Did you enjoy high school?

[malbui]

I had a contrasting time thanks to the system I was passing through. From age 11 I spent two dreadful years in a local comprehensive where discipline was limited to hoping the little thugs wouldn't burn the school down during term time. As the one prominently bright pupil in my year (this is a realistic assessment: I scored more than 15% more than any other pupil in every subject on both sets of year-end exams) I was tormented by my peers and largely ignored by the staff. Having my appendix blow halfway through the second year and therefore being absent for several weeks was a blessing as I could stay home and read instead of running the gauntlet of playground physical and verbal abuse every day.

Fortunately (for me, at least) I lived in an area where selective education at 13+ still existed and I transferred to the local grammar school where I was supremely happy. I had a string of excellent and committed teachers and was taught in an environment of ambitiously bright students who (in the main) respected discipline and wanted to learn. There were a few teenage bullies there, it has to be admitted, but in another stroke of good fortune I grew from being a skinny little runt to being 1m88 and 85kg and a few good shoeings out on the rugby pitch, where I knew what I was doing, kept things in order.

 

[Jorghnassen]

It was OK. Suffered a little bullying like "everyone else", being a smart kid and slightly smaller than average. But I had friends too. Had my share of good and bad teachers, never needed to study (it's quite simple, all I had to do was listen in class and write down the notes, and do the little work required, which took no time. When it got to repetitive, boring examples or extensive review, my imagination would keep me from getting bored, I did a lot of doodles around my notes and in my agenda). Of course, I wouldn't go back, kids these days... Then again, I wouldn't go back to my undegrad days either, though I had a great time, it's just not my place anymore.

 

[slingblade]

They were better for me than grammar school and junior high, especially my senior year when we moved to a new state and I suddenly found myself moderately "popular" for the first time. No one knew my geek-nerd-victim history, and so I had no bullies that year, got asked to dances, and had more than one friend. It was nice. And too brief.

(and I had a car. That was great!)

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Happened to me once. Did I mention I was a chemistry geek?

You mean like some rich kid wanted to have a "talk" with me because I must have cheated on that test, no kid like me could have gotten a better grade than him fairly?

Or the poor kid who wanted to have the same talk because I was "not staying in my place" (with him)?


Bullying doesn't build character. Fortunately I was a (*&(*& good long distance runner, I could float the classes without breaking a sweat, and a bunch of the good teachers did not support the crap at all. (Some did, though, because it was "wrong", or because "you must have cheated.)

And we have people like that here, too, don'tcha know?

I can say I never experienced that in ANY of the many schools I went to growing up (and since my familiy moved pretty much every single year, basically because the term of the lease was up, not to other states or anything, I went to a lot of schools). I've actually never experienced the "class system" as you seem to be describing. Very odd... I had thought that particular idiocy had fallen out of favor. Strange to think that such stereotypical stuck up rich people who think they are better because they live in a rich family actually still exist.

 

[T'ai Chi]

Yup, loved it!

I went to a small science and tech school, located near NIKE world headquarters. The school found interesting internships for us all over the area. I really learned to like math and science here, and we'd build trails in a nearby wetlands.

Also, everyone was popular because the school was so tiny.

Did I mention foosball for PE credit?

 

[coalesce]

HS of Art & Design, NYC, graduated 1983.

Loved it! Not enough to go back, but enough for me to appreciate that it was the best 4 years of school I ever had--far exceeding the next 4 years I would spend at the School of Visual Arts. The school was not zoned, meaning that anyone in NYC can attend, not just kids from the surrounding neighborhood. I made some lifelong friends and consider the education I received there the best I could imagine. I learned discipline and the value of deadlines there. I was never bullied nor teased about my weight (consistently 30-40lbs over) nor my clothes (a lot of second-hand). And I cannot forget Dr. Joel Arroghetti, who made sure I passed 10th grade Geometry whether I liked it or not. Without him, I'd still be there trying to figure it out.

Michael

 

[Alliebubs]

I loved high school! Well, not grade 9, because that's just an awkward time from everyone, but from grade 10 onward, it was a great experience. I met a lot of great friends, participated in student council and other extracurricular activities.

Most of the classes were challenging (except career planning; our counselor was a coke addict) and quite stimulating. I'll always be thankful to Mrs. York's history classes for really honing and helping me craft my critical thinking skills.

 

[Wowbagger]

Short Answer: NO!!!!!

Long Answer: Too painful to even think about.

I learned more stuff in just the past few months than I ever had in all of my schooling (with the possible exception of the ABC's, which today could be learned easily enough from TMBG songs, instead).

What was that quote Mark Twain once said? I'm too lazy to get the exact wording (maybe someone else will post it), but it was something along the lines of: I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

 

[tygirwulf]

I hated high school. It's been 5 1/2 years since I left and took the GED and I still get angry when I think about it. I've always had a weak immune system so I was sick a lot of the time. A lot of the teachers and faculty acted like it was my fault. One teacher even told my class one day that I was absent because I was faking being sick. I was in the hospital for pneumonia at that time.

I'm also hearing-impaired, and a few teachers loved to have the class watch un-captioned videos and take notes, then quiz us or grade the amount of notes we'd taken. Of course this isn't going to work for me, and even after numerous conferences they didn't seem to understand why they should even bother making basic accomodations for me. The principal told me outright the school couldn't afford to buy a caption-enabled TV, and then the next week, the school received a delivery of 22 new VCRs. The teachers didn't want to bother writing down assignments either, so I would end up doing the wrong thing because I misunderstood what was being said. Some of them avoided me so I couldn't ask after class either. They went out of their way to be, well, rule 8s to me. It took a visit to my lawyer, whose wife happened to be the secretary of state, for them to do anything to help me.

I will say not all of my teachers were like this. A few weren't, and they made my day bearable.

The other problem I had was my school was a very small one. Few electives, no challenging classes, nothing for me to exercise my brain in. Everything to me was boredom and busywork. I think a lot of teachers resented that, too, that I could know answers to their questions without reading the textbook. I resented having to spend hours a day after school doing homework that taught me nothing, that was not even interesting. I remember coloring in maps in 11th grade and labelling state capitals. I was disgusted with this assignment. We had to color in every state in a different color too. Eventually I just gave up doing this stupid busywork. I spent my evenings online, often researching whatever struck my fancy or talking to people overseas. Or I'd go to the university and hang out with a group of acquaintances from Nigeria, Kenya and Bangladesh.

When I was in 10th grade the school finally decided to institute a "gifted" program. This was basically a monthly meeting with all the "gifted" kids from all grades to sit in a classroom and do activities like talking about nothing in particular or, you guessed it, coloring. I was the only high schooler in this group. At one meeting the teacher in charge let slip that we were supposed to be meeting weekly for the school to get funding from the state for it, but of course, we were only meeting monthly because they couldn't be bothered with us. When I stopped doing my homework and she told me I couldn't be in the program anymore unless I raised my grades, I just walked away from her.

At the end of my junior year, I told my mother I was not going to high school anymore. She made me take a GED practice test first, which I scored extremely well on, so she allowed me to withdraw. I think my high school was glad to see me go.

I also hated how the teachers would stand by as certain people were bullied and mistreated by other students. Often the teachers would always blame the victim for being troublemakers. I would try to be nice to them as best I knew how. The other students left me alone completely, except for the girl who was my next door neighbor. She was nice to me but we had nothing in common.

College is nice because I actually have to apply my mind from time to time. I loved my intro to philosophy class, because I had to really concentrate on what the professor was talking about.

 

[money]

Wow, some of you had horrible experiences. I never saw anything like that (daily harassment, physical abuse) going on in my high school, but then again I did go to a relatively small school. We only had 111 students in my graduating class.

I loved high school. Classes were a breeze until AP, then history, gov't and calc were challenging to varying degrees. I got along with the nerds because I was in every available AP class. I was mostly seen as a jock due to 3 years of varsity baseball and football. I got along with the mormons since my best friend was seminary president (my town was about a third mormon.) I got along with the stoners and the cowboys because of friendships from middle school days. I took four years of Spanish, so I even had friends amongst the mexicans (my town was also a third hispanic.)

I mostly looked at high school as the social event of the year. I'd do it almost the same, except I would have stuck with basketball and been a bit more ballsy with the ladies.

 

[jman19999]

In a word..........No!

We had a very good school district. But I never cared much for high school. To me, it was something that you were forced to sit through. I felt that many teachers were inept, because the system rewarded seniority. Many faculty were there for so long, it appeared to me that they were sick of teaching.

The 5 days a week ◊◊◊◊ burned out on me and I was often to tired to study at the end of the day. Teachers acted and reacted like their class was the most important and assignments were often little more than "busy work" crap. Due to a documented learning disbility, my grades were very poor in many areas and I just wanted to get out of there.

College was better because I was able to modify my schedule and classes to take more of what I was interested in. I was treated way better by professors and TA's in college than teachers in high school. My high-school teachers often played favorites and if they didn't like you, they were often rude or abrasive when you tried to ask questions or get extra help.

High school was not fun for me.

Jeff

 

[Avita]

Awful. Extremely boring, for one - I had some teachers who did their best to make things interesting, but for me, it didn't quite make up for the roteness (and frequent uselessness) of the info we had to learn. Nobody ever did anything physical to me, but there was quite a lot of verbal/emotional bullying, to which I reacted by tuning the world out and fetishizing the things that made me different from my classmates, because I never wanted to be like them. I've spent all the years since then learning how to come out of that shell and stop compulsively doing certain things. I remember how one fellow student called me "witch" with such fear and loathing in his voice that I knew that he believed what he was saying.

At the time I was attending high school, I was also depressed, and while HS was not the only reason behind it, I only started recovering once I got into college. I used to hit myself as my own form of self-harm - if I'd known about cutting at the time, I'd probably have done that too. While I tried to conceal this behavior somewhat, there were plenty of times that I hit myself in class or in hallways, and must have been noticed. Nobody, and I mean nobody, including the teachers, ever said anything, although they commented plenty on my other weird behaviors. The apathy behind that, I find quite frightening.

 

[Godmode]

I enjoyed the social aspects of school, but the actual school part was very boring for me. Part of that may have to do with the fact I moved around alot and often found myself either repeating things I'd already learned, or skipping some things altogether. (Like through some freak timing/location problem, I totally missed out on sexual education...luckily my parents weren't shy about answering questions)

 

[Hindmost]

I am probably in the middle of the bell curve. I enjoyed some parts of high school and didn't enjoy others. I was--and still am a geek--so the social aspects of school were generally outside my prospects. I carried my sliderule around with pride however...and my golf clubs...a truly geeky sport back in my high school days.

After teaching for a few years now, I am convinced that small high schools are better for students than large high schools. Student interactions and the school atmosphere seem more hassle-free with less students.

glenn

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Wow, some of you had horrible experiences. I never saw anything like that (daily harassment, physical abuse) going on in my high school, but then again I did go to a relatively small school. We only had 111 students in my graduating class.

Nah, I don't think the size of the school has anything to do with it. I had a terrible time with the peckerheads i was forced to endure on a regular basis and my school was only slightly larger than yours (120 students).

 

[pgwenthold]

And my school was even smaller (75). I thought the smaller classes would be an even bigger problem, because there are fewer people with whom you might be able to find a place. It's easier to find people with common interests at a larger school. At a large school, your group of 6 is 1% of the class. At my school, finding 6 friends means having it is almost 10% of the class.

The only activities that were popular enough to be in common with any significant number of students were drinking (80% of the class) and sports (about a third, which were about 50/50 drinkers). If you integrated over all the high school classes, you could get a critical mass in drama (again, 1/3 athletes, mostly non-drinkers). Then there was also the town you were from (our school was made up of about 4 small towns).

So if you were a non-drinking athlete that hung out with the drama folks, you didn't have a lot of others around that were much like you.

 

[Hindmost]

Although there can always be excetions, recent research indicates that smaller schools tend to be better for students. I realize this isn't always the case. The cutoff seems to be 1000 students or so. Here are a couple of links that provide some information. We also had a seminar in our school about school size and social problems. The speaker--whose name eludes me unfortunately--indicated that smaller schools tend to have less issues with drug abuse.

Larger schools now are trying to break their schools into smaller groups within the same building. Many of those programs are in the pilot stage, so data is obviously still coming in.

glenn


http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/section4/indicator30.asp

http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/edu/size.html

 

[sackett]

Size matters. It matters a lot.

Owing to the small size of our community – a tiny village and an almost unpeopled rural area surrounding it – high school was for us essentially the final phase of a continuum that started in the first grade. You might almost say that high school, with its constant intense interactions, began when you were six.

Yes, I mean that: I attended high school with most of the same kids I met on the first day of first grade. Needless to say, the entire school was tiny, twelve grades in a single building, and high school was even tinier. My graduating class was one of the biggest in years, sixteen or seventeen as I recall. (The class before ours consisted of four girls; the only boy, Dang Blamey, dropped out in his senior year “b’cuz he weren’t gittin’ nowheres.” Well, he wasn’t.)

After twelve years of claustrophobic association, there wasn’t much left for us to learn about each other. Cliques could scarcely form; there wasn’t enough material. You couldn’t pick your friends; you couldn’t pick your enemies; you could scarcely say which was which. That could have gruelling consequences. If you didn’t get along with somebody – and clashes were inevitable, we were adolescents after all – you couldn’t avoid him in study hall or lunchroom or gym, and you couldn’t help but be in most of the same classes with him. Squabbles, even fights, settled nothing; you had to associate with everybody all the time.

Hell no I didn’t enjoy it, and I believe that the near-suffocation of that strange way of living harmed my education – and our school was not at all a bad one; Wyoming has always spent its money pretty freely on education, and even that little school set high standards.

Couple the airlessness of high school with geographic isolation, and you have all you need to raise generations of distorted kids. If we hadn’t had the immense and beautiful sanctuary of Wyoming, we might have turned seriously weird, and I mean textbook-case weird.

We don’t have class reunions. We have school reunions, when as many as twenty old crocks may show up, and discover that bygones ain’t bygones, not yet, by God.

 

[pgwenthold]

Although there can always be excetions, recent research indicates that smaller schools tend to be better for students. I realize this isn't always the case. The cutoff seems to be 1000 students or so. Here are a couple of links that provide some information. We also had a seminar in our school about school size and social problems. The speaker--whose name eludes me unfortunately--indicated that smaller schools tend to have less issues with drug abuse.

Larger schools now are trying to break their schools into smaller groups within the same building. Many of those programs are in the pilot stage, so data is obviously still coming in.

glenn


http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/section4/indicator30.asp

http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/edu/size.html

The point in the second link about extracurricular activities is most certainly legit. I could have never made the sports teams in a larger school, but was good enough to be a 4-sport letterman in my high school.

However, there is likely a flaw in the first link

Among regular high schools, a positive relationship exists between school size and the percentage of teachers who reported that apathy, tardiness, absenteeism, dropping out, and drug use are "serious" problems among students in their school. Teachers in larger schools were generally more likely to report that these problems are serious than were their peers in relatively smaller schools.

This aspect is pretty much meaningless, as it is probably an example of a single-ended observation. Things like tardiness and absenteeism are more noticable than arriving at time and attending, and so they get noticed. The larger schools will have more instances of absenteeism and tardiness, but it's not clear that it will necessarily be more prevelent when size of the classes are taken into account. More importantly, the teachers' reporting that they are a problem provides little insight into the question, because it is subject to bias. Not saying it's not a problem, just that the teachers' impression of whether it is a problem or not is not very useful for comparison.

 

[epepke]

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Not only was I improperly socialized, some people did some horrible things to me that I was only to find out about 15 or more years later.

Learned some good stuff, though.