucky my parents didn't suffer from my "bad behavior". Down with the system ! lets take brick by brick. I found this lock-down kind of liberating for allowing home-schooling by force onto the stupid system, that's a good beginning for this conversation we need to have.
I had a teacher who always told me to stop reading so we could have “circle time”, basically, people talked about their weekend and I absolutely hated it. I was new and wasn’t comfortable around people. The teacher gave me a lower grade because I wasn’t “enthusiastic”🙄
29:44 The only demerit I ever got in school was for pulling out a book and starting to read while I waited for the teacher to get the class under control and begin the lesson. I was the only one in the class that got a demerit, even though some people were literally screaming and throwing things! Can you tell I'm still bitter about it 15 years on?
I literally got in trouble for asking questions about the lesson, paying attention and engaging in the topic, while half the class was on their phones and ignoring the teacher. Admittedly, I was the only openly gay kid in the PSHE class and I was asking why she'd skipped over a bunch of slides on the presentation to focus on Bisexuality, Homosexuality, and Heterosexuality, and was interested in learning about Pan, Asexual, Transgender, etc issues, and was told off for "trying to start an argument" (I wasn't aware that asking orientation/gender questions in the Sex ed + gender unit was that triggering but go off homophobic school system) but still. That's the point of the lesson, right ? 😂
Some personal notes: - It baffles me to this day when I have been out of compulsory education for almost 10 years that being inducted into Gifted & Talented did not require parental consent (at my school at least) - My catholic school education was even more biased than a standard comprehensive, I feel. I have spent the years since educating myself on other religions outside of Christian denominations. - Uniform madness! I once got a detention because my black tights were the wrong denier, and when I questioned if this actually warranted an after school detention for a "uniform infraction" they made a phone call to my parents about my attitude (my parents laughed and asked if the detention was more important than studying for my GCSE'S as I was in Y11. I was quickly released from detention.) - Watching Supersize Me once constituted an actual top set Science lesson - it was a solid 3 minute walk between 'blocks' at my school, which crossed over a public pathway as well. And yet teachers were still not lenient on lates despite garbled apologies that you had come from the other block. Why was I apologising?? Anyway, I probably have more in the back of my mind somewhere that I have suppressed. Love the video Leena!
One time at the end of seventh grade, this kid was supposed to get an attendance award for never missing a day of school, but when they called his name all his friends shouted “ HE’S ABSENT”, and he really was.
As a young teacher, I have a few remarks because people tend to forget that education as a scientific, as a professional field does also evolve. I of course agree with the statements here... but I just thought it's good to give some context, so you know... people have some hope for the future ;) - I learned that you should never ever introduce a topic through homework. Meaning you can never let learners "learn" smth new through homework. (Of course in reality there is still the problem that we have to teach according to a plan and often struggle to fit all in). - The scientific fact that children should sleep longer universally accepted. The problem is that the system needs to be changed by politicians. - I teach history in Germany and the focus is both: being critical and knowing the basic facts of history. This means also children don't need to know all the dates and all the history. They learn a way to research and know for themselves. - I teach mostly 90 min, especially in main subjects. This is of course not a whole day but it helps to actually concentrate for a longer period of time. - The optimal lesson does differentiate ... this means: if your a good student the teacher has some interesting extra tasks, if you're struggling there are some easier tasks. Sad remarks: I really agree with the PE rant. I guess because PE class was originally designed to prepare you for military service, they believe in letting people suffer. Anyone heard of the torture that is called "Cooper Test" ? Yeah you know what I'm talking about. Also as a new teacher I really have to agree with you that its really important in which class you are. At the moment I teach a class that is absolutely socially incompatible. It really horrifies me to see that as a student you really have to be lucky in which class you end up in. And a sad scientific fact in the end: Waiting periods are actually the time in which people get bullied most often.
I went to school in germany and did the cooper test three times... I have no words.. interesting to have a german teacher here. my worst memory are group assignments. which taught me that I cant rely on anyone if I want good grades, that I better do things alone if I want them done right and that lazy kids get away with being lazy. Sadly, group assignemts were a staple during my school years.. what is your take on group assignments? But: I mostly remember having had mostly (not exclusively) great, talented, inspiring and passionate teachers. good luck to you!
Oh wow I just googled cooper test (it was called differently in my school), and it‘s so interesting to see that this is now seen to be a very inefficient exercise to say anything about student abilities. It was horror for me... as most of PE was, to be fair 😅
Oh what you've said is so encouraging. Unfortunately I finished school in the UK 2 years ago, and most of the things on this list were still horribly true for me
On History, her complaint is more that British students are almost never taught the UK's colonial past or atrocities. Instead they are taught mythologised versions of their earliest history. As a result, most Britons believe they did a favour to the world in invading most countries, but haven't heard of the Mau Mau massacre or the Bengal famine. In any other country we'd call it censorship and propaganda.
@@johannah.2654 I feel you. For me it was the same with group assignments when I went to school ("TEAM - "Toll Ein Anderer Machts"). But as a teacher there are possibilities to change this. I learnt that we can use role cards so pupils all have a special task, like time keeper, group leader, content researcher etc. So in the end the goal is to prepare them for how group works actually take place in the workplace. I think if more teachers would try methods like these even group assignments work out. When you know your class very well you can even try to fit the role to the student's abilities and energy. The only thing really standing in the way again, I must say, are time and space restrictions. Organizing group work for 30 pupils is hardcore...
8:00 As a preface, I believe uniforms should be affordable, and free to those who need it. However I remember my mom (she’s a teacher in a poor school district) had a student who’s clothes never fit her because her parents couldn’t afford to buy her clothes her size. She would get made fun of by other children. I believe that AFFORDABLE uniforms are an excellent way to avoid that situation
The sad fact is that schooling has really become about indoctrination - not about finding the best way for a student to learn and develop. It's indoctrination for nationalism or corporate usefulness or simply to keep society safe from young people that might want radical change (most likely a mix of all of it) and it's not about the betterment of the individuals going through it. Most long time teachers don't even remember their students names after the student has left any more, and I am sure that is from a lack of resources and funding but I am pretty positive it is also deliberate.
i've been thinking so much recently about how at primary schools kids were essentially labeled as either sporty or unsporty: you were in the A team for netball or you were in the Ds. Basically being told at the age of 8 that I wasn't good at sport made me completely disengage with team sports and exercise, I felt like PE was a form of ritual humiliation, from students picking sports teams and your ability to play a sport well determining your popularity it was all a bit wank. I remember sports teachers even making comments and jokes about my poor hand eye coordination (lol I was later diagnosed as dyspraxic so no wonder) and although now I run and do yoga regularly and am actually fairly fit I lack the drive and ambition to push myself and do well in sports and find it hard to see myself as sporty in any way and attribute this wholly to the way PE was managed at school.
I feel exactly the same! I always hated PE and thought of myself as 'bad at sports' for a long time - it wasn't until my 20s that I had the revelation that exercising can actually be fun. For me a big part of the problem was that I hated TEAM sports, and how competitive (and thus stressful and performative) PE always was, but now that I can explore exercise on my own terms I've realised I really enjoy working out when I'm on my own and not in conflict with other people - I love yoga, and running, and pole dancing! I wish I'd learned that earlier, instead of having it ingrained in me that exercising is horrible and I'm bad at sports. Lots of my people I know have had exactly this experience, too
You completely hit the nail on the head, I remember at a very young age being singled out by sports teachers. The whole way through primary/high school I was pretty much conditioned to hate sports and not want to participate in them
Team games with balls shouldn't be compulsory for those who hate them or are no good at them. They should be given the chance to do something more fun either outside or in the sports hall such as trampolining or yoga. Tennis wasn't something we did except in the summer term and on a hot day. That's a ball game but not a team game.
@@LBelacquax I had the exact same experience (and also currently love yoga, pole and running! who would have thought!). Especially yoga cause it's so non-competitive. And pole is just playfully building strength. I love it!
Hi there. I've always generally enjoyed sports and tend to be quite good at it. However, im not a very sociable/likeable person so as a result i always end up getting picked last or second to last. This lowered my self esteem a lot, and now whenever i play sports i tend to think of myself as "getting lucky" rather than it being a resut of my hard work. I really hate how sports depends on being a likeable/sociable person, and whether or not you have some form of popularity. I ended up losing a close friend of mine due to my personality however i didnt let it affect me much. Tl'dr: being popular is basically everything whether you are good at sports or not.
I remember being given a 'gifted and talented' project at the start of high school. 11 year old me was made to complete a research paper for NO REASON, out of school hours, under an ARBITRARY time frame, with absolutely NO follow up, that half the kids didn't bother to do. It probably started up in the head of year's 'In' pile and ended up in the bin. Not only that, but the memory of being 'selected' to visit a university at 13 years old... before even deciding on our GCSE options infuriates me. Not only was the programme divisive and exclusionary for the people not chosen, it was a wildly inappropriate and impersonal way of creating unnecessary expectations.
Being labelled as super smart and independent learners really young meant that my Advanced Learners group had a really toxic culture where you could not ever ask for help or admit you didn't understand something. Guess who had a nervous breakdown a year into the most prestigious degree in the country!!
Yup I was classed as a G&T student and its definitely had a negative impact on myself and some of my G&T friends, particularly around asking for help and anxiety about always being on top of things
Just to touch on the P.E point: I have mild cerebral palsy... I was put in the lowest group for PE, generally for those with health issues etc. +For cross country I came 6th out of 60 people, including the top group in my year. + I played netball for the school + I was the fastest batsperson on any team. + I continue to run and have done 2 10ks + I have done physical theatre & dance all through college. I was expected by my school to be shit at sport/ exercise etc. Because of my disability. I smashed that expectation. ...But what I would have liked to see was that you were given a choice one term of what sport / exercise you wanted to do and rotate to figure out what you liked
I agree! I enjoyed volleyball, dance, strength training, and lacrosse in HS and I would’ve loved to do those more often in PE. But if you wanted to focus on those, you had to be on a team. I’m personally not a fan of competition unless it’s with friends. Plus my skills were not up to varsity standards.
We always had everyone in the same grade mixed in the same level of PE as far as I remember, and then once you got to high school you could sometimes choose a focused PE class like dance (California, high school = ages 14-18) Although we did have tests in PE that definitely showed the difference between kids who could run a mile no sweat and people like me who would take 20 minutes and die
We did a bleep test. Basically run up and down a basketball court within the bleeps to see what your stamina was like. That was it. My Dad was in the navy and said that’s part of their initial training- go figure 😂
I suffer from severe adhd and anxiety, and was put in the "gifted program." And all that has done for me is put in my head that I should just be good at everything. They gave us very easy tasks and made us feel super smart for doing them. And then as soon as we got back to normal class and we're bad at something, we just had no idea what to do. It completely destroyed what little motivation I had
And then if you had trouble you just got told you "weren't trying" - which in turn just made me give up trying because why risk trying my best and getting yelled at anyway
The homework being graded is supposed to get more people passing. It's not required you get it right really, just that you do it. In highschool I refused to do majority of homework. Got a's on all my tests and quizzes. Barely passed, most of the grade was homework.
For me I did none of the homework and got mostly A's on tests and my final grade would be B's. Course work was only 10% of the final grade and test and quizzes were 90%.
On the uniform front, it was ridiculous that we could only buy from the school shop, and our school shop was only open for 1 week every year, but also that you bought something that was meant to last the whole year. Children GROW. You had to wear something MASSIVE in September to make sure it still fit in July. I had/have so many body issues that were made so much worse by ill-fitting school uniforms. If we had worn leopard print it would have been slightly easier though. Good one, Leena.
The “early elevation of certain types of intelligence” is even crazier in the Netherlands!! At the end of primary school, most of the children take a test (there are alternatives I believe) that basically determines what level of secondary school you will move on to. Which 1) puts insane amounts of pressure on kids! Because they feel like their future largely depends on how well they perform on that test (and I mean, they are not entirely wrong). And 2) creates this diversion in the classrooms, where some people feel better about themselves than others, depending on their test scores. It creates this whole “comparing yourself with others” idea. The whole reason this test was initiated was because it supposedly took away the prejudice of the teachers. But it turns out that is still a thing. Besides, if some of the children of the higher class are advised to go to a “lower” level secondary school, their parents will most definitely complain and make sure their child goes to a higher level secondary school. Even if they aren’t suitable. Also, children of lower class families that perhaps didn’t do so well on the test due to stress, and who will end up with a lower level advise, generally don’t have parents who will stick up for them to get them to a higher level which they would actually deserve. In conclusion, it’s a pretty fucked up system, with good intentions, but bad results. P.S. Loved the video! ❤️ Very relatable still!!
We had the same system in my area in Australia. We also had test for selective highschools that we had to take at the end of primary school to see if we could get in. Think highschool versions of Harvard, Yale, Brown,etc. It was terrible!
same in my country we originally had that test in primary 3 (literally 9 year olds) before they scrapped it just before my batch. Even then there is still a test to stream kids into "gifted" elite primary schools at age 9, which some parents pay extra tuition for kids to study for so they can get in. Now its primary 6 which is 12 years old. I think whats more damaging is the idea that your entire future rests on this one critical exam, which is SO NOT TRUE. Life is more about consistent work and moving towards what you want (which you can decide to change at any point, except maybe becoming a pro athlete) than speedrunning an essay in 1hr to determine your fate forever, you still have to work hard and people who might not have done as well can still catch up and find success. School tries to be like this is the only path when actually you can choose so many different ones.
hi, fellow Dutch person here. this is my take, more focused on being in middle/high school! i like that everyone can have education at their own level and pace. i don't like the way kids who can't keep up and have to go to a niveau are treated. i don't like that people will apologize to me for not being smart because i do gymnasium (the highest). they suddenly look at me very differently which makes me really uncomfortable. i don't like that funding generally seems to go to havo/vwo/gymnasium schools rather then to lower niveaus like vmbo. i don't like the way teachers expect the smart kids to be some sort of super humans. i don't like that primary school teachers will assign kids of Turkish and Maroccan immigrants generally to lower niveaus then their actual capabilities, because of their racism. i don't like the classism, which isn't an issue at every school, but definitely at some. i think the system is very good in theory but people suck.
My fave discipline I had at school was when a girl made up allegations against me and instead of exploring it i was asked to sit in a room where this girl and two teachers ripped me to shreds at how horrible a person i was. This was 10 years ago and the guilt and shame i was made to feel is still real, love me some childhood trauma. My primary school teacher was also sleeping with the dad of the child who bullied my sister constantly but nothing was done because of this lol. I am now a trainee ed psych so will be advising schools that is maybe not the best ways to be doing things.
You're the only other person I've heard say that they were absolutely exhausted after high school. I was so tired I had to take a couple of hours' nap everyday. I wasn't able to do any after school activities as a result.
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I had my 'bahaviour grade' lowered by two points on a six point scale for being 'too assertive'. You know, not bullying or smoking, rather occasionally telling a teacher that some other student had rights, or quietly reading when I was done with the material. Looking back at the past decade and all the standard abusive sexual situations I was able to say 'no' to and demand my 'no' is heard I would say we really, really need young women to be 'too assertive'. Crushing the ability to stand up for yourself in young people is kind of criminal.
I was punished for trying to get a student who was bullying others and sexually harassing me removed or therapied. Nope! It’s your fault-a 12 year old girl. Ruined adults for me for a long time.
This is so bad! I encourage my students to read (not very many do) but I'm not allowed to. I'm suppoed to "keep them busy" until it's time. Even if it's 5 minutes before the bell rings
Also! Most school punish both people if they get into a fight even if it's just like someone punches you and you shove them away. You both get suspended for the same amount of time which is literally teaching kids that you need to sit back and take abuse until and authority figure decides oh yeah that's not okay.
it is crucial so ppl don't stand up to authorities like the government and their bosses. I see it in a friend of mine who never says yes to us with ease but jump over backwards when her boss calls, even though is not work hours. it is a really smart system if you ask me.
I had the same thing happen because I seen kids start to go outside and we were being kept in for a bit a I got that evil yellow card for being to excited and eager to go outside
Just been forcefully reminded of being made to kneel on the floor so a teacher could check your skirt reached the floor.... as a person with shockingly long legs, this never went well for me. Also making young girls kneel on the floor in front of their male teachers so they could inspect their skirts??? Questionable
I can't even understand why we have to wear skirts. Why can't we wear trousers? Boys do, so what's the problem if girls would have an option to wear them as well?
That's horribly creepy
@@cdko That'a kinda fucked. I was allowed to wear trousers at my secondary school, and guys were allowed to wear skirts, you just had to follow the dress code for it. Like fuck I'm going out in winter and autumn in a skirt. You can do one.
ahh yes, the christian school i went to in highschool did this :) very fun.
My primary school had school uniform knickers. And they checked. So wrong on so many levels.
Dear schools
IF YOU'RE GOING TO FORCE PPL TO WEAR UNIFORMS DISTRIBUTE THEM YOURSELF
And for free, not everyone can afford to pay a ridiculous amount of money for something they'll never wear outside of/after school.
Yes!!
Girls shouldn't have ties as part of their school uniform. They won't wear ties in work unless they join the police.
as from a country where school uniforms are practically non-existent, I can't comprehend why you have to pay for your uniform when the school was only one who wanted it. as if you go to some job and they force you to buy their uniform? my brain is melting.
@@lemsip207 Nobody should have ties if they don't want them, they're ugly and uncomfortable!
"Imagine if it was around race"
In the US, black children and teens are regularly forced to change their hair(specifically, to cut their dreadlocks) in order to attend classes and significant school events. The justification being that they look "unkempt", whether or not that is true.
It absolutely does extend past class.
That's messed up wtf
I've seen multiple white kids show up with messy tangled frizzled hair, and guess what? They didn't get punished
@bort: exactly. Yet, in the US, in 2020, a highschooler w well kept dreads was kept from participating in graduation unless they changed their hair. And that's just the instance that made the news!
This really makes me think about the difference between US schools in different areas!
My previous high school in South Florida had around 2,500 students, was in a very low-income area, and what others may call "the hood". It is primarily made up of Black, Hispanic, and mixed races, so this situation never, if not rarely, happens.
Here, you can wear a crop top with spaghetti straps, a mini skirt, sandals, a hoodie; practically anything you'd like and nobody would stop you. You can wear your hair in any way you see fit, including having fully dyed hair of any color.
It's a shame that your school has these restrictions and goes to show just how racist and uneducated the curriculum is. We can't stand for this behavior any longer.
a black dude in my high school class like 3 years ago had to get his hair cut because it was “distracting”, hate that shit
Americans have all of this bad stuff but without healthcare.
Or uniforms
@@Kirsten_is_cursed10 no they have uniforms at some schools in the USA.
We didnt have uniforms but we had some god awful dress codes
Or proper sex ed! Abstinence yay
Bruh I had uniforms AND a strict dress code to show how you had to wear the dang uniform (which I’m sure other people have gone through as well, not trying to one-up anyone) I barely got by wearing boots in the winter!
The most toxic lesson school taught me was that "nobody in authority cares about your problems". I was bullied and these days I can't even think about it without being angry at all the adults who managed to teach me to remain quiet/compliant and then failed to notice I was in constant distress. I was academically strong so they also left me utterly unprepared for dealing with failure and with my self-worth tied entirely to my grades. I'm in my 30s and I'm still learning basic lessons on how to human.
i relate to that so much! I had good grades, so my teachers, many of whom I had had for three years at that point, failed to register my crashing mental health, even as I went from being chatty and annoyingly active with my friends in class to staring at the classroom wall in complete apathy or sleeping in class. They gave other students a stern talk when their grades started slipping too much, but mine never did so I had to be ok.
At the age of 20 I still have nightmares about school :(
omg I never read anything so relatable
This guy bullied me in middle school and I got detention for pushing him away from me, meanwhile whenever I reported him to the teacher he would at most get told to stop. And then of course the next day he would know I had reported him, which didn't help anything.
@EHnus Lover696 it's not a good mindset for young boys or men to have either, and is part of the reason that men are less likely to seek help for mental health issues than women
@EHnus Lover696 no mindset is inherently natural or unnatural, it's learned behavior. People learn values as kids and those values change as they grow older because their experiences have taught them to have a different outlook. It's not propaganda or mind control, it's life. You change the world every day through every interaction you have, whether that change is large or small, and you can change what impact you leave on the world. If one of my bros comes up to me and needs someone to listen to them, I'm not going to be a dick and say no.
Isn't it crazy that almost every adult has recurring nightmares about school? And nobody ever sat back and thought: "hey maybe we should change this"?
The simple reason a lot of people simply don't care about children.
Why don’t you become a school teacher?
@@orikiedu1833 Individual teachers, though noble, cannot institute the wide-scale educational reform necessary. One more good teacher won't end the institutional abuse. Also I don't like kids lol
Yeah it kinda is. I do think education itself is needed for a good society but so much both could and should improve about it. At the very least we should be discussing how to improve the schools
I think that's the one good thing about Covid. Kids get to be kids.
"Genuinely want to sleep and die" is such a mood for all of secondary school.
Preach!
especially if it starts at like 6:00 am
Secondary school and up
True
Teachers or students?
I got told by a FEMALE teacher when I was in school (16 at the time) that she felt bad for all the male teachers at the school because girls skirts tended to be quite short. 1. Yes, some would roll them up to be short. However, she was talking to me because I’m 5’9” and the skirt I had was fairly short on me because it was clearly made for a smaller height. 2. I felt so shit at the time. Like, I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable and I was very insecure about my body and wanted to hide it. But now?? I’m 19, almost 20. I’ve worked in a school, as a professional for training. 16 year olds ARE children. If male teachers can’t look at a student in a non sexual way, no matter the length of their skirt, THEY SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED AROUND KIDS, much less work in a school. Crazy. I’m bi and much closer in age to a lot of secondary school kids, but you know what? Never has it even crossed my mind that I should be uncomfortable over a child’s school clothing. Don’t shame children, get rid of creepy predators. Great video by the way, I loved what you had to say and agree with you. Adore your channel! 💗
Amen with all of the above! X
Ugh, that's such a horrible attitude! There's one thing in particular that I hate with all my being about the whole poor-men-who-have-to-see-girls-who-are-physically-attractive-but-not-legally-and-morally-attainable narrative. It's that the situation is painted in such a way that it's a kid's responsibility to handle it. Very young girls, often not even teens yet, are expected to learn and understand what stimulates men and then manage their look and behaviour accordingly. So young children are obligated to understand men's hardships and make effort to lessen their burden. When it's should be exactly the opposite!!! I heard so many lectures as a child and the worst part was I often really couldn't understand what exactly I was doing wrong - my parents were happy to help me learn about the human body when I hit puberty, so I knew what sex was, in great detail actually, but it was a sheer biological knowledge, I had no idea how sexual attraction works in practice, and it certainly didn't help that I'm on an asexual spectrum so even in adulthood it doesn't exactly work for me that way. But at least now I can tell the difference between sexy and pretty, in my teens I really couldn't. If it wasn't red or black lace it was normal and appropriate in every situation. Still, it was my job to understand that I may arouse men and not do that. I had to spare adult men's feelings. When every bit of reason and logic in the universe screams that said adult men should be the ones to make some effort to not make kid's life miserable.
Our school recently had scandal about Male teachers sexualizing my schoolmates, we thought they'll lose their job but no 🥴🤡 They're still teaching in our school ffs
Hard agree. This is bullshit. We should stop teaching our boys to grow up to be creepy men.
@@Sluppie Agreed. For one, men should give themselves more credit. They really aren't as easy to manipulate into seeing someone as attractive as they like to believe. It's actually pretty hard to make a guy notice you if he's not interested, just as hard as making the guy not focus on you if he is. What I mean, the fact that a guy likes someone ultimately stems from within him - his preferences etc. There's no code that women can just learn. Even if there was, it would be immoral to demand of us to go out of our way every day of our lives to honour it. But the truth is, there is no such thing. It's not possible for us to predict what will ignite a guy's interest. And that's for grown-up women. Don't even let me start on teens.
This might be a US thing but does anybody remember the “permanent” record that would “follow you throughout school”? Imagine applying for college and being rejected because one time you were sent to the principal’s office in elementary school for pushing another kid during recess.
Boy was I annoyed when I realized that was just some b.s. my mom kept saying. I wasn't even the type to misbehave (or stand up for myself) anyways so what was the point?
Yeah we have it too in England. Well, in my school anyway
Wait is it not actually permanent? I'm going into senior year and thought that the one time I threw a crumpled piece of paper at my desk-buddy in 3rd grade would haunt me when applying for college.
GOD YES!!!!! This was instilled in me from a very young age - if i got a single bad grade or a single detention, it would apparently be saved on my record for all eternity and affect my chances of getting into college or getting a job in the future. I didn't know that college admins and job hirers don't actually give a flying fuck about your elementary/middle school grades or detentions until late high school. Wish I'd known that sooner - I got such horrible anxiety and fear of failure from this message being drilled into me. As a "gifted" child that was constantly praised and never failed at anything in elementary school, it felt like my world was ending when I got to middle school and everything got so much harder, and there were no rewards for doing well either. I remember crying for hours the first time I ever failed a test in seventh grade. Had a panic attack the first time I got detention, too. It only got worse in high school - I'd end up hiding in the bathroom having a panic attack about once or twice a month (usually due to test anxiety). It got to the point where the teachers expected it - they just sighed, dragged me out to the nurse's office, and called my mom to take me home. High school killed my work ethic and motivation too. There were a bunch of kids kids taking all AP/advanced classes plus a ton of extracurriculars, while I struggled just to pass regular classes. It just felt like all my work would be pointless in the end. Now I'm failing community college and my mental health is still shit :)))) please kill me
Remember kids, its healthy to rebel. Skip class at least once. Especially if the teacher is a wang. Take a little mental health break if you need it. Got caught and now facing detention? Who cares. Detention isn't prison. They'll either have you do homework or pick up trash around the school. Not a big deal. Got suspended for some bogus reason? Free vacation time babyy. Grades slipping? Take it easy. Stressing over grades isn't gonna make them go up. It ain't healthy. I'm not saying blow off school, stop putting so much pressure on yourself. Whether you're branded by the school system as a gifted kid, demoted gifted kid, troublemaker, slacker, whatever. You're gonna be alright, take care of yourselves. Do what you need to do, just do YOU.
I taught future PE teachers for a semester, and learned that because the sportiest people - who love competitive sports - are the ones who want to be PE teachers, they tend to think a competitive, sporty environment is the most fun and effective way to get people moving. When I tried to convince them that it’s actually traumatic and damaging for a significant number of students, I don’t think I got through to most of them. :(
Traumatic is the right word for my experience.
I agree! I found PE really horrible too, mostly because I wasn't "sporty" and was a bit chubby so not only were my classmates more likely to leave me out of their team or make snarky comments, but the teachers were also really patronising. I think they were going for encouraging rather than patronising, but it came across as very fake because they didn't speak to me with the same respect and intelligence as the sporty people. For that reason, I grew up thinking I hated sport and exercise. Turns out, I absolutely love sport and exercise and I'm incredibly active now I'm in my mid-20s. I sometimes wish I could become a PE teacher just to be the kind of PE teacher that I never had growing up.
I also know of the curriculum of pe teaching trainees (in Germany). They learn to put students into categories like shy Emma and lazy Paul and how to basically shame them into running or jumping or doing whatever stupid exercise was to be endured that particular lesson. At uni, I always found that the p.e. Trainees were a lot less knowledgeable about pedagogy and nobody cared, really.
But I also found that speaking to those trainees about how p.e. was traumatising was like talking to a wall. I think schools (or universities when choosing students) should not focus on pe teachers being sporty (why anyway? They're not competing at the Olympics, they're supposed to teach!) and instead hire/admit those who found their love for sports despite being disadvantaged or having a shit teacher at school. But honestly, I just think pe should be completely dropped. Instead, have children really learn to play sports WITHOUT GRADING THEM
Yes! I hated PE, but I think if they'd have been so much better if they'd have reframed it for the kids that didn't enjoy it!
I 100% agree, and I was actually lucky enough that my last year of high school i had a couple days a semester where we did get to choose what we wanted to do for gym individually and it was everyone’s favorite day, the typically “bad” at PE kids got to have more choice and control and the typically competetive and “good kids just banded together and had a good time too. I really think that having most PE days, if we have to have PE at all, be like that would work sooooo much better and have happier kids with way better relationships with moving their bodies.
I really like your idea of restructuring PE to have it not be competitive and instead be focused on what the student is interested in learning about. I would have really liked PE more in school if it had been that way. Also I want to ban the practice of picking two people from the class and having them pick people one by one to be on their team. Being picked last or next to last, and on a regular basis, really lowered my self-esteem back then.
I literally didn't even know that happened in real life. I thought it was just a movie/tv show cliche. We were always just divided by subgroups by the coaches and we stuck with them for the whole year or semester, and that would be our team for every game.
I guess I was lucky.
Edit: Actually I remember three occasions where were did choose our own teams in 6th grade and 8th grade. One time it was for a jump roping unit we had where we get into teams and do a jump rope routine (which was actually pretty fun, but I'd understand why some of the less athletic kids wouldn't have liked it) and twice for our dance unit for the end of the year, which was basically like the jump roping routine thing but for dance. I don't recall any other times though. However, it wasn't in the cliched "each team takes turns picking one person at until we pick the last person" sort of way. It was just that we go into groups the normal way.
@@mynameisreallycool1 my teachers only did that for volleyball (which I hated from how overly competitive my teammates were). But besides that, what op described is true
Imo, pe should be dodgeball. Like the whole time. Nothing else.
Same, I was always picked last or almost last, the worst part is that I used to love sports such as soccer but always being picked last and being laughed at by my classmates just eventually completely killed my enthusiasm. One particular event I remember from high school (the fact that I remember it to this day goes to show how shitty it felt) was that I was playing in a soccer tournament in my school, and I heard someone from the opposing team say "Oh, [my name] is in their team? We don't even need to play then, easy win" and I just felt like crap, so much so that I never played competitive soccer with kids my age anymore, I started playing with people one or two grades below me and surprisingly I actually fit in with them way better, they were a lot nicer and less toxic too.
Gah sorry for this random rant, I just had this locked in my chest for so long ;-;
TheGeladoo TheGeladoo I’m so sorry this happened to you. 😢 I’m glad you picked different people to play with who were much nicer.
"It's much more character building to be bullied for what you've chosen to wear rather than what you've been forced to wear" Holy shit this is such a good point, wish I'd thought of that in the endless school uniform debates they used to make us do
Seriously, how many times did we have to debate school uniforms in a classroom, knowing that whatever we said didn't matter because it's not like the teacher or school would consider what we say seriously and change things?!
I'm just realising how that sets us up for a life sharing opinions passionately but passively on social media, instead of campaigning to the people with authority and working with them towards real change.
I'm a teacher. I brought this up to my principal. He said kids will become addicts if they don't. He wasn't joking
@@Kaybye555 dafuq :D
Except of course that for lots of kids they don't choose their clothes either
When you're still young it's your parents and whatever they can afford to buy you either way.
Poor people don't choose what they want to wear. They wear what they can.
One of my primary school teachers told my mom at a parent teach conference that I ask a lot of questions and my mom's response was "Isn't that what she's supposed to do?". Yeah, some teachers aren't fit to decide who the problematic vs bright students are.
The « gifted and talented » group is just as damaging to the kids that are « gifted and talented ». I was in that group and it screwed up a lot.
I too was in this group for the majority of my school years. We were constantly told we were “Guinea pigs” as they tested new teaching methods on us. Being placed in this class did give me cool opportunities... but it also gave me poor motivation as I had the mindset that I was already at the top so why try. This really messed me up when it came to university
I think the main thing is that so many people are wrongly placed in gifted classes. Gifted students are actually closer in behavior and needs to autistic students and deal with oversensibilities that they need help with. However, people/parents/teachers make it a little gold star if you're gifted.
Imagine getting placed in special classes for dyslexia, autism, etc and not actually needing it! That would definetly mess a lot of people up because the student doesn't get what they need in that class.
I don't think the answer is removing classes that people need, but actually educating teachers on what it means
Yeah being a kid that was seen as gifted meant I never tried I thought I'd already made it and I even already knew Latin before I entered school so school literally held me back because they didn't know what to do with me. Get to my A-levels, I start dropping grades left right and centre and I'm depressed until 21 because I have no idea how to apply myself at uni (amongst other things).
As a gifted and talented kid in elementary I passed everything easy, but when it came to middle, school hit me like a train. I'm now in GT 2.0 called IB
@@naenee6012 lol never heard anyone call IB gifted and talented 2.0. I wanted to do that but I didn't get to cos I ended up somewhere where they didn't offer it.
"We learned about [...] WWII a bazillion times"
*maniacal German laughter* Oh you sweet innocent thing YOU KNOW NOTHING
As a Dutch citizen I can only agree. So much WW2
for us in the US it's always the revolutionary war and ww2. we focus on those things too much. the only reason i knew anything else about history before i hit high school was because i was an avid reader and read everything i could
I swear we talked about that war alone for like 3 years and yes I'm German too.
Every. Single. Year. Since grade 7 (?) every year it was a topic at least once. Not only in history. Also in subjects like german, art, politics, etc. Obviously I'm German as well
Tbf the amount of times I've gone over the Cold War in the US... lmao
As you pointed out, school can also be genuinely awful for neurodivergent kids - not having any escape from bad sensory experiences, being punished for a lack of attention, being punished for asking sincere questions which they view as talking back, etc. I relate a lot to what you said about being so tired after school that you just wanted to sleep - school entailed so much more work for me than most kids and at upper school it was just exhausting. Teachers often know almost nothing about neurodiversity and often what they do know is stereotypes and research that has since been proved wrong, so they can't help undiagnosed kids towards a diagnosis, or help the kids who have been diagnosed in meaningful ways. Also fun fact my first middle school based the grades partially off postcode. love that
I almost failed PE bc I had so little attendance, my teacher told me she couldn't grade me since she literally only saw me like 4 times per semester (lol😂). But of course, I was just a lazy teenager, not a kid with a severe undiagnosed and unmedicated mental illness who could barely function anymore 🤷♀️
One of my friends who has ADHD once said that being neurodivergent or mentally ill in school will traumatize you
I had such a similar experience, I used to have to take a nap after school everyday becuase going to that school with autism was just exhausting. Then after that I had to all the homework on top meaning most nights I didn't stop working till about 2 am. My school just had so little understanding of neurodiversity, a few small changes could of helped me massively. At least is nice to know I am not alone in this experience, thank you for sharing.
I wasn’t allowed in the “talented” program because I couldn’t focus. That was their words but decided I couldn’t have ADHD because I wasn’t failing. I wasn’t impulsive enough. Even when I got my diagnosis, I was told I couldn’t use those “special accommodations” unless I was failing. The worst thing for me was learning that asking for help with my mental illness was failure. That my A+ plus days are me being neuro-typical and only when I was failing could I pull out “I have ADHD and need accommodations.” I went all through life trying my best to not use my medicine or ADHD tips since I thought it would label me a failure.
The good news is that graduate programs for teachers are spending a lot more time on neurodiversity than they used to (at least in the USA). Different learning styles were discussed in almost all of my classes. My class on learning disabilities taught us about the history of disability law, the ADA, how to write an IEP, and even apps and websites that can help kids with specific issues.
Somehow, despite being autistic and only getting a diagnosis for it at age 25, I don't remember ever having much trouble in school and actually being something of a teacher's pet in a lot of subjects...
*University,* however, hoo boy. I mean I did a language study that actually worked out well for me because I was genuinely interested, but last year I tried to go back to uni for a different degree that might help me get the kind of job I actually wanted (something within movie production) and there I just crashed *HARD* because I simply *could not* keep up with all the theory and the analysis of stuff and the thousands of pages of curriculum they *demanded* that we read... I did not even last one full semester. Halfway through it the stress was already entirely too much for me and I just gave up.
...Then again I guess Aspergers is decidedly different from ADHD and such things in that regard.
Me and my friends were talking the other day about how WEIRD it was that we couldn't just go to the bathroom and that we couldn't eat or drink in class. Looking back now, they were literally breaking human rights and letting students go dehydrated and with low sugar levels.
I only got after school detention once and I didn't have to go to it because my mum rang up saying "I'm a full time worker and a single mother. If you want to give her detention, bring her home yourself." (Because I took the school bus so if I had After School I would have no way of getting home). And they cancelled my detention because they were not willing to take me to my house afterwards 🤭
I actually can't relate to quite a few of these points. So I guess I got lucky at my school.
I’m doing remote learning and some of them aren’t allowing me to eat IN MY OWN HOME
This one has always shocked and horrified me too. We were never allowed to bring water bottles into class unless we had a doctor’s note saying that we were sick enough to need it. Like... what the hell? Everyone needs to be hydrated in order to be healthy in the first place, and there wasn’t really ever enough time to get a decent drink from the fountain between classes either. And don’t even get me started on how messed up it is for a teacher to tell a student that they can’t go to the bathroom yet “because reasons.”
@@bird-of-hermes3385 same!! we had that dumb water bottle rule which was so harmful to us
That's crazy! I'm a Primary School teacher (in Australia) and I always insist students bring water bottles to school and keep them on their desks- I also always allow them to go to the bathroom haha I know it seems silly and annoying that students still need to ask, but it's all due to Health and Safety regulations, in order to keep track of where everyone is. It's hard managing a class of 25-30 students under the age of 10.
@@brownoxfords9661 you are an amazing teacher then!! most teachers in America would not allow that :
School is a hellscape meant to discipline you into being a perfect factory-working robot. Learning is not its purpose- in fact, the information taught is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is that you do EXACTLY as you're told and repress any and all social feelings and human necessities as much as physically possible for an extended amount of time. It was LITERALLY created as extended training for working at a factory, and in modern times, it has developed into its own factory of suicide, a system that encourages and perpetuates bullying. Nothing about the school system is even remotely okay, not only morally but also biologically, and the modern schooling system should be scrapped entirely, and replaced with an entirely new system of teaching, that ACTUALLY cares about helping children develop and grow and learn.
Is there a way to give a comment 10,000 likes?
Sadly people tend to stick to tradition regardless of if it's ethical or not and they have had 100 years of brainwashing for students. Now we don't even question or try to change it's just "well that's just the way it is."
100% agree and have been advocating for abolishment of the current horrific and abusive school system since i was in grade 4!
What kind of factory work do you do?
the subtle ableism. I had been cornered by two teachers, literally put against a wall in a corridor during class, because i wore a hoodie. I wanted to be left alone that day as I hadn’t slept in two days and was so sensitive to stimuli, especially light and noise, so I tried to make my field of vision smaller with a hood and I wouldn’t talk to anyone. I had a male teacher raising his voice at me, making aggressive/stern/angry facial expressions at me and mocking me for how I responded to this confrontation. He yelled at me for not responding to his rhetorical questions and then when I did respond, in a defensive/snappy manner, he yelled at me more and mocked me for being emotional. I quote, ‘you clearly aren’t ready to have a mature, adult conversation’, as an autistic 14 year old with anxiety who was feeling quite literally threatened and vulnerable in that situation, I knew I didn’t OWE anyone a ‘mature, adult conversation’, so I got extremely aggravated and cussed him out before storming off.
What is it with adults trying to force children to mature so quickly, yet when we take interest in ‘adult’ topics, they want to infantilise us again?
Either way, I later got moved to a college for ‘gifted children’ where there was no uniform, school started at ten instead of nine, they celebrated holidays with themed lessons and costume days, the classes had no more than seven students at most, you called the teachers by their first names, phones were allowed and you could listen to music during class etc etc etc. I do so much better there and made friends who were similar to me, my mental and physical health improved extraordinarily, I started engaging in lessons and even began learning things at home of my own volition. In conclusion, I was given extreme freedom and privileges in my education for the simple fact that I ‘had potential’
You had school at 9am? Where the hell do you live and how can all of the U.S. get there?
Where do live??? The school sounds awesome :'(
@@azurequeen_of_doggos6976 england, its a very difficult college to get into and i'm very grateful I was given the opportunity. the course is usually only offered to students with severe mental illness or disabilities who struggle to attend public school but the staff still deem intelligent and worthy of extra help. its quite expensive for schools to send just one student to the college so the classes are small and most students dont attend a full 5 days a week. there are never more than 8 students in my class and we do all the standard lessons alongside enterprise, cooking and arts and crafts. the college also has connections to organisations for mentally ill/troubled or disabled youth and a lot of the staff are lgbtq themselves or lgbtq inclusive. i think the college sets a perfect example of what more schools can and should be offering their students :)
I understand the logic behind uniforms but it's kind of pointless because once you leave school and move on to college/work etc. you're going to be choosing your own clothes...and people can still wear flashy brands as adults. Teaching kids to express themselves through clothes at a young age is important
Agreed! I realized when I got to college I had no idea what my personal style is other than throwing on a t-shirt or hoodie and leggings or jeans. I had to wear a uniform all through high school
I also feel like the whole rewarding good behaviour of not talking back was very negative for me as an adult. I was a quiet kid and it made me not practice speaking out loud when I had a different point of view. It made me learn to stick around when I disagreed with what was going on and that has so many negative consequences for adults. It’s only now that I have actually been practicing and feeling comfortable with sharing my disagreement out loud and I so wish I could have practiced this before my 30’s.
Yeah like I don’t understand why adults think they’re above conversing with kids.
Wow, I think I had this problem to, but I hadn't considered it until now.
Yes!! Living in a very conservative part of Florida, I had to deal with teachers CONSTANTLY spewing crazy conservative shit and would be reprimanded for speaking up. Now, as an adult, I'm having to teach myself that I don't have to keep quiet when I disagree with someone, nor do I have to stick around and listen to crazy talk every day.
I have this deep ingrained anxiety of talking to adults and authority and I can't feel sure about my own opinions since regurgitating my teachers opinions is all I've ever known. (Also protip for students - if you want to get good grades, listen in class and regurgitate your teachers opinions, they drop so many hints as to what will be tested.)
@@samf8405 same but teacher yelled liberal shite
Another thing to add, in my school we weren't even allowed go to the toilet during lessons, you could ask but they would usually tell you no. You also had to ask to have a drink from your water bottle or to take off your jumper in the summer. I went to a public school that was rates 'good' by offsted, these are the standards of a 'good' school in the UK and personally I think it's disgusting
This was me at primary school with a specific teacher. I managed to get around it though by just saying I wasn't feeling well or had a stomach ache. Then she would let me go to the toilet!
We should start pissing in class and create a revolution
@Chloe Valentine That is horrible and unfair.
I'm glad my school wasn't mostly like that, except one time when a substitute wouldn't let a student go.
Didn't make any sense, given he needed to go, she wasn't teaching anything.
Its the same for america
My mom straight up said this the other day after I told her about our experience - she said - "the satanic education system has destroyed all of the childrens' minds and wellbeing"
I grew up being treated as a "gifted kid" and it completely destroyed my mental health. I often associate my grades with personal value and have a really hard time at failing things. You can't succeed/grow without failing and this is something I'm working to accept more. I can't even imagine how kids that doesn't get good grades often feel about how others treat them, considering that many of them could do amazing things if they had a system that works for them.
I wish you'd have mentioned how you get praised for sitting quietly in school. But just sitting quietly at work doesn't get u anywhere. Nobody wants to work with the boring quiet person. They want to fun, charismatic person. That is who gets all the opportunities and promotions. I do have a fun, & interesting side, but I'm so shy as a result of seeing kids getting yelled at everyday for talking.
We had ‘gifted and talented’ at my school - but it literally didn’t involve anything. Like no different lessons or tutoring or anything. Nothing. So we were basically told some kids were ‘gifted and talented’ and some weren’t and that was it. So weird.
We had it at mine as well. For elementary school meant leaving the class for an hour a couple times a week to do extra enrichment work with a teacher hired for that purpose, and it was mainly a way to let the students who were more mathematically inclined pursue that in peace (especially for the girls). For high school it was basically a class offered as alternative to home ec that involved us doing self-directed projects.
we had a once weekly meeting and we did little extra things that were just fun stuff along with a few extra opportunities. other than that, nothing different. i was apart of a small group of students who went to the next grade up for reading but that's cause we didnt have honors classes in elementary school, but that wasn't apart of the gifted program. i just was an insanely good student in elementary school.
Sounds like a weird social experiment.
I was a "talented" student but what it amounted to was kind of skewed. I still felt very awkward learning I was being singled out like that. We also had this Society in sixth form which was definitely training people up for Oxbridge. The teachers made a massive point of going round the whole year group with special "invitations" to the society. Apparently they'd watch University Challenge after school and discuss "deep" topics etc. I wasn't picked although I'm very pleased I wasn't. It helped made me realise just how toxic the Oxbridge environment was and got me to stop aiming so unrealistically high for getting a place.
@@TheRogueDM I remember feeling awkward as well - especially as some of my friends were picked but others weren’t. That ‘special invitation’ society sounds so messed up as well. It baffles me that schools want to give high performing students more teaching and support than other students who might benefit from it just as much, if not more. I know there’s usually support in place for students who really struggle - but what about the bunch in the middle? Surely they should be given the chance to excel too? I feel like if they’re going to offer anything oxbridge-focused or extra tutoring then it should be open to anyone who wants the extra challenge.
The class divide in schools in the 21st century:
- what PHONE you have (this is a massive one, I got teased for not having an iPhone)
- what sports shoes you wear (gotta be Nike kids!)
- not sure if this is a thing in other countries but in Australia, we have Bring Your Own Device policies which is like bring in your laptop/tablet to assist in learning
- how you get to/from school
and I could go on!
Bruh we weren't even allowed to bring computers or devices to school until high school for me, and I only graduated HS in 2019. American here.
Flippin highlights. If you had highlights then you were well off in it school (although almost half of the student body was under the poverty line so no one really got bullied for not being well off)
In the school I went to most people older that 14 years old generally didn't give a dime about the clothes of phone one would carry, the again, more than 90% of the student body was middle-class and a large amount of people from academic parents or farmers. Shoes were more a thing to just casually show off with or something you'd use to make conversation. The students that were under or on the poverty line could be counted on one/two hand(s). Bullying did happen, but was surprisingly indiscriminate of wealth and materialistic stuffs. (as you know, basically everyone was able to afford good looking clothes, but we had a non-uniform policy with still strict regulations regarding lengths of skirts, prints, jewellery and make-up ==> (American/Japanese/bands or artists)Brand clothes are basically almost always not accepted) (==> no ac/dc shirts to find fellow fans of your genre)
Cheating in relationships, sexting mistakes, being a dick/pretentious person or just general violence(ADHD/ violent autism) were the main causes of bullying.
One of the divides that was most prominent is the divide between students using their bicycle or public transport. One meant that you were able to cram in the morning on the bus, the other meant getting wet/dirty in the rain and having to do more work at home. (though this divide was only really a problem in the first two years to find people to get along with, as birds of a feather flock together.)
Oh, and this is in a Belgian school just FYI. (politics is a mess here, but schools are fine I guess)
BYOD is so useful in school but it’s also not because what if you don’t have a device?? My school provided laptops to certain students but I don’t know the criteria and not every school can provide devices to students without them.
i got bullied for wearing sketchers by my “friends” in 9th grade...when they cost the same as nikes :( they were cute literally just had the sketchers logo. still makes me sad to think about
Paused to immediately take the Factfulness quiz. Was quite cynical and got almost every answer wrong lmao
Omg sameeee. I automatically assumed that every answer would be the worst possible option lol.
It's SO GOOD. I've been memorising the facts and then being * that person * when there's a lull in conversation. 'Hey, what would you say is the average....'
hi tiffany!! love that you watch leena's videos too!
When Leena talked about “gifted” students I immediately thought of Tiffany’s “Previously Gifted” thing she does! So wild to see her comment after my brain made that connection. This makes me also think of one of the first things that made me love sociology, our teacher made us learn and think about that whole thing of dividing kids into gifted and not gifted students. She helped me realize the bias that goes behind it, she also tied in race with that study of that one teacher that taught kids how bias works with race (I can’t remember her name, but I think it’s Jane something). And you’re so right, some kids would do extremely well if they didn’t have all the outside factors of home life and each person having different socioeconomic stressors.
I read this comment thread before taking the quiz so I guess I knew I couldn't be too cynical and got 61% right hahaha, kind of tempted to do this quiz with my Year 10 class during form time to see how they view the world
What bothers me really is when teachers would put you in groups with people you either specifically requested *not* to be in with or that the teacher knew you disliked for whatever reason (whether it may be just them never doing their part or just straight up bullying) bc "you won't be able to choose who to work with at work in the future". Like, bro what? WTF.
Also our school having you require a laptop/tablet and ms office with out providing any of those in order to (successfully) attend grade 11-13 and graduate (I live in Germany btw)
I'm a teacher and I stopped giving homework years ago. Studies show that homework doesn't work to help kids learn. So totally agree about homework. But I have so many parents ask about homework. Our school does uniforms so we can get funding etc. But I was listening to the spiel of the lady selling the uniform and man they are shady snake oil salesmen. "No Karen I can't see the superior stitching because that isn't superior stitching." We got rid of the classroom switching etc and yeah it made a huge difference. Besides switching to lots of different subjects makes students generalist instead of letting kids be experts in something they are passionate about. One of the best students in my class is literally doing only things related to art. I really enjoyed this video and you are spot on. And schools are changing but we get a lot of flack from people because change scares them. I wish they could watch this.
I wish I could have gone to your school. Just reading that made me want to learn.
I saw in a meme that homework was actually imvented by an Italian teacher as a PUNISHMENT.
I'd be worried about the kid doing only art because they wouldn't be learning other "important" things like biology... learning biology is good for being able to weed out misinformation about health as an adult in the modern social media world. Also, being able to use logic is good... I imagine math would be the closest to teaching that, but perhaps we should just have a logic class. And a human body / health / biology class instead of the standard bio.
Some hope for change. Still vast things need overhaul or school remains evil horrific and corrupt.
I don't know about younger kids, but homework for 13+ is a great way to encourage kids to do the right sort of revision in their own time and prepare them for future studies/managing work. I don't think kids should be punished for not doing it, but do think the importance of independent learning (even just giving something a go) for absorbing information (and sadly passing exams) shouldn't be ignored. I think the real question should be why are we presenting learning cool things in a way that makes inherently curious and smart kids hate that journey? Probably more of a problem?
Some other things that might be purely American:
-school lunches. Uniforms are very uncommon here, and while clothes are a point of class divide the thing I had the most trouble with was lunch. The rich kids could afford the extra things, the ice cream bars and the better drinks, double servings of the one good thing on the menu, etc. Or they brought their lunch, but it was super fancy. Not quite Claire in the breakfast club level most of the time. But like that. Middle class kids just ate the regular lunch, but us poor kids had a couple options. You were either on free lunch, which was handled differently by the lunch day ringing you out so everyone knew, you brought your lunch but it wasn't the glamorous shit the rich kids had so everyone made fun of you, or you just gambled on whether or not your mom put more money in your lunch account or not. If you lost this bet and shit didn't, once you got to the til the lunch lady would make a HUGE scene about how you should have known better, makes you throw the entire tray of food away, and hands you a sandwich that consists ONLY of white bread and American cheese. That's it, thats your whole lunch. Couple that with the fact that breakfast at school usually cost extra, IF your bus got you there early enough for it, and a lot of us didn't have breakfast or dinner at home, that cheese sandwich could be your only food for the day. And you could feel the rich kids mocking you with every bite.
-college. Everything is about college, college, college. Every choice you make for your entire childhood is supposed to get you into a good college. Gotta take those honors and ap classes, gotta get perfect attendance (another grievance on its own), gotta get into those extra curriculars, gotta already know what you're gonna be for the rest of your life at the age of 14. And its always college and never trade school. People here look down on plumbers, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, etc but they're SO important and actually make really good money. But every kid is pressured to get an office job, be a doctor, you can do better than that. Its so toxic.
-home ec, woodshed, autoshop, etc, all classes that teach you basic life skills, and would breed an interest in trade jobs, are GONE
-attendance. You're expected to come to school every. Single. Day. Whether you're sick or not. I remember in idk maybe 6th grade this girl getting an award in front of the entire school for NEVER missing a day since kindergarten. I highly doubt that girl never once caught a cold and brought it to infect her classmates. Couple that with whats happening now... yikes.
I'm sure I'll think of more but this is already really long and no one will read it so tldr: burn it to the ground, start over
Edit: I thought of another thing. The real thing we have instead of uniforms. Dress codes. Oh my god dress codes. Where a 5th graders shoulders are too sexual to be seen, you get written up if your bra strap falls down and can be seen, all skirts or shirts have to be finger tip length even if you had a huge growth spurt that year and haven't had new clothes bought for you yet, where if your jeans have holes in them you're committing a Sin. I had a friend who got sent down there multiple times a week cuz she had 3 pairs of jeans and 2 of them had holes from being worn for so long. Basically every rule was geared towars girls.
When I switched schools, I wasn't allowed to dye my hair weird colors because The Sout, and the new one allowed you. There was this punk guy and his hair went from ginger to blue and I commented to him on it like "whoa they let you do that here?" And the next week when I turned up with purple hair the 2 punk girls he hung out with decided they had to bully me for the rest of my time there, existing in the same net of friend groups, because I was a "poser." All because I found out the dress code was different.
Some schools had a "no pajamas" rule, that wasn't enforced if you were a popular sport team girl wearing your school sweater pants to class, but if you wore the SAME STYLE of sweat pants with a cartoon character instead of the school logo as a poor kid who wasn't on a sports team you got sent to the office.
Okay, yes, thank you. From Canada, but functionally identical w.r.t. your comments, and holy shit were dress codes a nightmare (and I'm a man, so it was way easier to avoid running afoul of them). I was trying to remember writing another comment here why discussions about uniforms kept popping up like weeds, and it was in large part because of difficulty navigating dress codes, which were in place since I guess they figured teenage girls were all exhibitionists or something. I know there were excuses made about "distracting the boys", but I was a teenage boy once, and even in that testosterone-addled state I could focus around the girls wearing spaghetti straps. Sure, for a short while I'd be a little distracted, but after 10-15 minutes teenage me got used to it and stopped really thinking about it. I only gave a shit as much as shit was given by rules or teachers or anyone else acting like there was something wrong.
As for College/University vs trade school, I saw a shift in emphasis following the 2008 crash, but by that point I was 2nd year at uni, so my highschool experience was very much about grades and university. Granted, I also live in an area with a huge amount of residential construction, so there's a more direct path for a trades career here.
I’m genuinely very happy my lunch ladies gave me lunch even when I was in debt
American schools are so wild. I probably wouldn't survive if attendance was important like that at my school. I suffer from chronic migraines and have an 80% attendance at best.
The "cheese sandwich" was BULLSHIT, yes, in a sense it's better than starving but like, couldn't they have at least heated it up and melted the cheese to make it a grilled cheese?
Omigod yes so true. My school had woodshop, metal shop, and home ec classes, however, there was a very clear gendering of them. The shop classes (and similar trade classes) were considered good to have on transcripts, with some having AP or higher level versions. The sewing and cooking classes, aka the ones our society deems feminine, were considered "easy" classes that you take to fulfill a credit and usually had teachers who weren't kind or very helpful towards students.
I wanna talk about how, because I was quite academic and performed well in most subjects, teachers totally overlooked the fact I was actually having issues because my grades never suffered. This was despite me being known to the school as a 'looked after child' with teachers having to provide a report for my social worker for my care review meetings.
From about year 9 onwards, I was basically either drunk or high for most of high school, I'm not talking, teehee I had a WKD on break, I'm talking I used to bring in straight whiskey in an apple juice bottle and drink it throughout the day.
I was drunk for all of my Year 9 SAT exams and I came out in the top 5% of the year group. Not sure if that's a good reflection on me or a bad reflection on the rest of my year group, but it meant that as long as I kept turning in work that was good enough, nobody bothered to notice or challenge anything I did (smoking on school grounds, skipping classes, selling pirated porn dvds, defacing my uniform, swearing, amongst other things, as well as, you know, being obviously drunk/high) or consider that maybe I needed support.
One thing I *did* get pulled aside for:
I had a French assignment 'write an essay, in French, about what you did last weekend', to then be marked by the person you sat next to. I hated my French teacher, he hated me and my friends. He made French tres ennuyeux. Because French was boring and I knew my best friend would be marking my work and she'd find it funny, I wrote a fictional essay about how I'd been to a Greenday concert and afterwards got invited backstage and hung out with Billie Joe and now we were dating. It wasn't explicit, I didn't write about us having sex or anything, I think it was like, Billie Joe is very cute, he asked me on a date and now he is my boyfriend' type thing.
I got pulled out of class the next day by my head of year, who sat me down and stated 'A few of the teachers have expressed concerns about your sexuality'.
I challenged it and the head of year asked me 'Well, who is Billie Joe?'. My french teacher had shopped me in over the assignment I'd written and because he's a fucking idiot, didn't even realise (or bother to check) that the lead singer of the very popular band Greenday, was, in fact, a dude. I called him out and stated that even if I was gay, I don't see why that would be a concern of his or any of the staff as it's my personal business and has nothing to do with school and that actually pulling me out of class to ask me about it was discrimination. Head of year didn't have a response, muttered something about offering support, I stated that if I wanted to talk to someone about my sexuality, a male teacher is probably the last person I'd want to talk to about it, he fumbled some more, said it didn't need to go any further and dismissed me.
So, to summarise:
Being drunk - noone notices or cares
Being potentially gay because your teachers don't know the lead singer of Green Day is a fucking dude - get pulled aside and confronted about it, by a male staff member, within 24 hours.
Same! I was getting smashed in the morning before school for years and was homeless year 11 - 12 as well. No one took it seriously at all because my grades usually the highest in class. Everytime I tried to ask for help I was brushed off. I kept getting in trouble for only wearing the sports uniform and not the formal but it was because you would get detention if the formal wasn't nicely ironed and I didnt have a fucking iron cause I was fucking homeless. I'd get in trouble for charging devices at school but once again I didnt have anywhere else to do that. If you tried to explain peoples eyes would just glaze over.
That is so wild. I hope things got better for you
EXACTLY. PEOPLE ARE DEALING DRUGS, SMOKING, BULLYING OTHERS, AND BEING HOMOPHOBIC AND RACIST, ETC AND THE SCHOOL DONT DO NOTHING. THEY TURN A BLIND EYE TO IT. BUT SOMEONE CHEWS GUM OR DOESNT DO THEIR HOMEWORK, WE GET IN SO MUCH SHIT LIKE HOW THE RUCK DOES THAT MAKE SENSE
As a teacher we cant assume anything. We wait until you speak up because it causes misunderstandings if we assume. Some misunderstandings are racist and all I got to say about that is I'm sorry you had that experience. Not all teachers are the same.
@@snowvampire101 I was known tot he school as a looked after child. A member of staff even used to attend my 6 monthly care reviews. They knew I was troubled, they chose not to acknowledge it because my grades were good and the school was failing.
I was one of those kids that was high achieving and "always on my best behaviour" and holy shit what you said about always needing external validation was so true, and has in fact followed me into my twenties. I've started questioning why I pursue creative hobbies like writing and painting. Do these things actually bring me joy, or am I attached to the praise I got from my teachers, or the top mark I got in class.
When a teacher is nice to you and you pretend you got PTSD from it a decade later.
@@WhaleManMan what
@@WhaleManMan Do everyone a favour and delete your reply
I have the exact opposite problem, I was never encouraged in anything in school, never given validatin for anything, so now that I'm out looking for careers or hobbies I'm so scared to be told I'm not good at it that I'd rather not try anything at all.
@@prettylittlewords7162 That's completely valid. Seems as though school can create a dependency on external validation either way. I know this may not mean much, but I really hope you find a pathway that brings you joy
I love how most people are writing full paragraphs.
why do kids get detention for being late to school... I'm still here and ur just gonna make me not wanna go if I'm ever late
straight up going from secondary school to college, that's exactly what happened
i don't go to class if i'm late anymore because of the instant anxiety from getting in trouble
i find detention so weird...in argentina that doesnt exist, the idea of staying extra hours in school as a punishment is cruel
It really sucks when the reason you are late is something you can control. I took the bus to school every day, and my bus was very unpredictable (because stuff happens). It was suppose to come every 15 minutes, but sometimes you wouldn't see a bus for an hour, then three buses would come at the same time.
Now couple that with the fact that I also had to take my younger sister to school every morning did not help. It was a 25 minute bus ride to her school, then a 15 minute bus ride back to my school. Wait time would vary, but on average, it took me an hour to get to school.
I would normally get to school just five minutes before class started, but then one day, the school decided to change their schedule and start 10 minutes earlier. This obviously sucked because now I had to leave the house much earlier, pray to God my bus would come on time, drop my sister off at her empty school (because she'd end up arriving at school before the campus even opened), and pray to God again that my next bus would come on time, all to get to class earlier and avoid detention.
And I still got a lot of tardies!
Exactly! Students at my school in america get more punished for being late than missing class entirely, so honestly if u wake up late, just dont show up at all.
I got detention for forgetting to have a test signed three times in a row, even though I got perfect scores on the test. My parents were flaky and never home, so fun rule :)
God, I hate that. Both of my parents have been retired for a long time but I had friends with single parents who worked and just busy parents in general, it's so stupid to put that on a kid
I once got detention for asking a teacher to re-explain a project cause I didn't understand
I got a warning/infraction for not getting my agenda signed during the 1st week of school for basically the same reason 🧍♀️
My uni: work life balance is important
Also my uni: gives so much work it’s impossible to have a work life balace and forgets that we also need time to like, cook, do the dishes, do laundry
My uni: You need to understand that some of the students you're teaching come from disadvantaged backgrounds
Also my uni: Why do you need to work? Ask your parents to pay your fees
Loopy Kitty This is perhaps one of my biggest gripes with universities. I did a drama and performance degree which meant all our modules, except written modules, were group projects aka performances of some kind. This meant we had to arrange rehearsals amongst ourselves but when almost everyone in the group has a job this is nearly impossible and you’re lucky if you can manage a 3 hour rehearsal once a week. My university would also do random lectures and we’d be notified maybe a week before, 2 if we were lucky, so anyone with a job would suddenly find themselves scrambling to arrange cover at work. Often this wasn’t possible and they’d have to miss the lecture but as a consequence get some nasty, condescending email about how their degree must come first. Clearly they didn’t understand that it was people’s jobs that allowed them to live and study in the first place!
My uni: gives us a 15 minute spiel during induction about maintaining our mental health during these times of * gestures broadly *
Also my uni: immediately after this assigns a project brief all about covid that will mean we are all focussing intensely on * gestures broadly * for 30-60 hours every week (depending on how "dedicated" a student you are)
@@woodnymph01 Ah that's so aggravating! I had the group project issue as well, one year we did a 4 week project with a group of 4 and the only point all 4 of us could get together was for the presentation 😅 Fortunately we were all in the same boat so we understood one another, as we had to mark eachother on how well they worked in the group
My uni: this is a really intense program. you won't have time to work a job while doing it.
Also my uni: **costs money**
How messed up is it that dress codes are so strict and send girls out for bra straps or showing shoulders or high socks etc but the things they make you wear are actually pretty dodgy too.
Ours was a white shirt that was slightly see through, definitely don't want anyone spilling water on you,
A skirt that was probably a bit too short (quite above the knee) etc.
But sooo much trouble for the most basic of things.
Oh my god yes. I'm in school right now and the P.E. uniform for girls has a skirt so short that school is now making us wear leggings beneath it
@@angelinaelchammas2506 what?? PE has a SKIRT?? why? like a skort or tennis skirt?
@@natpat4094 It's a skort, just a skirt with tiny little shorts attached to the bottom of it. It's insanely short too
No! The Men™️ can never know that we have boobs! They are a Sin, and must never even be hinted at!
*insert more sarcasm here*
@Sahana Collins ikr
I can confidently say that school is partially responsible for my social anxiety. I developed a fear of teachers, authority figures, and generally anyone older than me after a substitute teacher screamed in my face for five minutes straight after getting up to throw away a tissue in the first grade. She freaked out, saying that she had told everyone the day before not to get up under any circumstances unless told to by her, and got even more mad when I explained to her that I had been out sick the day before. What teacher, substitute or not, tells a seven year old that its their fault for not asking their friends about the substitute teacher's new rules before they came to school, and accuses them of skipping school because they were lazy.
Smh abuse of power. I swear some people take these jobs do they can power trip in kids.
Yep! This one science teacher had this whole "out to get me specifically" thing to the point where I've been out of school for 6 yrs and I only had her for 1 school year and I'm STILL dealing with the consequences of the trauma she put me through. I burst into tears when my superiors correct or question me, which frustrates them, and me! I don't want to react like a toddler being told NO, but I'm still mentally/emotionally stuck in being 15 and hiding under a table having a panic attack bc the teacher my mother threatened with a lawsuit to never speak to me again came into my new classroom to "speak to me privately".
I hate it! I was a good kid, I was a chatterbox but I did the work, liked the subject, engaged with the lesson, and always had my equipment! I never skipped a lesson ! Why did she need to have beef with me like I was sleeping with her husband ? I was a child!
I had the same fear of authority triggered by my fourth grade teacher who screamed at me when I started crying because I had to write an extended response. I cried every time those two words were even brought up, and he was usually very nice about it but one day he just snapped. looking back on it now, I just wonder why no one sent me to a guidance counselor or anything. I had a fear of failure and am bad with time constraints, but I had to figure that out myself instead of the adults doing anything about the 8 year old with a clear anxiety disorder
"imagine telling kids not to come out or they'll be bullied" I don't need to imagine, teachers and schools do that. Happened to me once, to my friend Rosa who was being bullied anyway and was told by her head of year "well I'm Christian so I don't believe in being gay" and "I'm straight, I don't have to come out, you don't either, it'll make both of our lives easier if you don't". When it happened to me it was a more general thing of "no need to push your views on to other people!" after I'd gotten in to an argument with both students and a teacher about how being gay is not a choice. This also happens with race with the dumb hair restrictions that target black people specifically.
That's terrible, I'm so sorry D:
Also, don't put 30 kids in one classroom, 15-20 is acceptable
On that note, don't dismiss teachers when intakes are smaller - reduce the class sizes. The intakes will increase again in time.
Im 17 but one thing I've been thinging about recently is how ablelist attendance and attendance rewards are!
Since my sister was born I've always thought about how it's such a shame that she'll never have the chance to receive an attendance reward for being in school ever day of the term. She has Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and because of this she often misses school for appointments or sometimes just a bad CF belly day. No matter how passionate she is about school or how much she wants to be in she'll be punished by way of no reward for her condition!
This promotes such a terrible mindset to push through illness to come in and to punish those who can't push through. Not only is this bad for mental health and risks spreading illness to others, it creates so much unnecessary pressure. I remember feeling ill one night but trying to ignore it and make myself better but i couldnt and i threw up. I remember crying for so long, not because it was horrible but because i had ruined my perfect attendance I'd had since year 7. If that's the way it made me feel, there is no way that pressure isn't damaging to others especially disabled students or students struggling with mental health!
Totally agree with this!
Rewarding attendance teaches that illness is basically a character flaw
@@r.darling4135 Yeah! it's awful!
Yes I have terrible allergies to one of the plants near my house and would get sick every single springtime. I would feel terrible for missing school, even though me not staying home or over working myself would often turn my allergies into bronchitis. One time it turned into walking pneumonia. They really make it seem like missing one day is the end of the world and that you can never catch up. It's awful to put that much pressure on kids and made me super anxious.
@@meganmahoney9270 Gosh that sucks! It's insane how devastating it can be to feel you won't be able to catch up. I remember thinking if i had to be off i would make sure I'd be off for as little time as possible so i miss too much, that pressure to get better quick and to not get ill is awful. Especially because it's something you can't help
especially when teachers dont give u extra time to make work up!! i would go to school when i was at my worst just so i wouldnt miss material
I've had a whole complex about standing up to bullies which has followed me into adult life, some teachers would tell me "Ignore them, be the bigger person and walk away" and others would say "stand up for yourself" or "if you're a bystander you stand with the bully", I've always hated confrontation and was scared of getting into trouble so I'd always let people walk over me.
Only now at 21 have I started being able to stand up for myself and set boundaries but it's still something I struggle with
That's very mixed instruction they gave you.
Some of them make sense, but it'd be good to be more consistent, or clear.
Crushing bullies is always the best course of action, all of the time. I chose the passive route and I survived lol, but I also lost my backbone and self dignity. On the day of my death bed, I will regret not living honestly and always being polite all the time. I think massive wisdom and cunning is required to know when to crush and when to fold.
ironically, your point about how communication should be taught at home just doesn't work with modern school systems. they take up majority of your day, there's no time for self-reflection and personal wellness. i'm in high school right now, and i've often found that even during online school, i just can't find a balance between self-care and school. i've really want to reflect on my own behavior and origins but i just can't because of my assigned workload that plays a part in my future apparently.
Same here
I left a strict Catholic high school for an independent artsy high school and it changed my life. We were allowed to choose activites in PA and wear whatever sporty clothes we thought was okay. We could eat and drink during class, so we could actually rest during the breaks instead of stressfully shoveling down sandwiches. I remember when our strictest teacher sought out a student and apologised to him in public for yelling at him the day before. Each student could choose a patron teacher they trusted and turn to them if they had trouble getting bullied by peers, abused by a teacher, or if they felt they were falling behind with their studies. It blew my mind and it worked incredibly well. I'm still in contact with several of my teachers. I avoid everybody from the Catholic school like the plague though.
As a former valedictorian who won my school a bunch of academic awards, the system that perpetuated academic competitiveness and constant anxiety over my academic performance directly and completely fucked me up.
I didn't have an identity or personality outside of my grades all throughout high school because constantly being praised as clever and receiving boatloads of validation for it tricked me into believing I was o my valuable because of my academic performance. And because I went to a private school my administration was monetarily invested in maintaining a toxic academic culture because the more students they could say were Top Cambridge students the more prestige they accrued.
I'm still struggling to value myself outside of academics and it's so hard because I spent all of my adolescence being told it was the only valuable thing about me and crafting an identity outside of that is so hard.
I was also a high academic achiever until I got sick and failed my AS Levels. I had to do AS and A2 in one year, and did so badly that I felt I had lost the Intelligent™ identity. Ever since then there's been a hole where Intelligent™ used to be.
Same. I'm still looking for my identity ever since I graduated. Should've spent those years knowing myself more instead of learning a bunch of shit that I don't even remember anymore
Woof what a mood. I went to a liberal arts & sciences magnet school and it seriously fucked me, and all my fellow students, up. Everyone was constantly competitive and no one really felt like a real "friend." Everyone was your competition for rank/internships/scholarships/college admissions.
The worst was bullying. Kids wouldnt bully each other in the classical sense (physical violence or commenting on your appearance/money/etc.), they would bully you for your grades & class rank. So if you got B's and C's (me!), you'd get called dumb and stupid a whole lot. It led to a lot of self-loathing and shit depression thats lasted me for years.
It took a long time for me to realize that getting B's & C's at this incredibly hard school didn't make me stupid (not to mention I had undiagnosed ADHD the entire time which def effected my grades). Its also the process of unlearning that your value/worth isn't based on grades.
Your experience is unexpectedly similar to mine in some ways even though I underachieved academically. I had almost straight Fs towards the middle of my sophomore year at the private highschool I went to. Where my experience maybe gets similar to yours is identity and self esteem. I did not feel as though school were meant to teach us anything valuable, but instead was just a factory to pump out robots whose only function was to make good grades and to be "smart." I was having a lot of undiagnosed mental health and neurological issues (ADD) that prevented me from performing at even an average level, even though I was a smart kid. I knew consciously that these standards were toxic constructs, yet the mistreatment I sometimes received due to my performance caused me to give them merit and contributed to a belief that I was worthless.
I wonder if any public schools suffer from this sort of competitiveness, or if it's just some private schools... Thank you for sharing your experience.
@@scoopitywoop I had a very similar experience where I couldn't do my GCSE years for health reasons and I completely lost my sense of self. Thank you for sharing.
My sister trained as a PE teacher and gets defensive when people tell their traumatic stories from PE. The training they get these days is apparently much better. But my concern is that the retraining doesn't reach the older generation who are still teaching
Thanks to that older generation of pe bully teachers I only got into excercice well past 26...I truly Hope your sister's gen is better at helping kids not hate phisical activity.
I'm a teacher and I'm planning to switch careers when I get to a certain age. I've seen way too many teachers who get to a point where they aren't able to change anymore and you have to change to keep up with kids. It is built into my lifelong plan. But then I also retrain constantly but I agree we should encourage retraining of older teachers.
my pe teacher was old and wrinkly and left the year i didnt have to do pe anymore... out of all my teachers, she deserves punching in the face the most
I think PE teachers didn't need A-Levels to go to teacher training college if they were going to specialise in PE at one time. Probably not even the full set of O-Levels.
I think the biggest lie we're told about school is that it's supposed to produce well rounded, responsible (and in France "republican") citizens, when I think the reality is way less utopian and way more practical. We go to school so that our parents can be free to go to work. The basic function of school is social : society needs to put children somewhere while their parents go to work.... And since schools are underfunded (as you said) and curriculums are created by people who aren't teachers or even specialists in anything relating to children's development, the current state of research or general psychology and education (at least here in France) well....... the whole thing is a bit of a shit show. There's a huge contrast between what schools and formal education say they're doing and what's actually happening within the walls of schools and universities. That's the biggest lie, at least to me
big agree
I would even go so far as to say we go to school IN ORDER to be turned into obedient workers who are not keen on self-expression and try to gove above and beyond for their company because they somehow think they'll be rewarded for that.
I'm from Mexico. I agree. It is similar here
I know a lot of people who's eating disorder started from the school nurse bmi checks in secondary
That's so unbelievably fucked. Especially since the general BMI measurement system isn't an accurate way to measure the actual healthiness of a person. I'm so, so sorry for those kids and I hope they got the help they needed.
I always hated where they would check my weight, and then call it out. I am taller than many of my classmates, and I am an athlete, so I have quote a bit of muscle. Therefore, I weighed more than my peers. It always made me so insecure.
The new P.E. teacher at my school tried to get people to weigh themselves in front of the entire class. :/
I remember dreading Sports Day every year, not because it was physically exhausting, but because, for me, it was 'Look at all these people who are more physically and athletically capable than you. Feel happy for them. They just ran faster than all the others, so you should be happy. If you're not happy about their success, you're not getting involved in the spirit of the event. You have bad sportsmanship.' Everyone made such a big deal about it, but I just found the whole ordeal miserable. I just really hated it.
Also I’ve just remembered how at school if your coloured bra could be seen through your shirt ,you had a letter sent home to buy some plain or nude ones.... Jesus Christ what was wrong with my school?
lia morrison my school did a very similar thing! when it became 'trendy' to wear neon coloured bras, the teachers caught on and all of a sudden they weren’t allowed. our student pastoral manager once gave an empty threat to us in year 8/9 if people came in wearing those kind of bras she'd instead make us wear a super itchy cotton vest instead....so bloody weird
I just had a really stark memory of it. It made me uncomfortable to think of why they insisted on it. Or indeed why teachers were ‘distracted’ by them. Sending an awful message 😓
We weren't allowed to wear a vest under our white polo shirts and they went see through when we got sweaty, so we all had to wear our thick wool jumpers in the 30ºC summers. Oh also the school raincoats weren't waterpoof but you weren't allowed to wear non-uniform ones and the woollen jumper and skirt took a full 3 days to dry and were so expensive most people only had one of each. Like what the actual fuck? Seven years later I am still grateful every day that I can wear clothing that is appropriate for the weather!
@@mouseluva I never got it...like 'you'll have to wear a uniform when you start work.' ...erm I worked at Waterstones where the CEO has insisted we didn't were them so as not to appear like faceless drones.
Not to mention every office environment i've interviewed for since have more a 'smart casual' workwear... then again all my headteachers were ex-army/navy...
:')
@@mouseluva same, the teachers would make fun of us for wearing our jumpers in the heat but we were always like?? The uniform shirts are literally transparent??
school made me so scared of authority or getting into trouble, that when I'm reprimanded for something not even that bad I get so anxious I feel like crying. it felt like if I wasn't a goody two shoes my whole school career would be at stake
omg me too!
Me too. As a person who seriously struggles with perfectionism, knowing that one mistake could get me screamed at was terrifying. School was messed up. I don't go to that school anymore, thankfully.
I agree, it was like that for me at home, and at school, and then when I went to work. I'm unemployed because my mental health is so fucked I can't work without having constant panic attacks. I'm so relieved it's not just me but it actually makes me angrier that so many people have been through this.
Same! I was so terrified of being late to class in middle and high school I would not use the bathroom for the entire 7 hours I was at school. I was constantly dehydrated and now even 2 years later I have lasting health issues because of doing that consistently for 7 years.
same. i constantly feel like i'll get yelled at if i don't do everything perfectly
This video has made me realise that I was shoved into a gifted and talented group at the age of 9 in order to be sent to a grammar school in order to get into another higher-achieving grammar school which then convinced you your life was worthless if you didn't get into Oxbridge... for what? Serious self-validation issues and a problem with perfectionism that means I rely on external validation? Wicked. Now I'm paying £9250 a year to keep that pattern going...but at least I can wear my own clothes I guess? *cries in broke student*
Schools always want to “prepare you for the next grade / high school / college etc” yet they forget to focus on the things that you should be learning for your grade level and they just throw homework on you saying that “this is what you are going to be getting in high school / college etc” even when it’s an insane amount of homework
I live in the US and we have Common Core and that's the entire purpose of it
Basically they take a bunch of third graders and teach them fourth grade material, doing the same thing for every grade and repeating the process every year until you're teaching kids material they fundamentally cannot understand and then telling them they're "not as smart as the previous grade" because of it
For me the worst thing in school is PE. I can't remember how often I started crying because I embarrassed myself in front of everyone for not being able to do simple sport tasks.
At my school we weren't allowed to wear leggings with our summer uniform unless we had a religious exemption, but I am literally allergic to the cold (I get hives and everything it's wild) and we switch to the "summer" uniform in March, so it's usually still cold. I got so many demerits for wearing leggings when I wasn't supposed to and they didn't care that I was literally breaking out in hives because I didn't have a religious excuse.
its insane to me how schools can just decide exactly how u dress even if it doesnt comply w the weather
I like how they'll make an exception for religion but not for health. That's like making sure to have alternate options of food for kids who can't eat pork for Jews and Muslims or meat in general for Hindus, but then not caring to make alternative options for peanuts or dairy for kids who have allergies. It's good that they take religious freedom into consideration, I'm all for that, but it's weird that they won't make an exception for someone who will feel actual physical pain from it. That's just ridiculous.
Why did they want you to be showing off your legs? Who was it that was so obsessed with that?
Why do we need a religious reason to dress modestly anyway? Or even any reason at all? Why not just personal preference? I thought we were ‘distracting to boys’. A medical reason is also completely justifiable.
This just reminded me of how (when I went to in-person school) teachers would breathe down kids' necks for wearing a sweater (or anything really) over their uniforms. A lot of students at my school only had one or two t-shirts because their parents couldn't afford (or just couldn't bother) to purchase too much on uniforms. This resulted in kids getting detention or kicked out of class because they had a non-school garment on. Their reasoning was that if our uniforms didn't show, nobody would know if we were students or intruders.
Isn’t having a ‘head like a colander’ or a ‘brain like a sieve’ a good thing? You retain all the big important stuff and let go of the small and inconsequential things? Yo I’d take that as a compliment
Omg I'd never thought about it like that ! He definitely meant it cus I flunked a test but I'm gunna twist it in my head that way now, I love it!
leena norms ✨ welcome! Loved the vid x
@@leenanorms you could then add on with an analogy of making pasta. You WANT to drain the water out of pasta because if not the meal will taste bad and watery if you dont.
When I was in primary school I was the only girl who played rugby. The principal called my mum multiple times basically telling her how dangerous it was for a girl to play, but I was 100% sure I wanted to do it. It went absolutely fine. I played well, was at the same level as all the boys, and except for the sexism of 11 year old boys, it was really fun.
I found out a few years ago that the school now has rugby open for both boys and girls; no questions asked. And it made me really proud!
Us girls have to do netball and boys football, like bruh, wtf, what if I want to play football?
I’ve found that schools instil very toxic mindsets of anxiety and fear. You will often get crippling guilt for having breaks, eating, sleeping, having fun/being happy, or even being sad/depressed.
I said to one of my teachers in tutor time when we where talking about Corona, that "If some children and teens are happy about a mass school closings during a pandemic, then the education system did something *very, very* wrong," The teacher just stood there shocked, and just carried on talking, and the answer was yes, there is something *very very* wrong with the education system rn, Best moment in my first year of secondary school.
I was diagnosed autistic three months ago at age 25. I remember when I was in Year 4 or so and learnt about having to change classes every hour in secondary school I started getting anxious about it. If there were points to be lost for communication/participation/interaction with peers, I lost them. PE was hell. I still have PTSD flashbacks and nightmares about PE. But I was in all the Advanced Learner classes and graduated second in my year with a scholarship and went on to the second hardest course in the country at the best university in the country, then had a nervous breakdown a year later and never graduated. School so clearly doesn't equip you for anything if you can be really good at school and fail so spectacularly at life. This video felt so damn validating, thank you Leena
"I wasnt good at school so therefore it's their fault and not mine and I have PTSD or something"
@@WhaleManMan did you even read their comment or are you just trying to push an agenda, which doesn't even apply here?
I'm in the process of getting diagnosed with autism and the therapist I was talking to essentially was saying that if you're getting good grades you can't be neurodivergent and that bugged me a lot because it was saying that my problems weren't to be taken seriously and that if you're doing fine in school there shouldn't be any other issues. It sucks that school has become the marker of whether you're okay or not.
@@thegreendorito9095 You should probably start looking for a new Therapist. Your Therapist should be able to understand your feelings and he or she should never trivialize/minimize them. I just got diagnosed with ADHD- PI formerly know as ADD and I have been struggling since I entered high school. I was high functioning earlier on but still had struggles like being too slow when doing pretty much anything. My teachers never got help for me and my parents didn't do anything until it was too late. I told my parents that I was struggling with things at home and in school and that I was depressed. It took them 7 years to finally get me to a Therapist and it was only because my older brother told my Mom that depression is serious. I found out that I have 3 disorders and I now have a great Therapist :). Don't stop till you get the right treatment for you!
Ash the innovator, thanks for the concern and I hope that you're doing good now. On the bright side, that person isn't my regular therapist but the person testing me for a diagnosis and all that. My actually therapist is really great and deserve a freaking award for making the best of my endless rambling.
in regards to the 'no personal autonomy after abuse teaches bad boundary setting" - school is awful about it - the school system is basically telling children to 'deal with it', accept abuse from authority figures and worst of all - when you try to call out abuse the system will punish or ignore you
I had multiple teachers who would yell or belittle students to the point of tears and the school basically supported them because 'They're my coworker or friend' 'they're actually quite nice as a person' 'you don't always like who you work with' --- like,,,,,, 'nice' people can be abusive, and this isn't just working with people you don't like in a group project it's a grown adult abusing their power over teenagers and still forcing those students to be in their classes,
At my school the whole year group was split in two halves-the “clever” and the “dumb” half. Eventually they had to stop because it was leading to bullying. Also many people just gave up on school because they were assigned to the dumb half. All based on SATs results! I really struggled in primary school and didn’t get good SATs results so I was put in the “dumb” half and yet I ended up with great GCSE and AS results. The system is stupid.
one thing ive always hated about school is how much people all u out? like a few days ago my teacher asked everyone to raise their hand if they didn't have a phone, you wanna know how embarrassing it is to be the only kid in your jr high class without a phone, that earnt at least two days of bullying for me
My best friend was a gifted kid, and one time while we were waiting outside the classroom for history. I began to explain why I thought the gifted groups were pretty damaging and deciding certain people are gifted and others are not, and she basically said I was just upset because I wasn’t in the group or I was just exaggerating. She’s now experiencing that post gifted group experience, and I hope she can get through it.
Honestly the whole thing with school preparing you for adult life, sometimes I think, "Yeah but adult life doesn't have to be like that" or "Sometimes adult life isn't like that so why we encouraging it in schools?"
And people, especially those of my age, tell me to “suck it up” as if we aren’t what adults call us “the future”. Whose future? Is it really ours, or do they want to pass on such a depressing mindset, therefore further leading us to a crumbling society of more depressed folks unable to live their lives in a way that makes them happy? They just love to make us think these things can never be in our control, and it never will be for as long as we believe those regurgitated words.
Ironically, one of my teachers abused me so badly that I severely struggle in any working/business environment bc whenever a superior corrects/questions me I burst into tears/hyperventilate, even when I'm not actually upset/the problem is a reasonable, easy to resolve/answer/etc.
She did not prepare me for adulthood/my career, she prepared me to be stuck reacting like a fckin toddler to super common and basic issues. Thanks Umbridge! 🤬
Elementry/middle/high school is NOTHING like real life. It's not even anything like university! In university I could show up in a crop top, short shorts, deep v neck shirt, flip flops, a onesie, a bikini, topless, pjs, a full suit, impractical high heels...anything! And you don't get sent home. Magical how clothing stops affecting your learning when you're a uni freshman but not a high school senior. Also, you can just leave the class and go to the bathroom without needing to ask. You can make your schedule. I don't have to study french if I don't want to. Sorry this got away from me a bit lol
I'm in high school, and at my job I work kinda closely to the adult higher-ups, and it doesn't seem like school is what prepared them for their jobs. we get our tasks done but don't have ridiculously short time constraints to do so. and just being able to clock out and have no more work to do!!
Wow. That point about boundary setting. Wow. This is one I need to think about. The day I always think about is when I asked not to be sat beside someone who I really really really did not get a long with, for that reason and because she was very disruptive in class and I wanted to learn. I went up to the teacher after the rest of the class left and explained my reasoning and asked to be moved. She apologised to me and told me she put me there because she knew I was the only person the girl wouldn't talk to during class, which would make her easier to manage.
My education and happiness was sacrificed because my teacher couldn't control the class.
This actually happened a lot, but I never realised how intentional it was until this teacher explained it to me and apologised but didn't change the seating arrangement
That happened me to a lot in elementary / primary school in particular. I was the good student who wanted to behave and focus, so I was always assigned a seat next to the disruptive student because I was supposed to be a "good influence." I never realized how messed up this was until much later.
@@mariongivhan4574 i- literally had your same EXACT experience and it took me this comment exchange to realise how f-d up that was, like... wow.
@@biancas4756 😱 Did the teacher at least take the cheating into account when marking their work?
I was considered a “good kid” and often had the “uncontrollables” sat by me in order for me to either help them with their work or to try and keep them quiet. I also only realized it was happening when I asked if I could be moved because I couldn’t focus on the class. She said no, and I noticed it was happening in my other classes as well.
THIS. SO MUCH THIS. Because I was well-behaved there were so many occasions where a teacher would put a shitty student next to me or near me, so my learning was disrupted. They thought I was a "good influence" and therefore I would influence the shitty kid? This even happened when I boarded at school, so I didn't even get a break after finishing the day.
I needed this video. School was the most depressing and traumatic experience of me life.
Same watching this is making me cry. School was awful and I dont ever to step back
damn me too
When I was in high school I actually wrote an in-depth paper of logistic reasons why I think mandatory homework should not be allowed / expected. My main point was that I chopped up the average high schoolers day into 24 hours. The average teenager actually needs more sleep than the average adult, and they actually closer to 10 hours of instead of 8 but averaged it down to 9. I also took out the time that they actually spend in school time that some high schoolers spend at an actual job and or extracurricular activities and time to be social and eat and all that stuff... Essentially I showed that with homework the average high schooler needs like a 32-hour day to accomplish everything important for a young growing person. I also made the point that if they're already doing well wuth their grades, and they do not need the extra practice then what's the point... It would be nice if homework was available as an optional study tool for those who need it. But right now we are wasting time in children's formative years for them to do busy work (that they don't even really have time for) and I still to this day as an adult believe mandatory homework is ridiculous and shouldn't be a thing
But I also said some of the points you said here, such as homework being unfair as something contributed to your final grade because of economic status and stuff like that. If your parents are not wealthy and they have to be at work a lot you will have nobody to help you with your homework oh, well little Timmy's family is home all day and practically just does it for him
I also personalized my reasoning by mentioning that I myself on average was a C-B student.... And that was mainly due to the fact that I often didn't do homework assignments because I didn't have the time or I felt incredibly unmotivated after a long day. And the worst part was that I already understood and grasped the material I was supposed to do homework on, so doing the homework wouldn't have served me in any way other than arbitrarily maintaining my grade in the class... Without graded homework assignments that affected My overall score I probably would have been a B-A a student
The abuse thing is definitely a big thing. I was systematically bullied and humiliated at school, and never really learned how to properly stand up for myself. I’m in my 50s, and I still struggle between avoiding conflict, and the rare occasions where I over react. I never felt supported at school, with the attitude always being “what are you doing to invite bullying?”. So I learned to not attract attention.
same
interestingly, a lot of what you mentioned doesnt apply to my experience (went to school in germany).
One of my worst experiences for must have been group assignments. from 1st to 12th grade, into university. increasingly often we were asked to do an exercice or a project or a presentation in groups. to organise ourselves independently and to presrnt some sort of result without instruction. we would also be graded in groups.
the teachers always said that it is supposed to teach us working in teams as this is a basic softskill and essential for our future work life. not only is this untrue for many jobs, including the job where I ended up (I am self employed and organize everything myself), all the group tasks did, is teach the following: Lazy kids get away with being lazy and doing nothing/little. Kids who care about their grades and who are motivated learn that they must carry the group and do more work than others if they want those good grades. We learn that group grades are unfair to each and every group member and dont represent anyone. I learned that if I want something done right, I besto do it alone. And that I couldn't rely my peers.
also I find it lazy of the teachers. but group assignments are part of the curriculum. so its not their choice I guess.
anyone who hated group assignments?? pls...
Also being purposefully put into groups with people you violently dislike/that violently dislike you
I'm very shy and I hated group assignments. I felt like I always ended up doing most/all of the work (which I actually preferred!) or none of it because I had a really hard time speaking up, especially in middle/early high school. One of my teachers actually helped me through this and let me come in before school to do presentations or gave me alternate assignments. It really helped prepare me for the end of the year, when we had a big project, and later because I had more courage to speak up.
I still don't like group assignments though. They can be really unfair sometimes.
Sorry this got so long!
I'm also from Germany and I feel you. Group assignments are the worst for several reasons. First of all I don't like working with people or people in general. Second the time I spend with organizing tasks within the group, telling the same three things to the same persons bc they don't care, etc is twice the amount of time it takes for me to do alone. Also most teachers don't give you a lot of time but excpect a perfect result. Ugh
Well, I actually liked group assignments, but that‘s because I was hella nerdy and awkward, and for me group assignments were a way to not get bullied, because other, more popular kids were obviously hoping that partnering would improve their grades and so that would stop them from being super mean to me, out of fear that I would not help them.
I do see how that’s not an ideal situation tho.
Yep, the lazy ones mooch oof the actual hard working ones, it's so frustrating,
I've already commented but I have a second point: the merit system. We had houses at my school, and I got bullied a lot by about half my form class, and I developed anxiety and chronic depression during secondary school. As a result, I didn't give a SHIT about "house pride" "the team" "form sports" etc and i got so much shit from my form teacher bc I didn't care about the sports day teams and never stepped up to help/volunteer for anything (anything being charity stall events, discos and like, mini sports days? We had Big sports day and like form sports days?) Like, 1. Why the fuck would I volunteer to do sports I hate and suck at, work a stall with someone I hate, or spend extra time with people who specifically make my life worse every. Single. Day. And 2. Why didn't my form teacher (who saw us every morning for 5 yrs for an hour, spent time with us on school trips every year, and taught all of us in various lessons) notice that I went from being excited, bubbly and social in yr 7, happy to participate, and then every year after that I hated everything, didn't want to do anything, and refused to join in?
The sports day thing makes me remember a girl yelling I'm my face because I refused to both run the 1500 metre and do discus. Decided that I would do neither
We placed second anyway
Exactly! Why is is that teachers never notice when someone is clearly struggling or unhappy, but for something as trivial as chewing gum or sleeping in class, they don’t just notice it, they start yelling into our faces. Like bruh
@@jesusssugarbabyuwu78yearsa63 you aren't there to develop or be happy or be children, you are there to be "disciplined", like a dog that needs training. school are prisons
I've got a house system in my school to,
@@jesusssugarbabyuwu78yearsa63 exactly! I did my homework, always had my folder planner and pencil case, and (mostly) wore my uniform properly, so teachers just kinda ignored me bc I was “fine” (aka my mental health wasn’t getting between me and performing the school requirements) and never noticed I was getting chased home, harassed during classes, assaulted during lunch breaks etc (literally once got the shit kicked out of me on CCTV in school and was nearly suspended for....... getting beaten up. I didn’t land a single hit)
I want to share something I realized about mistreatment in families which also applies to schools in my opinion:
Any behavior you as a parent/teacher/... show toward a child teaches them that it is okay to be treated like this. They will conclude that it is normal for anyone -not just you- to treat them like this.
Would my father be fine with my boyfriend yelling and breaking furniture because I disagreed with him? No, absolutely not, but behaviors like these (which I experienced as a child) are the reason I felt like I wasn't allowed to tell romantic partners off when they crossed my boundaries.
PS: Blouse F is really nice but I don't like ties or uniforms in general and fortunately German schools don't have school uniforms, "only" the other problems Leena mentioned.
Something I will always hate school for is the lack of actual life skills. They say it’s to help you when you’re an adult, but then all they do is stuff your head full of information that you won’t even use! I’m literally taking a Transition School, which is a school designed to help you to transition from highschool into an adult life. ISNT THIS WHAT HIGH-SCHOOL IS SUPPOSED TO BE. But no, just more useless math, more useless reading and more Bullshit.
Also, the sexual education sucks. In Florida, the only thing we got was a video of someone giving birth and a video about periods. Which was an AD mind you. An Ad to sell products, which looking back, is disgusting. We also learned about how the male and female parts work, but that was it. Nothing about safe sex, or consent, or anything like that. I went to a new school for my senior year, and even THEN I didn’t get a sex education class. I got a health class, sure, but in that we just did this project on Human Trafficking. Which is a serious issue, for sure, but I’m still severely disappointed in my education when it comes to my own body and health. The school education system is fucked, and it’s going to take a lot of change to fix it.
If there's one thing that school taught me it's that it's this:
Everybody is an asshole waiting to bully somebody.
And my parents wonder why I'm so reclusive lmao
I always find it odd that I spent 18 years following all the rules and being really studious and Im now unlearning that in academia. Was told to "ignore the rules and follow your scholarly instincts" I AM NOT EQUIPPED!!
I'm a teacher in Canada. We just switched to "quints" instead of "semesters" because of covid. So every day we have one class in the morning from 9:10-11:50, and one class in the afternoon from 12:40-3:20 or something with a 10 minute break partway through. Anyways, it's really interesting how some things have flipped. Some students who were struggling before are really thriving with longer classes, but there are some that are struggling to focus on the same subject for half the day.
In sixth form (16-18) I suddenly had 1 or 2 double periods for the first time ever and I noticed the same thing. it was really interesting.
I’m also candadian, but we only have one class. They’re about to change the schedule but right now you’re going either Monday Tuesday and every 2 Wednesday’s or Tuesdays Friday’s and every 2 Wednesday’s. And we’re only doing a subject a week. It’s really bad for me.
I'm loving lock-downs because I know all our bullies (the ESTJ/ENTJ) are suffering for it, and we (the I***) are loving it. Its like nature made us to survive and strive in those times !
stop blowing my mind!! i get SO stressed picking outfits just for everyday wear and I'm 20. i genuinely think it's because of the pressure put on for non uniform days. I thought that I needed the ultimate outfit that showed who I am to all my peers in one outfit on one day... i still feel that way. Feel like I just had a therapy session.
I quite liked moving classes every period. It was just the activity I needed to wake me up for the next class. Because when I tell you I was tired, I mean it.
In my us schooling us history was always prioritized. World history was for younger grades, like the first grade after you changed schools, followed by several years of the same 200 years of us history for the next few grades
It's actually the opposite for me lol in my US school
I go to an American school, am in 9th grade. We covered Ancient history in 6th grade, and other than that the only thing we have covered in history/social studies was from the 13 colonies up to the civil war.
That’s how it works in Australia. Y7 = Ancient Rome + Australian history, Y8 = medieval Britain + Australian history, Y9+ = Australian history + Australian history
Hehe yes i remember protesting about having to wear “skimpy garments” in front of all the boys for no good reason and i refused unless we were allowed to wear joggers! Win and im proud of small me
i am big proud of u!!! schools have no right deciding the type of clothes a student can wear, especially whens its obvi sexist
I'm a teacher and as per usual, I completely agree with all of your points 😂 I really appreciate you making it known that teachers aren't the (main) problem (there are problematic teaching practices/teachers). I am in the system and love conversations of reimagining school because it is necessary and past due. The school system is oppressive in many ways and I would love to work with a more of a learning community and self paced model.
Oh my god I remember being told off so many times for reading!!!!! Like I finished, let me learn outside of this class pls
This is so weird! In America, at my school, we were encouraged to have a book to quietly read if we finished with our work. It kept us quiet, lol. Sometimes if everyone was talking and it got too loud the teacher would be like "ok quiet time, get out a book, put your head down, or do something quietly.
Omg I remember my yr 6 teacher complaining about the fact I was reading instead of answering the register.
I'm still mad (it was 20y ago) I got banned from the library for spending too much time there and they started for some reason locking its door, they said it was dangerous for a kid to be alone in the library. I remember there was a librarian, I don't know what they did to her for allowing students to actually use the library, true hero she was.
Like what? for what reason? might I learn something you don't want?
It only made me desire to learn more and to realize how ridiculous everything was when I was 10y old.
So I think I got it, I'm not there to learn, but well, screw you, now I'm gonna be rebellious and learn everything I want to learn.
I still remember the face of my teachers when I opened science/history/math books in the wrong classes, it was very funny, because I wasn't technically doing anything wrong, the only thing they could come with is "you are not paying attention", but still I could answer all their questions because I studied the subject and I was really ahead of everyone and had good grades (some of the highest), and they couldn't actually send me to detention for that.
Some actually did try to send me to detention, that was actually not a punishment, like, that's what I want, I only had to perfectly calculate so I don't have too many absents, so I could pass to the next year.
Despite all that, teaches were baffled by my high grades, so they couldn't expunge me from school.
My parents would receive a lot of letters, but I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong, I had good grades to prove it, they had to work a lot and didn't have time for the bullshit in the school. Good thing they didn't need any stupid social benefit from the government, otherwise that would be tragic to me, so I was actually privileged, otherwise my family would have been locked in poverty forever, but luckily my father was an civil engineer and had already endured the bullshit system enough.
If I decide to have children, I will need lawyers and psychiatry (for the child and for me) and I will die on this hill, you won't "discipline" us, I'm going to war over the system.
I'll teach the children how to be a free thinker, like I learned and escaped the system, and I know they won't allow for home-schooling either, because they are losing the grip. Nowadays you can go to jail for not sending your child to school, at least in the country I live, I find it outrageous. I'm pretending moving to another country because of that.
I was lucky my parents didn't suffer from my "bad behavior".
Down with the system ! lets take brick by brick.
I found this lock-down kind of liberating for allowing home-schooling by force onto the stupid system, that's a good beginning for this conversation we need to have.
I had a teacher who always told me to stop reading so we could have “circle time”, basically, people talked about their weekend and I absolutely hated it. I was new and wasn’t comfortable around people. The teacher gave me a lower grade because I wasn’t “enthusiastic”🙄
@@aishabowboa7198 the exact same thing happened to me!
29:44 The only demerit I ever got in school was for pulling out a book and starting to read while I waited for the teacher to get the class under control and begin the lesson. I was the only one in the class that got a demerit, even though some people were literally screaming and throwing things! Can you tell I'm still bitter about it 15 years on?
As you should!
I literally got in trouble for asking questions about the lesson, paying attention and engaging in the topic, while half the class was on their phones and ignoring the teacher.
Admittedly, I was the only openly gay kid in the PSHE class and I was asking why she'd skipped over a bunch of slides on the presentation to focus on Bisexuality, Homosexuality, and Heterosexuality, and was interested in learning about Pan, Asexual, Transgender, etc issues, and was told off for "trying to start an argument" (I wasn't aware that asking orientation/gender questions in the Sex ed + gender unit was that triggering but go off homophobic school system) but still. That's the point of the lesson, right ? 😂
"You don't attend school in your 20's."
Me: softly cries into my uni books
Some personal notes:
- It baffles me to this day when I have been out of compulsory education for almost 10 years that being inducted into Gifted & Talented did not require parental consent (at my school at least)
- My catholic school education was even more biased than a standard comprehensive, I feel. I have spent the years since educating myself on other religions outside of Christian denominations.
- Uniform madness! I once got a detention because my black tights were the wrong denier, and when I questioned if this actually warranted an after school detention for a "uniform infraction" they made a phone call to my parents about my attitude (my parents laughed and asked if the detention was more important than studying for my GCSE'S as I was in Y11. I was quickly released from detention.)
- Watching Supersize Me once constituted an actual top set Science lesson
- it was a solid 3 minute walk between 'blocks' at my school, which crossed over a public pathway as well. And yet teachers were still not lenient on lates despite garbled apologies that you had come from the other block. Why was I apologising??
Anyway, I probably have more in the back of my mind somewhere that I have suppressed. Love the video Leena!
One time at the end of seventh grade, this kid was supposed to get an attendance award for never missing a day of school, but when they called his name all his friends shouted “ HE’S ABSENT”, and he really was.
As a young teacher, I have a few remarks because people tend to forget that education as a scientific, as a professional field does also evolve. I of course agree with the statements here... but I just thought it's good to give some context, so you know... people have some hope for the future ;)
- I learned that you should never ever introduce a topic through homework. Meaning you can never let learners "learn" smth new through homework. (Of course in reality there is still the problem that we have to teach according to a plan and often struggle to fit all in).
- The scientific fact that children should sleep longer universally accepted. The problem is that the system needs to be changed by politicians.
- I teach history in Germany and the focus is both: being critical and knowing the basic facts of history. This means also children don't need to know all the dates and all the history. They learn a way to research and know for themselves.
- I teach mostly 90 min, especially in main subjects. This is of course not a whole day but it helps to actually concentrate for a longer period of time.
- The optimal lesson does differentiate ... this means: if your a good student the teacher has some interesting extra tasks, if you're struggling there are some easier tasks.
Sad remarks:
I really agree with the PE rant. I guess because PE class was originally designed to prepare you for military service, they believe in letting people suffer. Anyone heard of the torture that is called "Cooper Test" ? Yeah you know what I'm talking about.
Also as a new teacher I really have to agree with you that its really important in which class you are. At the moment I teach a class that is absolutely socially incompatible. It really horrifies me to see that as a student you really have to be lucky in which class you end up in.
And a sad scientific fact in the end: Waiting periods are actually the time in which people get bullied most often.
I went to school in germany and did the cooper test three times...
I have no words..
interesting to have a german teacher here. my worst memory are group assignments. which taught me that I cant rely on anyone if I want good grades, that I better do things alone if I want them done right and that lazy kids get away with being lazy. Sadly, group assignemts were a staple during my school years..
what is your take on group assignments?
But: I mostly remember having had mostly (not exclusively) great, talented, inspiring and passionate teachers.
good luck to you!
Oh wow I just googled cooper test (it was called differently in my school), and it‘s so interesting to see that this is now seen to be a very inefficient exercise to say anything about student abilities. It was horror for me... as most of PE was, to be fair 😅
Oh what you've said is so encouraging. Unfortunately I finished school in the UK 2 years ago, and most of the things on this list were still horribly true for me
On History, her complaint is more that British students are almost never taught the UK's colonial past or atrocities. Instead they are taught mythologised versions of their earliest history. As a result, most Britons believe they did a favour to the world in invading most countries, but haven't heard of the Mau Mau massacre or the Bengal famine.
In any other country we'd call it censorship and propaganda.
@@johannah.2654 I feel you. For me it was the same with group assignments when I went to school ("TEAM - "Toll Ein Anderer Machts"). But as a teacher there are possibilities to change this. I learnt that we can use role cards so pupils all have a special task, like time keeper, group leader, content researcher etc. So in the end the goal is to prepare them for how group works actually take place in the workplace. I think if more teachers would try methods like these even group assignments work out. When you know your class very well you can even try to fit the role to the student's abilities and energy.
The only thing really standing in the way again, I must say, are time and space restrictions. Organizing group work for 30 pupils is hardcore...
8:00 As a preface, I believe uniforms should be affordable, and free to those who need it. However I remember my mom (she’s a teacher in a poor school district) had a student who’s clothes never fit her because her parents couldn’t afford to buy her clothes her size. She would get made fun of by other children. I believe that AFFORDABLE uniforms are an excellent way to avoid that situation
The sad fact is that schooling has really become about indoctrination - not about finding the best way for a student to learn and develop. It's indoctrination for nationalism or corporate usefulness or simply to keep society safe from young people that might want radical change (most likely a mix of all of it) and it's not about the betterment of the individuals going through it. Most long time teachers don't even remember their students names after the student has left any more, and I am sure that is from a lack of resources and funding but I am pretty positive it is also deliberate.
i've been thinking so much recently about how at primary schools kids were essentially labeled as either sporty or unsporty: you were in the A team for netball or you were in the Ds. Basically being told at the age of 8 that I wasn't good at sport made me completely disengage with team sports and exercise, I felt like PE was a form of ritual humiliation, from students picking sports teams and your ability to play a sport well determining your popularity it was all a bit wank. I remember sports teachers even making comments and jokes about my poor hand eye coordination (lol I was later diagnosed as dyspraxic so no wonder) and although now I run and do yoga regularly and am actually fairly fit I lack the drive and ambition to push myself and do well in sports and find it hard to see myself as sporty in any way and attribute this wholly to the way PE was managed at school.
I feel exactly the same! I always hated PE and thought of myself as 'bad at sports' for a long time - it wasn't until my 20s that I had the revelation that exercising can actually be fun. For me a big part of the problem was that I hated TEAM sports, and how competitive (and thus stressful and performative) PE always was, but now that I can explore exercise on my own terms I've realised I really enjoy working out when I'm on my own and not in conflict with other people - I love yoga, and running, and pole dancing! I wish I'd learned that earlier, instead of having it ingrained in me that exercising is horrible and I'm bad at sports. Lots of my people I know have had exactly this experience, too
You completely hit the nail on the head, I remember at a very young age being singled out by sports teachers. The whole way through primary/high school I was pretty much conditioned to hate sports and not want to participate in them
Team games with balls shouldn't be compulsory for those who hate them or are no good at them. They should be given the chance to do something more fun either outside or in the sports hall such as trampolining or yoga. Tennis wasn't something we did except in the summer term and on a hot day. That's a ball game but not a team game.
@@LBelacquax I had the exact same experience (and also currently love yoga, pole and running! who would have thought!). Especially yoga cause it's so non-competitive. And pole is just playfully building strength. I love it!
Hi there. I've always generally enjoyed sports and tend to be quite good at it. However, im not a very sociable/likeable person so as a result i always end up getting picked last or second to last. This lowered my self esteem a lot, and now whenever i play sports i tend to think of myself as "getting lucky" rather than it being a resut of my hard work. I really hate how sports depends on being a likeable/sociable person, and whether or not you have some form of popularity. I ended up losing a close friend of mine due to my personality however i didnt let it affect me much. Tl'dr: being popular is basically everything whether you are good at sports or not.
I remember being given a 'gifted and talented' project at the start of high school. 11 year old me was made to complete a research paper for NO REASON, out of school hours, under an ARBITRARY time frame, with absolutely NO follow up, that half the kids didn't bother to do. It probably started up in the head of year's 'In' pile and ended up in the bin.
Not only that, but the memory of being 'selected' to visit a university at 13 years old... before even deciding on our GCSE options infuriates me. Not only was the programme divisive and exclusionary for the people not chosen, it was a wildly inappropriate and impersonal way of creating unnecessary expectations.
Being labelled as super smart and independent learners really young meant that my Advanced Learners group had a really toxic culture where you could not ever ask for help or admit you didn't understand something. Guess who had a nervous breakdown a year into the most prestigious degree in the country!!
Yup I was classed as a G&T student and its definitely had a negative impact on myself and some of my G&T friends, particularly around asking for help and anxiety about always being on top of things
Just to touch on the P.E point: I have mild cerebral palsy... I was put in the lowest group for PE, generally for those with health issues etc.
+For cross country I came 6th out of 60 people, including the top group in my year.
+ I played netball for the school
+ I was the fastest batsperson on any team.
+ I continue to run and have done 2 10ks
+ I have done physical theatre & dance all through college.
I was expected by my school to be shit at sport/ exercise etc. Because of my disability. I smashed that expectation. ...But what I would have liked to see was that you were given a choice one term of what sport / exercise you wanted to do and rotate to figure out what you liked
I agree! I enjoyed volleyball, dance, strength training, and lacrosse in HS and I would’ve loved to do those more often in PE. But if you wanted to focus on those, you had to be on a team. I’m personally not a fan of competition unless it’s with friends. Plus my skills were not up to varsity standards.
We always had everyone in the same grade mixed in the same level of PE as far as I remember, and then once you got to high school you could sometimes choose a focused PE class like dance (California, high school = ages 14-18)
Although we did have tests in PE that definitely showed the difference between kids who could run a mile no sweat and people like me who would take 20 minutes and die
We did a bleep test. Basically run up and down a basketball court within the bleeps to see what your stamina was like. That was it. My Dad was in the navy and said that’s part of their initial training- go figure 😂
I suffer from severe adhd and anxiety, and was put in the "gifted program." And all that has done for me is put in my head that I should just be good at everything. They gave us very easy tasks and made us feel super smart for doing them. And then as soon as we got back to normal class and we're bad at something, we just had no idea what to do. It completely destroyed what little motivation I had
And then if you had trouble you just got told you "weren't trying" - which in turn just made me give up trying because why risk trying my best and getting yelled at anyway
The homework being graded is supposed to get more people passing. It's not required you get it right really, just that you do it.
In highschool I refused to do majority of homework. Got a's on all my tests and quizzes. Barely passed, most of the grade was homework.
For me I did none of the homework and got mostly A's on tests and my final grade would be B's. Course work was only 10% of the final grade and test and quizzes were 90%.
On the uniform front, it was ridiculous that we could only buy from the school shop, and our school shop was only open for 1 week every year, but also that you bought something that was meant to last the whole year. Children GROW. You had to wear something MASSIVE in September to make sure it still fit in July. I had/have so many body issues that were made so much worse by ill-fitting school uniforms. If we had worn leopard print it would have been slightly easier though. Good one, Leena.
The “early elevation of certain types of intelligence” is even crazier in the Netherlands!! At the end of primary school, most of the children take a test (there are alternatives I believe) that basically determines what level of secondary school you will move on to. Which 1) puts insane amounts of pressure on kids! Because they feel like their future largely depends on how well they perform on that test (and I mean, they are not entirely wrong). And 2) creates this diversion in the classrooms, where some people feel better about themselves than others, depending on their test scores. It creates this whole “comparing yourself with others” idea. The whole reason this test was initiated was because it supposedly took away the prejudice of the teachers. But it turns out that is still a thing. Besides, if some of the children of the higher class are advised to go to a “lower” level secondary school, their parents will most definitely complain and make sure their child goes to a higher level secondary school. Even if they aren’t suitable. Also, children of lower class families that perhaps didn’t do so well on the test due to stress, and who will end up with a lower level advise, generally don’t have parents who will stick up for them to get them to a higher level which they would actually deserve. In conclusion, it’s a pretty fucked up system, with good intentions, but bad results.
P.S. Loved the video! ❤️ Very relatable still!!
We had the same system in my area in Australia. We also had test for selective highschools that we had to take at the end of primary school to see if we could get in. Think highschool versions of Harvard, Yale, Brown,etc. It was terrible!
@@charmainen8475 That's exactly what it is! Horrible!
same in my country we originally had that test in primary 3 (literally 9 year olds) before they scrapped it just before my batch. Even then there is still a test to stream kids into "gifted" elite primary schools at age 9, which some parents pay extra tuition for kids to study for so they can get in. Now its primary 6 which is 12 years old. I think whats more damaging is the idea that your entire future rests on this one critical exam, which is SO NOT TRUE. Life is more about consistent work and moving towards what you want (which you can decide to change at any point, except maybe becoming a pro athlete) than speedrunning an essay in 1hr to determine your fate forever, you still have to work hard and people who might not have done as well can still catch up and find success. School tries to be like this is the only path when actually you can choose so many different ones.
hi, fellow Dutch person here. this is my take, more focused on being in middle/high school! i like that everyone can have education at their own level and pace. i don't like the way kids who can't keep up and have to go to a niveau are treated. i don't like that people will apologize to me for not being smart because i do gymnasium (the highest). they suddenly look at me very differently which makes me really uncomfortable. i don't like that funding generally seems to go to havo/vwo/gymnasium schools rather then to lower niveaus like vmbo. i don't like the way teachers expect the smart kids to be some sort of super humans. i don't like that primary school teachers will assign kids of Turkish and Maroccan immigrants generally to lower niveaus then their actual capabilities, because of their racism. i don't like the classism, which isn't an issue at every school, but definitely at some. i think the system is very good in theory but people suck.
My fave discipline I had at school was when a girl made up allegations against me and instead of exploring it i was asked to sit in a room where this girl and two teachers ripped me to shreds at how horrible a person i was. This was 10 years ago and the guilt and shame i was made to feel is still real, love me some childhood trauma. My primary school teacher was also sleeping with the dad of the child who bullied my sister constantly but nothing was done because of this lol. I am now a trainee ed psych so will be advising schools that is maybe not the best ways to be doing things.
You're the only other person I've heard say that they were absolutely exhausted after high school. I was so tired I had to take a couple of hours' nap everyday. I wasn't able to do any after school activities as a result.