I guess my history is almost opposite while achieving similar results. However, I get bunched in the same group and expected to feel privileged and guilty.
I grew up in another country and went to end of junior + high school in a US school in the inner city where nobody studied in my class except for me. 65% of the class never graduated. My parents, although very educated in our home country never paid for school and worked very bad jobs initially here such as postal service worker and person who poses census questions.
Although I never did particularly well in school in my home country, I did extremely well in the US because everyone else wasn't doing anything. I was ranked 10th in a graduating class of 900 students and did well on the SATs except for the English section. However, I got into many fights to protect my image in school or things would have gotten worse for me there. This resulted in not being able to get into decent colleges since for whatever reason that is reflected on your "record".
Finally, this apathetic behavior of my classmates and friends transformed me a little and i did poorly first couple of years of college. However, impending struggles with job market made me get back to studying. I took more loans to pay for my undergrad + masters and graduated with a decent GPA + research. Then got a job in software and now almost finished paying off loans.
Let me describe what high school life is like in inner city public high schools:
People growing up in inner cities are treated like animals in the cafeteria and elsewhere. There are police officers with guns. There are literal metal bars on the windows and only plastic utensils are allowed in cafeteria. Fights happen where everyone jumps on the tables and cheers on. There are metal chains on doors for students not to escape midway during school day. There are metal detectors at the entrance in case students bring guns. You can go to the bathroom during class only 5 times in 6 months. You are taught how to add fractions in grade 10 math class. Guidance counselors never help you and always try to do the least amount of work possible. I had to talk to the principal to make them let me take a math test to test out of elementary school math. Had to switch math classes to get a math teacher to let me go to a math olympiad.
The experience for me closely matched what American movies would show prisons are like. The students themselves think "nerds" are incredibly uncool and the coolest people are rappers + sports stars. I think median amount of time people spent doing homework there is about 0 seconds. Almost everyone constantly talks during class and you can barely hear the teacher.
After escaping this circus, I'm expected to feel sympathy for some of the people who were my classmates.
So while I still think I got lucky in terms of intelligence, the solution to this problem is to change the culture. For example, in my old country, there is literally no commonly used word for "nerds" and people who get good grades are considered cool.
Additionally, going to college for vast majority of students especially those who come from high schools like mine is a waste of time. There should be trade schools. There should be a major high school reform. People who act like prisoners should be put in some sort of boarding school so they stop poisoning the well for others. People who participate in a fight by the virtue of being attacked by others shouldn't get detentions. It should be explained to their parents that this behavior is completely not OK. Media should stop idolizing singers + sports players. In fact, MTV programming should be completely remade into a subtle pro-education propaganda channel. Cancer like Jerry Springer et al should be canceled.
It is totally possible to graduate from these high schools and do well.
The problem is not money, but culture. Privilege has _nothing_ to do with it since tons of people in much much poorer countries with schools that have a lot fewer funds do a lot better.
I feel like most people don't understand what American education/school culture is really like in inner cities and what students are really like who go there. Here are a couple of movies that somewhat match my experience:
The Class (2008) - French film but similar (milder) situation.
Kids (1995) - Very accurate but little to do with education.
I went to a low-caliber school because I lacked the intelligence to successfully attain the grades, test scores, and extracurricular achievements necessary to gain admission to a superior school. Now that I am either out of school or at a college whose competition is even weaker than that of my high school, I imagine that my failures were completely by choice, that I am smart but just lazy. Though I have zero facts to back up these delusions, I am at least free from the constant stream of academic measurement that says otherwise. Nevertheless, I still look down on those who either did not go to college or attended schools I view as inferior to even my lowly alma mater.
Not sure what your school experience was like, but for me it wasn't a bunch of equally intelligent students all thinking themselves above average. I'm happy to be in a career now where I feel surrounded by people who make me feel stupid; back then, it was very different. In high school, I never got less than an A with minimal effort, while everyone around me struggled. I don't say that to brag--I was just a big fish in a small pond. It's quite rare that many smart people are all clustered together, especially in a US public school in a relatively poor region.
I am saddened to here that lots of people had poor high school experiences. My teachers ranged from good to great. Much better than my college professors. Students were highly motivated. It was the perfect environment for me.
Growing up I used to think I was smart. Now I think I am the product of a great education system.
I was in a program like this in 5th and 6th grade. I believe I was among the lowest achievers in the class, both by grades and extra curriculars. Of those I still keep in touch with, I believe I'm still among the lowest achievers - I never finished college, among other things, although I'm certainly doing fine for myself professionally. The class fed to two different high schools so I lost touch with roughly half of my classmates, but as far as I know they all finished high school and all that I know of finished college or university. Just another perspective.
I'm Gen X - the High School I attended, and ultimately received my GED from was inner city. While we had more Ivy League acceptances from our student body than any other local public school, we also had on-campus murders, armed police officers roaming the halls, and a bathroom that no one but drug dealers and users went into.
I left school my senior year, and went into a career in computers. I had been a part of the "computer underground" since 12 or 13, and knew UNIX better than most admins. I couldn't speak or write properly however. Turns out employers, weren't too keen on odd combination of l33+ sp34/<, and street slag. I relied on two co-workers over my first several years of work to teach me English. I think I've been free of "tooken" for nearly a decade. Thank God.
It wasn't the school's fault, I made a choice. I could of easily gone to a decent college, but laziness and lack of priorities could have derailed my life. I was lucky enough to have these guys take an interest in me.
It's extremely depressing. I really don't feel like I have much hope knowing I'll never be able to achieve anything because of who I was when I was in high school - it's even worse because I knew what I wanted in high school (Siemens, high school research, etc), but had no idea how to accomplish it.
In my public high school, we had kids go to Ivy's, and we had kids go to jail. I went to a decent state school on a scholarship - I was only 20th out of my class of 400. That wasn't that hard to do. Sure I didn't go to Harvard, but I got an engineering degree for basically the cost of living expenses which is not too bad. My total expense on education lifetime has been less than my first year salary.
Meanwhile, I found out one of the kids I grew up with in elementary school just got arrested for murder (of another girl from our HS). One of the kids I did stagecraft with in HS is in jail for 10 years for killing someone while DUI. I know a bunch of kids who did nothing at all with their lives and are still working local retail jobs.
We all went to the same public school. We all had the same teachers. It isn't even the parents, some of best in my class had 1 parent or bad parents (hell even my parents were AGAINST me doing honors classes, I hate to fight them about it). The outcome is entirely dependent on what the student himself put in.
But like one line is that "being poor" blog that is always passed around, you are responsible for decisions you made at 14 whether you like it or not.
Oh, for sure. The larger issues are all the issues that come with being in a poor, inner-city school where there are no real examples of how doing well in school could actually help one's life. Where gangs, violence, and going to prison or jail is assumed to be normal. I had students confused by the idea I've never been arrested and where all the adults in their family (including grandparents) are members of gangs. At this particular school, 4% would go onto any post secondary education. Less than 1% would attain a four year degree. The (majority of) students and their families had zero buy in for school meaning much of anything.
That’s unfortunate. Twenty years ago I attended high school in a working class suburb. I was fortunate to get selected into a gifted program and had teachers who challenged me to work hard and overcome my surrounding. Changed my life and inspired a career as a data scientist and entrepreneur. I hope the younger generation can have the benefit of adults who care enough about them to challenge them to succeed, because the real world does not grade on the curve.
I did terrible in high school and ended up going to university 6 years later and did very well. High school is barely a faint memory of my past and being judged on that would definitely irk me.
I'm sorry to hear that. It was a genuinely terrible phase of my life, and caused a lot of personal re-evaluation for me.
I actually adored high school. There were 330 people in my graduating class. I graduated third, only a sliver of GPA away from salutatorian. There were 6 National Merit Finalists in my class (including myself) and one of the things that always drove me to excel in high school was the sense of competition with my very intelligent peers, along with the support of some amazing teachers who actually cared about us and would be actively disappointed when one of us didn't live up to our potential. Many of my advanced classes in high school were very small. We had 12 people in our AP Chem class.
Then I got to college and I was just another number. I lost my peer support group and any meaningful feedback on my work from my instructors and with it, my motivation.
Until that point in my life, I'd always had my sense of self and identity tangled up with academic achievement. I was a "smart kid". Doing poorly in college didn't just feel like a failure to get a particular grade, it made me feel like I was a failure as a person.
It took me years to get over that. In fact, I'm not 100% sure I am completely over it. But at least I don't let it consume me anymore.
You're more than your grades, you're more than college. There is so. much. more. to any single person than a single facet. If you think you'd do better in a smaller school, try to transfer before it's too late. Or if you decide that college isn't for you, don't beat yourself up about it. You can still well, especially in technical fields where skill is more important than a sheet of paper.
And get help for the depression, if you aren't already. I spent about a year on Effexor (and Ambien for the crippling insomnia that piggybacked onto my depression - it was terrible, I used to get auditory hallucinations of alarms clocks and phones ringing in the distance) and it truly made the difference. True clinical depression is a chemical blackhole in your own mind, and the drugs can give you the foothold you need to find your way back out of it.
At the end of school (17-18 years old) I was top of my class. I got the best exam results in my town. I expected to breeze Uni, I sailed through the first year and some of the second, breezed some higher (3rd/4th year honours) classes for which I had a natural aptitude. I realised not long after starting that I was more intelligent than some of my class but by no means all but also tellingly lacked their drive and ability to knuckle down. There were several others that were completely out of my league in all aspects.
Sadly I'm still kinda there wallowing in that [self-]defeat 12 years on.
Idk. I graduated in the past decade. My school had a pretty expansive program of advanced classes and not advanced classes, which resulted in basically isolating the smart kids from the not so smart kids. Because of this, it was fine to be nerdy and smart. Yet in senior year there was an unexpected sort of social war when the not so smart kids wanted to control things like prom, and were unhappy when the rest of the school, who were never seen in their social circles, also had a voice. Got quite nasty. My area was relatively wealthy, and people probably had generally good lives. I think it would have been very unpleasant if it were a poor area with no separation of classes and more frequent trouble at home situations.
At the end of the day, if kids are struggling, they're going to feel frustrated. And they're going to take it out on the physically weakest kids and the ones who are most making them look bad by being good at school if they're not separated, protected, or somehow made mutually engaged (all of which are expensive things to implement). I don't think it has anything to do with anti intellectualism personally.
I was GT in my very mediocre public school - shit was still hard for me, academically. I got a B in calculus 2 in high school. I constantly feel limited by intelligence and social skills (which harms motivation). Most of this thread is just bragging - “dumb” people like me don’t get the benefit of the doubt and don’t receive any of the societal benefits either.
I could have gone to a school for the gifted, but I wanted to be with normal people, not the over achievers (friends that went later told me my worries where justified). At some point I just decided to minimize all school effort and did my own thing as good as I could, but hated school since 2nd or 3rd grade.
I dropped from winning some math competition every now and than to the lowest mark that got me through, but I would do it this way again.
I'm happy with whom (not what) I have become, a thing surprisingly few can say.
Yeah, I'm one of them. And I too use to think it was all me and my aptitude and merit and hard work. Now, it makes me cringe how I could ever think that. With age I've realized how privileged I was, and how many people who really worked far harder than me and still didn't get ahead.
To be clear, schools can't fix all the worlds injustices. Life is unfair and realistically we may never be able to fix that. But we can stop doing this that are making it blatantly more unfair than it has to be...
I was identified in middle primary school and had to change school to attend another school that had a class for gifted children. I proceeded to take the top grades at that class. I finished primary school close to my 12th birthday, years ahead in basically every category. There was no option to continue in any program for high school so I was sent to the local high school, an impoverished school where the majority of the effort goes to controlling poor behaviour as opposed to education. The solution of the school was to just let me stay in a normal class doing not a great deal of learning for a few years.
I spent some very unhappy years between ~15 and 24. I wish I'd had the chance for a different youth.
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