doing poorly in school

[shrub77]

Hi everyone, first post.

Well, goes, last moth I took the Myers brigg test at school, I got intp, 100 I 62 n 88 t and 32 p

Ever since last year, I have lost faith in my education system (pwcs, USA)

Its based on pointless redundant assignments rather than actual knowledge, for example, our task was to label maps and color, I received an F on it because apparently" your coloring is worse than a child's." Even though I had everything correctly labeled. The girl next to me who was an artist made three errors errors on the location of Lithuania, Libya and Thailand. She received an A.
This frustrated me. I complained and I was quietly put down. Now I have an F in three classes as I refuse to partake in this system. Its not just history, its in science too. Its repulsive.
if I do ever grow up to be rich, I plan on opening schools across the world to properly educate kids like us. I won't teach how make paper look pretty, but rather train the architects of tomorrow.

I'm sorry for boring you, it's that no one else will listen to me, my parents and school think I am stupid or crazy.

Cheers

 

[EditorOne]

Well, is there any reason you can't color inside the lines? If that is the definition of success, then succeed and despise your success, but it's less stress than an F and being labeled bullheaded.

 

[shrub77]

I can color,, but I do it sloppy, my handwriting is as well, if did put 100% effort in it it would take forever. And it really annoys me, my real problem is that public schools are centered towards average kids and no child left behind discourages gifted programs. Aesthetics > content apparently

 

[Jah]

then do it with water-colors, and make it really intricate with impossible to detect borders. (like in real life.) And learn how to construct good arguments.



And then, trick the system...





OR
realize it's just a game you're going through, try to learn despite the system, and give less than a damn about the grades.


In real world grades don't really count.

 

[Pizzabeak]

I thought INTP were known for 'intelligence'... Is being lazy a reason for doing poorly in school?

 

[GYX_Kid]

intelligent, bored with the material, distracted and unfocused (or too focused on what's actually interesting), lazy and building momentum on "own alone time to recharge,"

The school system's a really popular game.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Judging how I was back in high school, I would have laughed at the people trying to get me to the frivolous task. Then proceed to throw a chair at someone I did not like for the lolz.

If you want to save you mind, study topic you're interested in under your own volition. Always try to maintain improve your technical English and mathematical skills. It is not particularly hard, buy a text book and go through it page by page.

School does not matter anyway. There're always alternative ways to get to where want to go.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

The school system's a really popular game.

I recommend that people should just try and survive it. Personally I went bat shit insane in the perverse environment. But look at me now! I am doubleplusgood oldthink.

 

[GYX_Kid]

I recommend that people should just try and survive it. Personally I went bat shit insane in the perverse environment. But look at me now! I am doubleplusgood oldthink.

I second the recommendation in a general sense, but there are always exceptions to the rule. I won't get too into it, in case an outsider happens to find my name here...

 

[Jah]

Judging how I was back in high school, I would have laughed at the people trying to get me to the frivolous task. Then proceed to throw a chair at someone I did not like for the lolz.

If you want to save you mind, study topic you're interested in under your own volition. Always try to maintain improve your technical English and mathematical skills. It is not particularly hard, buy a text book and go through it page by page.

School does not matter anyway. There're always alternative ways to get to where want to go.

Second this, btw.


Get basics, like natural sciences and language, in under your belt.


Also, consider learning about B.F. Skinner, and behaviorism, try to figure out why you do the things you do, and whether or not they coincide with what you consider a good life, whether they help you closer or further from your goals in life. (if you don't have goals, then focus on what would improve yourself the most, and develop in directions which would help you when you do find out. Good Health, basic Logic, argumentative skills, etc. )



Learn to operate this machine you're inside, your body,
how to program yourself, your mind,
how to program computers... ( maybe try this out: http://primerlabs.com/node )

Read the book Influence, by Robert Cialdini. The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins.
Don't get trapped in the unimportant discussion of politics and religion.

Read some philosophy, maybe start with Bruce Lee, so that you remember to forget that which is not important, and stay sceptical about the claims of what "is".

Tao of Jeet Kune Do - Bruce Lee

Look into guys like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wJ-js_NLV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eu9GfHCpVo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LcIHwanRqs

Also, fuck it, you've only got one life.
You've got the choice to be free now, or never.

 

[shrub77]

Thanks guys, I realized a long time ago that grades are nearly a letter. I have no problem reading textbooks or theoretical papers.Ive even taught myself a few subjects. My only question is why are schools so obnoxious? Their bureaucracy is atrocious. Why do people put up with this? Its not educational its training office slaves.

 

[Mello]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Thanks guys, I realized a long time ago that grades are nearly a letter. I have no problem reading textbooks or theoretical papers.Ive even taught myself a few subjects. My only question is why are schools so obnoxious? Their bureaucracy is atrocious. Why do people put up with this? Its not educational its training office slaves.

You must take an aristotelian approach when analyzing the institution. The purpose of something is what it is. The place is designed to destroy one's minds and one's sense of self because that is what it does. As for why people put up with it? There is a strong urge in everyone to conform to what the group is doing.

Don't worry, there are many institutions in your life that fulfill a similar role as school. University is a great example. University attempts to instill in people that absurdities, logically inconsistencies, blatant fallacies, etc. can be ignored. Now we have thousands of people getting degrees in liberal arts with the ability to prove 2 + 2 = 5 by conflations or thinking that they is not external framework of reality that concepts of the mind are judged against.

I did not take school seriously until I went to school for students with behavioral issues, special needs (austism etc.) and the gifted. I received for each subject the 12th to 10th highest grades in my state for all subjects apart from English. This enabled me to receive a few scholarships during the course of my engineer and mathematics bachalor's degrees. Now I am doing a PhD where I receive 40k a year tax free and I do not pay tuition fees.

 

[del]

Thanks guys, I realized a long time ago that grades are nearly a letter. I have no problem reading textbooks or theoretical papers.Ive even taught myself a few subjects. My only question is why are schools so obnoxious? Their bureaucracy is atrocious. Why do people put up with this? Its not educational its training office slaves.

To quote de Touqville:

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

 

[Pizzabeak]

2nding Jah, looking into some Terence Mckenna is totally not a bad idea.

 

[Dapper Dan]

I would recommend that you stick with it as much as you can. Enroll in some more strenuous or interesting courses, and try to challenge yourself. It's amazing how much my work ethic improves when I'm doing something that engages my mind.

 

[BridgeOfSighs]

I would recommend that you stick with it as much as you can. Enroll in some more strenuous or interesting courses, and try to challenge yourself. It's amazing how much my work ethic improves when I'm doing something that engages my mind.

On that note, look into taking a community college class or two. Online or otherwise. A lot of schools let you take them in lieu of normal classes and they will count toward college credit -- should you pursue it later.

 

[Vrecknidj]

If you really want to know why schools are so awful, then immerse yourself in them completely. Put your energy into succeeding, and then go into education in college, become a teacher, and find out, from the inside, what's wrong.

There's a lot wrong in there (I've been a teacher for more than 20 years). But, no matter what I tell you, you won't understand until either 1) you're a lot older and have a lot more experience of the world, or 2) you go into the system yourself and experience it yourself.

Sorry, that's the way it goes.

Dave

 

[EditorOne]

Not all schools suck. I have a part-time gig acculturizing (is that a word?) incoming executives for big corporations. This week I spent two hours visiting an elementary school with the incoming family. It was conducted by the most enthusiastic principal I've ever met and the school was not one teacher in front of a class in a series of rooms, but each classroom broken down into several areas, each with a teacher or aide working with small groups. The principal was so into it that he knew exactly what the lesson plan for the day was for each classroom as we came into it and could pinpoint exactly what information or skill was being developed in every room. Extremely happy kids, extremely happy teachers, very casual, and I specifically noticed in fourth grade art class (with a Van Gogh print and a Klee print on the door, by the way) the kids were NOT coloring inside the lines at all, they were whanging away at some kind of freeform crayon thing in which they weren't supposed to be creating representational art, but abstract shapes conveying how they felt at that moment. Fourth grade, art as personal expression: I'm remembering the stupid, banal clay turkey I made in fourth grade and thinking things have gotten better, at least in some schools. Let me stress: An American public school where one principal's vision has been embraced by the entire staff and the board of education. It's not hopeless everywhere.

 

[Sanctum]

A big problem i have with the school system is the SOL test because that becomes the center of everything. Teachers become only concerned with students passing that they stuff the answers down your brain instead of giving you the tools to come up with the answers. Honestly they don't provide you with any true knowledge. That's why i love my Honors English class its not an SOL class so she really gives us the opportunity to come up with answers. In that class we literally cover every other subject even if just a little bit. We learn history, stumble on science, Psychology when doing character analysis, and others. If classes were more idea based then just black and white i would get better grades because after a while i just begin not to care, loose interest, and do enough of the work to pass even though i have the ability to get strait A's to me the grade isn't worth doing work for something im not passionate about.

 

[masterpeez]

Yeah highschool sucks but this is your only chance to complain and rebel. In college its no longer cool to be that slacker kid. Maybe freshman year, but its already rubbing off for me. I used to identify myself in high school as being, "that young man with so much potential, if only he would apply himself."

The thing is, slacking off, at least for me, was a way to make myself look smart, with the only benefit being a couple points to my ego and social status.

I was blessed enough to have a pretty tough highschool with AP classes and such, which kept me working, but always procrastinating everything to the latest possible moment. Oh god, you got me started thinking about high school and how much it sucked. In college if you emberrace yourself in front of class, it is in front of 100 random people you will never see again. In high school, its in front of the same 100 kids that you see every day for four years. 100 insecure, lonely, attention-hungry kids. Yikes.

 

[RaBind]

That's the way it is so you just have to kinda accept that fact. High Schools are probably designed to discipline students as much as they are to educate them. I remember many of my classmates complaining about how they were never going to use anything they learnt, in maths class, in real life, similar to this, your being asked to do something that you feel is not important, which is coloring. It kinda doesn't matter what you think, as long as your teachers think you are a good student and you should be happy as long as you have good grades. In my view nothing really matters at all, as long as you know you can get those grades, you want. If they tell you to run laps to improve your stamina in exams than just do it, you'll find that teachers can be as helpful, when they like you, as they can be destructive, when they don't like you.

My experiences at high school just involved wearing a mask all the time and getting on with the work.

You have to develop coping techniques. I basically developed a persona at school which was similar to a being a robot.

 

[7even]

Here's how I see it, unless you have a brilliant idea and stick with it then follow through with it, you don't really have many options. We live in a society where education seems to be one of the only few options to succeed, (gain an income to live) or at least the most straight forward. Even if the process is blatantly ridiculous and a complete waste of time in my opinion. It needs a reform like everything else in this world, but hey that's not going to happen.

So go through with it, so you can get a job. I'm sure later on you can study something that actually interests you. I'm in the same situation as you to be honest but I try to push the cynicism away because it really does no good, even if we're right. You just can't beat society and it's norms.

I mean, I just see education as an evil project designed by the government so we can follow through one of several 'government hand-picked' paths, to receive a job and to fund an economy to support a system. All these industries do more harm than good, society's way of life is clearly destroying the world, scientific studies have already shown that but yet we continue. Running out of resources at an alarming rate and destroying nature; Earth (something I really really really really hate) and stealing it's resources greedily and somehow deciding it's ours and that we can profit out of them. I really don't know what to do other then somehow make society as a whole to think, open their eyes and change their ways.

 

[Nibbler]

I feel ya. But what you're going to learn by just taking the time to do it right is beneficial to you:

1. Perseverance
2. Developing hand control. Lack of penmanship/coloring skills is due to modern computer use. These skills will greatly benefit you especially if you go into a science where running delicate experiments is crucial.
3. Discipline
4. Pride in that you did better than the artist who got brownie points, not smart points.

My own frustrations were in doing tedious classwork, too. But don't sell yourself short in what you can learn by just chalking it up to, "They are against smart people and only want to help dumb people." There is always something you can learn. Ignoring that will only hurt you in the long run.

Do a good job for yourself, not for them.

 

[Fghw]

The school system is failing me as well. I reached the apex of achievement at 6 and have been falling from it ever since.