I am surely in the toils.

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oh hey nightmares from the hell that was 1999-2000

No, Calvin was right

Calvin was 100% right.

sometimes i think i miss high school and then..this is pretty accurate

one time i was in class in middle school and i was eating a beef jerky slim jim and the teacher said “stop eating that unless you have enough to share” so i pulled out a box of 200 slim jims (from costco of course) and the teacher fucking confiscated it.

side note: perfect example of “is that your real objection?”

A friend of mine used to go through the pizza line and try and get more banana peppers than he was allowed or something so one day he brought a whole ass jar of banana peppers to lunch because he wanted to eat them and he got detention and they were taken away. It was some 8th grade controversial bullshit.

I remember this time in my technical graphics class we had a teacher who was really specific about the kind of pencil we used. So one day this kid had enough of his shit and when he told him the pencil he had was the wrong hardness he looked at him and looked at the pencil and said “oh! Sorry sir, I didnt realise!” He the proceeded to reach into his bag and pull out one of those huge gag pencils that was, in fact in the correct hardness.

So the teacher stood there stunned at the big dick energy of this lad, eventually he snatched the pencil off of him and (I forgot to mention that we had this class in the woodwork room) went up to the giant saw to saw it into 3 pieces. Long story short, the teacher got in trouble because it turns out the pencil was stupidly expensive and the kid threatend to sue the school.

Same. In year 11 maths, had a dude bring an apple because he had a meeting at lunch so he was hungry and the teacher gave him “the ultimatum”. But this was no ordinary student. Long story short; every Thursday after school, a bunch of us would go to the nearby park and eat the whole ass watermelon he brought to class every week. Dude copped like 15 detentions because he refused to stop.

i knew this conceptually, but like you dont really KNOW that public school is designed to set you up to be a good worker bee until you're cracking out a report, after hours, at 7 pm on a monday night and it hits you; oh, i'm doing homework, this is why they made me do homework, and suddenly i'm feeling it in my chest. i cant believe i was raised by the state to be an automaton, and worse, i am one of the lucky robots who isn't doing manual labor.

ya know what fucking reblog this, we SHOULD be mad

the original "robots" were really just humans manufactured to be slaves:

[x]

Heartbreaking Simpsons Moments 1/∞: Bart Gets an F

I never understood why it’s an F if he gets more than half out of 100? Unless it’s more than 100. If you get more than half the answers right how is it an F?

You must not be from America. Here, grading is fucked up.

Average American Grading Scale: A+- 97-100 A - 94-96 A- - 90-93 B- 80-89 C- 70-79 D- 60-69 F- 59 and under

And in some places in America it goes by a 7 point scale, so it’d be A - 100-93 B - 92-85 C - 84-78 D - 77-70 F - 69 and below

Now you understand why American kid’s feel like there’s no point to school. If you have a 100 question text, and get 79 of them correct, that’s a C. That mean’s your Average Intelligence on this particular subject. And it get’s even worse when you have only like… a 10 question quiz. If you get two wrong? that’s a B. 80 fucking %. Now tell me again why American school’s are easier? 

No wait but whats the grading system in other countries?

UK Grading Scale

100-70: A

69-60: B

59-50: C

49-40: D

Below 40: F

next time you try to tell americans that we’re stupid

i’m gonna remind you

that our “average” is your “A”

#is that true? Yep I was shocked when I heard this in a different post but a Google search pulls up a ton of sites backing this up. Shit son I woulda passed College Algebra with an A in the UK. And I spent the end of the semester in perpetual fear that I would fail and have to retake the class.

And basically as an American you’re expected to get 80 or higher. Technically 70s are considered ‘average’ but there is such a level of pressure to get a B or higher, that Cs have become equal to Ds. Basically anything under 60 you might as well gotten a 0, and anything between 60-80 is considered practically failing. So basically schools have to be designed to make sure majority of students are getting 80s or higher on specific topics, which means you’re spending all your time going over a few choice facts a billion times and there is very little room to teach anything else. Which explains why American schools are of such low quality. The insane demand on the students ends up wrecking their education. Not only do you not have time to teach them anything, but they end up hating learning. Even outside of school your life is dedicated to memorizing these few dumb facts because your homework ends up taking hours of your time. A teacher from one subject says they expect you to spend 2 hours every night on their homework. And if you’re studying 5 subjects and they all demand that 2 hours? Good fucking luck, because if you don’t have straight all 80s or higher you’re not getting into a good college and college degrees have somehow become the minimum requirement for getting jobs.

I spent most of my junior year of high school in a state of constant panic that I was going to get a C in Honors Physics much less fail the class. If I got a C on my report card, I was grounded until the next one. I lost count of the times I’d wake up at five in the morning to take the early bus to go in for zero hour before school actually started for the day

File this under the exact reason so many Americans detest going to school.

This. All of this. Now add to that a set of parents who look at an all A+ report card (save for one subject) and ALL they can focus on is how *horrible* it is that you’re “slipping” in Biology for having an A-. #true story

In a lot of areas of America, including the schools I went to, don’t even use D. It goes straight from C to F. Anything under 70% counts as a failing grade. How messed up is that?? And like someone said above, getting a C is like “ooh you barely passed, you’re on thin ice”

We had to get 70% just to PASS, and for y’all it’s an A??? School grading systems need an overhaul

An A in Canadian school is roughly an 85%+. B (i think) goes from 75%-85%. C from 65%-75%. D is 50%-65% and Failing is anything below 50%. Personally, I’ve never had below a B on my report card but if I was american I’d probably have had some Cs in my time in school.

In Brazil it’s like. You got 80% right? You get 80% of the grade. In numbers. No letter bullshit. I never understood why put on the letters if you have to calculate how much you got right anyway?

Here where I live in NY, for my college and also where I went to public school, anything 65 and above is passing. Hell if you were close they’d tend to round it up. 

The problem with this system isn’t that it’s harder to pass. I’m fairly certain it’s just as hard to get an A in America as in the UK. Yes, you have to get a higher percentage to pass, but that’s because the difficulty level of the test as a whole is lower.

So the issue isn’t that American kids have to take harder tests. The issue is that American kids develop a skewed perception of what success should look like, a perfectionism complex, and difficulty coping with rejection, difficulty handling criticism, etc. You get straight A college students who can’t find a job in their field, or settle for a job that’s exploitative, because they aren’t prepared for the reality that 80% of their job applications willl be rejected and they give up after seven tries, already viewing themselves as failures.

It also sucks to give bad grades.

Years ago, I changed to what I call a “Level Up” system of scoring, using additive scoring instead of subtractive. Paralleling how we study media narratives in my “Science Fiction & the Popular Media course,” I use the metaphor of Leveling Up their experience while earning better grades (like in gaming, one media form we study).

In place of the traditional deductive-only grading system (where students lose points by not turning in “perfect” work), my system is additive.

In all my classes now, by simply completing all the readings and viewings, turning in acceptable responses on time before each class, creating a decent mid-term project, participating equitably in a group presentation (during non-Covid times), creating a decent final project, attending most class sessions, and partnering to help lead at least two class sessions, students are pretty much guaranteed at least a C+ for their final grades.

Then everything they do beyond the basic requirements earns bonus points toward “Leveling Up” their scores (and, therefore, grades), while giving them greater freedom to choose between options and tailor their learning experience.

I suggest a multitude of opportunities to earn bonus points, for example, by doing additional research or attending outside events and writing reports on what they learn or sharing their discoveries in class discussion. They can study or attend anything relevant, whether I suggested it or they discover it on their own.

They can also Level Up by exceeding my expectations on each project and during each class period; that is, they earn more points than the base value by exceeding “average effort” (traditionally graded as C work), thereby raising their grades (and deepening their educational experience). If anyone in higher administration were to give me trouble about giving an entire class A grades, I have plenty of evidence to demonstrate that they earned that exceptional grade!

There’s always a few each semester who simply don’t turn in things, or don’t care deeply enough to strive for top scores, or their lives implode and they prefer to take a lower grade rather than an Incomplete to finish later. But I no longer have to deal with people complaining about how they should have been given higher grades. Nice bonus. Win-win.

This puts learners in control of their scores - and their education - more than possible in traditional grading systems. Their final grade really is up to them!

It’s not for every college or alternative-school teacher, of course. Such a system requires explaining it to students fresh out of American primary schools where they have zero freedom and are used to panicking about how many points they’ll lose. Lots of institutions are very conservative about grading. And it’s a lot more work for the teacher.

But totally worth it to see so many people really soar! Plus I get to learn about a lot of cool stuff they sought out on their own, and see a lot of fun and creative projects I wouldn’t have thought to assign, like a dinosaur diorama, or oil paintings, or movie reviews on their blog, or many other wonderful things.

And it’s not just me: This kind of thing is gaining some pedagogical traction in education theory: In the academic world, it’s called “incentive-centered grading” or “gamification.”

If you’re a teacher with the freedom to implement alternative grading schemes, I urge you to try this. Drop me a note if you’d like tips from what I’ve learned over the years.

There’s a few people in the notes saying “but people used to come to class in pajamas” and yes that’s true but like, not everyone feels comfortable doing that and there’s a lot of social pressure involved there.

Also something not mentioned in this tweet that I think is equally important: poor and rural students may not have the bandwidth to have their camera on all the time. My rural internet connection has absolutely ABYSMAL upload speeds, so while I can stream video coming in from someone else (as long as nobody else in the house is doing the same or downloading a large file or anything), I cannot actually do my own streaming because the connection chokes. I would much rather be able to, you know, just focus on the class material and not be distracted by making sure my camera isn’t blinking out every 30 seconds. One of these things is far more important to my education than the other.

I do not require my students to turn on their camera unless it’s group discussion time and they WANT to. We don’t know what anyone’s home Life or living situation is like, there’s no point of putting that kind of pressure on them

My teacher over the summer made the entire class time discussion, but the catch was you didn't have to have your camera on or even talk out loud, you could type in the chat. He would lead the discussions while keeping an eye on the chat and had that be a completely valid form of participating. It was the best discussion class I've ever had, because you could participate without pressure, people who normally wouldn't speak up felt comfortable typing, and if you had a thought from an earlier point you could mention it without disrupting the flow of the conversation. 10/10 would recommend to all teachers

that's how I run my classes! most use video, but not all the time, and some only use chat - and those are likely the ones who wouldn't talk much in class anyway

also, I've had a few suffering Covid, so they couldn't attend at all if not for online discussion, especially the chat feature when their voices just don't work

Ok.  I’m asking this seriously.  Public schools aren’t businesses.  They don’t turn a profit.  They aren’t running in the red.  How is opening schools back up supposed to jump start the economy?

Oh I see.  It’s so parents can return to work allowing the government to skip out on another round of stimulus money.

Hmm.  Don’t like that much.

As someone who ran track and cross country for 4 years in high school, this always fucking mystified me the most out of all the insane shit PE had us do.

Track and field club taught all new runners how to properly warm up, stretch, pace, etc. Its a process, and doing it properly takes 15-20 minutes to make sure your body is ready so you dont hurt yourself.

PE didnt do jack shit, they just said "go run a mile" so 70% of the fucking kids sprinted flat out the first lap and basically walked the other 3. Multiple people did it in boots or tennis shoes. I'm amazed more of them didnt pull a muscle or worse in the process.

I dont know what the purpose of PE was, but it sure as shit wasnt proper exercise. And I think a lot of people suffered for that. If they spent the time teaching us about the importance of physical health, proper nutrition, how to safely stretch/exercise, etc, we would all be better off now.

Let's be real, PE exists to shame and torture the fat kids, and for pretty much no other reason.

*Insert that thing with all the people who dread gym*

this one?

I was so furious when she was made Secretary of Education and I remember just hoping she wouldn’t fuck shit up too bad, and now she’s influencing policy at the highest office regarding education and a global pandemic that we have absolutely fucked up beyond belief.

This next year is probably gonna suck in just so many awful shitty ways.

to be fair to the youths, this is the same generation that will secretly cross state lines to get vaccinated, you only really need to be worried about the conservative half of the lot (although, you’ll have to be careful because from my professional experience as a former child, they, just like their adult compatriots, are big fans of bullying and may rip off their peers masks at recess), and the lot that is too young to understand disease prevention. We aren’t reopening schools for kids though, we are opening them so that their parents can be productive members of capitalism, which was trash before, and is trash now.

I see in the notes lots of concern about kids (whose parents have paid up to date) missing discounted school lunches.

Solved by bringing food to the kids each day. That also provides an opportunity for checking in on them, and looking for signs of abuse (another concern).

But will we? Costs money, and money-hoarders are too busy hoarding right now to care about the 99%.

This country’s social failings are glaring right now.

i literally cannot imagine being in college right now with a pandemic going on. i 100% believe i would have dropped out if this was going on while i was still in school (i dropped out for a LESS globally pandemic-y situation than this, after all lol). anyway if you're in school right now you are doing amazing and this is hard, so it's totally reasonable to be struggling, and also I'm furious at your university for you because I'm sure there are a dozen reasons for me to be. hang in there.