Ignominiousbob: kenoshaillini: It's really a shame that the best and brightest minds of our generation are here on fark making fun of this girl.

You sound fat.

and probably lives with 6 or more cats.

I began with one ball for the whole course and it got irretrievably lost, and the ball represented an idea, and I had no idea, and I went to the pro shop and there on the table a book called "The Leader In Me" and I opened the cover and there inside hollowed out sat a golf ball. I was so excited I knocked that ball for all my might but I was off and it came down on top of the mediocrity of a valedictorian student. Oh, Great..

America uses the Prussian School System. It's designed to turn out factory workers, soldiers and obedient prison inmates. We don't have any factories anymore so guess what your kids are learning to be? The Prussian School System is also what allowed a guy like Hitler to come to power in Germany. If I ever breed, my kids are going to be florescent toothed homeschoolers.

Farking Allah.

Is there nothing more pretentious, arrogant and stupid than a high schooler?

But leave it to Youth to think that their opinions matter and that they know more than adults and that they and only they know what is wrong and how to fix it.

Precious little snowflake has a disappoint.

douchebag/hater: Is there nothing more pretentious, arrogant and stupid than a high schooler?

yes, you.

schubie: America uses the Prussian School System. It's designed to turn out factory workers, soldiers and obedient prison inmates. We don't have any factories anymore so guess what your kids are learning to be? The Prussian School System is also what allowed a guy like Hitler to come to power in Germany. If I ever breed, my kids are going to be florescent toothed homeschoolers.

Hitler? Really? Come on now.

Public schools are tasked with teaching every kid in America to be a functional citizen. That's it. It's not their job to produce anything beyond factory level skills. If a kid is looking for more, that's what college/tech school/art school are for.

Praise Cheesus: The school principal mentioned to me I was the only student in the state to score a 100% on the graduation exam.

.

i bet he tells that to a lot of people.

do you have to be in the gym in 23 minutes?

Ignominiousbob: Animatronik: Look at you critiquing the physique of the valedictorian! Isn't that part of the problem???

Welcome to Fark. I recommend the mugshots, and some of the Photoshop contests.

Yeah and now I post the pic of the guy who blogs about chicks who are way below his standards, and then you say you've got to be at the gym in 26 minutes (I was in that thread), and then I post the pic of Mustard Man and say you mean like this guy, and then you say...
those are what people call memes, I call them idioms.

BTW, in tributes to enhanced derrieres, shouldn't forget about Sir Mix-a-Lot, in addition to Queen and Spinal tap.

thamike: IronTony: Unless you graduated from a high school in an affluent district, you know exactly what she's talking about.

I graduated from a high school in a very affluent district, and I know exactly what she's talking about. And I don't mean affluent like Malibu affluent. These were the powerful people's kids, so my district was considered either 1 or 2 in the US at the time. There was still a lack of creativity being pushed on everyone, but if one is intelligent, one knows how to subvert it and do their own thing while still accomplishing the goals being sold to them.

I may have gone to the very same district. And I'm very proud to report that I was expelled from that high school at the age of 14 (it was the '60s and running an underground newspaper was pretty much the highest form of treason at the time).

For the record, I now have a doctorate from a Big 10 university.

I think the American educational system is awful. It is designed to stamp out creativity. It encourages mediocrity. We are clearly now reaping what has been sown.

redmid17: No real school system is going to waste their time teaching logical fallacies and tautologies.

Kids learning how to think logically would pretty much kill politics, wouldn't it?

Praise Cheesus: In high school, it got to the point where instructors would hand me an idea, give me a time frame to accomplish the goal and present copies of my drafts once a week. I was on campus about 2 hours a week, the rest of my time was spent doing the actual work... and working a real job.

When you grew up, what career do you pursue (out of curiosity)?

Spmkk, for some reason I find that incredibly disturbing.

RanDomino: That's exactly what she's saying. Her point is that it's bullshiat.

I realize that, but it's not like it's preventing her from achieving. It's sad and needs fixing, but she's certainly not losing out. I feel bad for the kids who don't learn in the regimented style and get left behind, not for her. She can go wherever she wants and become whatever she wants.

I've noticed that it doesn't matter what high school kids do, whether they fark up and make fools of themselves or they make an effort to be better people, Fark is going to ride them like Government mules because they are high school kids. What is it going to take for Fark to genuinly care or be proud of our most valuable assets?

Let's see, she wrote a speech complaining that the school system only taught her how to complete her next assignment. Apparently she completed the assignment of writing her speech by ripping off "Linchpin" by Seth Godin.

Congrats, sweetie, you're taking credit for other people's work. You'll go far in middle management.

Animatronik: those are what people call memes, I call them idioms.

Well, if you know what a meme is, then you know about responding to someone's lengthy screed on some topic with an observation or guess about their obesity.

I was told many years ago yep at 18 you think you have all the answers, but hell you don't even know what the questions are yet. When I started working and raising a family found out Grandpa was right.

Philbb: downstairs: Plenty of people blow off high school and do very well in college. Plenty of people blow off high school AND college and do very well in life.

Can you define "plenty" and provide citations please.

I agree that some people do, just as I know that some people do well in high school and then fail at college. Some also do well in high school and college don't do very well in life. But, I think, these are the exceptions.

i gotta agree here. plenty is probably too much. it is a rare person who can achieve at a high level. college and high school don't factor in to their success. they are just driven to succeed. if they chose to excel in high school or college they would have. it' their nature to succeed in whatever venue they choose.

formal "higher" education and high achievement can be mutually exclusive. but it's the individual and not the system that determines the result.

Jim_Callahan: downstairs: That's all BS. She didn't have to "excel" like she did to make it in the world. She's just bitter, I suppose, that she's looking back at a lot of missed opportunity.

Plenty of people blow off high school and do very well in college. Plenty of people blow off high school AND college and do very well in life.

At least she's smart enough to realize the charade. But she wasn't smart enough to not play it.

People that miss high school and do well in life generally didn't "blow off" high school willingly, and generally care enough about it to at least get a GED later.

But yeah, other than that I'm with you 100%. Barring your profession requiring certain technical aptitudes, you never have to go to college. Go loaf around and split logs for a living, or work your way up to management in a service industry job or something, four years of work is four years of work and if you don't suck at life, it'll get you as far outside a classroom as in.

You know how I can tell you haven't looked for a regular white collar job lately?

If you want anything in a cubicle, you have to have a degree to get there. You are perfectly capable of doing the work *without* the degree (just some on the job training), but the average person won't even get an interview without meeting the minimum requirement of having a degree.

would have approved? (new window)

/rhetoric

ShillinTheVillain: I imagine most of her teachers were seething at her for trying to reveal what a joke most of them are. That being said, it's her fault more than the school's that she didn't explore her interests. She said in the speech that while her friends were making music and pursuing hobbies, she was working on extra credit she didn't need. That's not the school's fault, that's hers.

I want a followup in a few years when she has a nervous breakdown in college and ends up on meth.

It's the school that told her grades were so important. And they are supposed to be looking out for the kids best interest.

Silly of her to believe them? Sure. But not like the system isn't *designed* to try to make kids follow what they say.

/we all have to live with our own choices.
//thankfully she realized that now and not later.

Was she hot ?

I know a lot of westerners don't really understand the sentiments in the speech, but if you grow up in that kind of pressured education system it's pretty common. I recently attended a meeting of university students at a national school in Korea discussing the education system after a student rebelled against the system and got national attention.

The current generation of university students are the ones that have been pushed their entire lives. Attending school in the morning and afternoon and academies after school, often until the wee hours. For instance, I live near a playground. It's empty until about 9-10 PM - when many of the local students get out of their academies.

Many of the university students who were about to graduate felt the same way. They worked their entire lives chasing a future that someone else laid out for them. And in the end, despite them being 'prepared' for high paying jobs in businesses or the government, many of them aren't even interested in these roles. And it's not easy to change their path here like it is in the west. They feel cheated by the education system, forcing them to constantly compete and be under so much pressure they never even got the chance to think for themselves and decide what they wanted to be.

Smart kid, burning out too young. Sad. Reminds me of myself when I still had some degree of hope. Casual nihilism and cynicism still works fine for me.

I really honestly think my generation is completely farked: No job prospects (unless you want to be deployed in Afghanistan), drowning in student loan/credit card debt and the overwhelming sense of malaise as the county goes further down the toilet.

/oh right....we're all farking snowflakes to you.

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/see how annoying that is?

So much bitterness in this thread.

She's the valedictorian, and she deserves the opportunity to criticize the system that she has obviously adapted to very well. A little pretentious for a teen, maybe, but there's also a lot of insight in her words for a teen.

Mytch: I know a lot of westerners don't really understand the sentiments in the speech, but if you grow up in that kind of pressured education system it's pretty common. I recently attended a meeting of university students at a national school in Korea discussing the education system after a student rebelled against the system and got national attention.

The current generation of university students are the ones that have been pushed their entire lives. Attending school in the morning and afternoon and academies after school, often until the wee hours. For instance, I live near a playground. It's empty until about 9-10 PM - when many of the local students get out of their academies.

Many of the university students who were about to graduate felt the same way. They worked their entire lives chasing a future that someone else laid out for them. And in the end, despite them being 'prepared' for high paying jobs in businesses or the government, many of them aren't even interested in these roles. And it's not easy to change their path here like it is in the west. They feel cheated by the education system, forcing them to constantly compete and be under so much pressure they never even got the chance to think for themselves and decide what they wanted to be.

Having grown up in the Hong Kong education system, probably the second-toughest in the whole world (after Singapore's), I have to agree with this. The indoctrinating effects of school is very pronounced in Asian systems.

APE992:
English I didn't fair well on due to having a jackass for a teacher

Actually, I think your failure at English might not have been solely attributable to your teacher's purported jackassery.

tl;dr

SubBass49: The overwhelming majority of teachers hate the "teach to the test" system of education as well, and we DO spend time and money fighting against it. The real problem is in the legislative bodies that tell us that's what we have to do in order to somehow prove that we're doing our jobs "properly."

So, sorry snowflake, you can DIAF. Place blame where blame is due. It'snot our fault you're an overly-competitive little douche that wasted what should have been some of the best years of your life.

You honestly think *high school* are some of the *best* years of someone's life?


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!


At least now if I have to go to a soul-less authoritarian environment, I get PAID.

And as soon as I find a better environment I can LEAVE. Cops don't come and drag me back to my job and force me to do things I don't give two shiats about and will never actually need.

Also, if I don't like the way laws and things are going. I actually have a say about when I VOTE for the people in authority. It's not a big say, granted, but it is more than the totalitarian regime that high schoolers are placed under.

And just because I'm not in high school anymore doesn't mean I've stopped playing on sports teams or given up music.

It's just now I don't have sports teams full of overly obsessed teammates who are trying to get college paid for by their skillz. The music groups are no longer full of kids who are only there b/c their parents are *making* them take band.

They're actually full of people who give a crap about playing and so are not only more fun to be around, but make progress extremely fast.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have free public education. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need some serious work (depending on the district in question.).

/working for the school district this year.

UNC_Samurai: coco ebert: If anything a liberal arts education allows you to explore what interests you. No one's forcing you to be an overachiever (well, except maybe your parents).

And the bevy of people on Fark who think a degree that's not in chemistry, law, or business makes you a horrible waste of oxygen.

BS. A degree that's not in chemistry, physics, or math* makes you a horrible waste of oxygen. Don't be putting law, business, and barristas in there with us.


*or subdisciplines like engineering, of course

PiffMan420: Smart kid, burning out too young. Sad. Reminds me of myself when I still had some degree of hope. Casual nihilism and cynicism still works fine for me.

I really honestly think my generation is completely farked: No job prospects (unless you want to be deployed in Afghanistan), drowning in student loan/credit card debt and the overwhelming sense of malaise as the county goes further down the toilet.

/oh right....we're all farking snowflakes to you.

I'm right there with you. You can get the grades, the degree, play by all the rules and still end up f*cked. But don't worry, we aren't all going to Afghanistan.

Some of us are still going to Iraq.

thamike: ShillinTheVillain: I was top 10 in my graduating class of 200

Woah, you're old.


LOL

Rodeodoc: Hero? So this precocious little snowflake gets up and whines that she doesn't think she learned anything and that makes her a hero? she thinks school is boring? she thinks students should just be able to "find themselves"? This isn't a hero. this is just another spoiled brat looking for her 15 minutes of fame. She thinks school is boring? Wait until she finishes fou ryears of college (that mommy and daddy will pay for) and takes her shiny new Arts degree to her data entry job.

You sound bitter, probably because your "mommy and daddy" didn't care about you enough to pay for your education. "Looking for her 15 minutes of fame"? She's making a speech, giving her opinion of an educational system that rewards apathy and bare minimums. I'll agree with you that the hero tag may be a little much, but how is it so awful that a young person who actually thinks for herself is so disagreeable to you?

Magorn: UNC_Samurai: coco ebert: If anything a liberal arts education allows you to explore what interests you. No one's forcing you to be an overachiever (well, except maybe your parents).

And the bevy of people on Fark who think a degree that's not in chemistry, law, or business makes you a horrible waste of oxygen.

hell I've heard farkers have a hearty chuckle about having a JD too. Apparently most of them, being techies, respect only degrees in the hard sciences. Having been a computer scientist, journalist, freelance writer, and a few other things first, I am content with my JD and the fact that I'm now a lawyer, but "following my bliss" was not easy for me, particularly because of the dozens of teachers who lined up in front of me and screamed at various times "You are so smart, you can literally do anything you want to"

Which really doesn't help narrow down your choices any and when you do find something you enjoy doing, you have to demand of yourself whether it it "important enough" of whether you are "wasting your potential"


Word.

I finally said "fark it" and got a job driving school buses so I'd get paid good money for a job that gave me ample time off to pursue whatever interest I wanted to focus on currently.

-Right now it's programming and website development. For kicks and so I can make some side money periodically.

-Next it will be hunting, meat processing, and brain tanned hides (and the assorted blankets, moccasins and jackets I'll be making from it. Totally making my husband a elk hide jacket with his first elk!)

-Some baseball and other sports. To keep exercising, but actually have fun doing it.

-Looking at herbology type medicines later (with an update in my organic chemistry.)

Oh, did I mention getting summers and breaks off so I can actually be home for my child? Yeah, that too. It's more fun to help teach him the stuff he's interested in (most of it I can still teach him at this level) than just sending him off to a camp or whatever.

kenoshaillini: It's really a shame that the best and brightest minds of our generation are here on fark making fun of this girl. Farkers are obviously the most street smart, money wise, well hung and gifted individuals in the land. Pity our knowledge is wasted hurling insults and not changing the world, for we know everything and those on the outside know nothing.

Thank you. I chortled.

kenoshaillini: It's really a shame that the best and brightest minds of our generation are here on fark making fun of this girl. Farkers are obviously the most street smart, money wise, well hung and gifted individuals in the land. Pity our knowledge is wasted hurling insults and not changing the world, for we know everything and those on the outside know nothing.

YOUR NOT SUPPOSE TO BUT OUR OATH ON THE PUBLIC FORUM!!

I wish I was sober enough to remember my valedictorian speech.

/Valedictorian is a long ass word

Praise Cheesus: If I had decided upon a straight and narrow educational path, I would have had exactly the same experience she did. Only that diatribe of hers could have been written about the Class of 2000, of 1990, 1980, 1970...

It's all same crap, different decade.

I never saw the advantage to fitting into the little cubby-hole that the teachers wanted me to. In second grade, I was in a mixed grade class (2nd/3rd) and actually had a brilliant teacher. She noticed within 2 weeks after the school year started she had a handful of kids that put forth apparently no effort, but were always right there with the answers to the questions.

Her response was to bump us all up to the 3rd grade curriculum and see what we could handle. Those that handled it with ease, she turned us into tutors for the kids that struggled. This worked out for several of us, until we hit 6th grade and it was a repeat of everything we'd learned the year before. The school contacted parents and jumped the lot of us over to the junior high.

My problem was that not even the honors classes held my interest. Maybe that's because I was a strange little kid: my grandfather and father were master electricians, so they taught me how to calculate inductance and capacitance in circuits when I was about 6. My grandmother felt there was no such thing as an "inappropriate" book, so I'd been reading everything I could lay my hands on since I was about 4 years old. As a result, I had a whole lot of teachers that considered me a "problem child", to the point that by the second semester of 7th grade, I was bumped to 8th grade and still spent a good chunk of my class time as a teaching assistant. It also guaranteed that I never wanted to become a teacher. By the time the September of my 13th year rolled around, the school district advised my parents I was to be sent to the "alternative education program".

In short, the district had officially listed me as a complete pain in their collective ass and was placing me over with the delinquents.

By the third day of the school year, the instructor for grades 6-9 realized I was not there because I was a bully or destructive (in spite of painting contact explosive on the back of the principal's desk drawers), but because I wasn't being intellectually stimulated or challenged. So, he provided me with projects; compare and contrast writing styles of various books and authors, research various periods in history and how the common man lived in those times, bring in my camera and take photographs, then document the way things were at that school and the surrounding area, track various companies on the Dow Jones or Standard and Poor's Index, follow up using public information on the P&L and P&E sheets and write reports.

In high school, it got to the point where instructors would hand me an idea, give me a time frame to accomplish the goal and present copies of my drafts once a week. I was on campus about 2 hours a week, the rest of my time was spent doing the actual work... and working a real job. I took the standardized tests, just so the district and board of education had some record of me, checked in with the attendance office so the school could collect state funds for my education. Even though I saw little of the inside of a classroom after 8th grade, I still managed to ace the standardized tests and the one required for graduation that was introduced the year I finished up. The school principal mentioned to me I was the only student in the state to score a 100% on the graduation exam.

Sometimes, you have to break the mold, because not every kid fits inside the mold.

I suspect education would be a lot better if classes were not so bloody crowded, if school administrators would look beyond the standardized exams and allow teachers to send the kids they know are too damn smart out on journeys of educational discovery like I was allowed.

However, that does require two things: foresight and personal responsibility. Not much of that is found in the modern education system.

cool story bro.

i was pretty good, but not grade skipping good. I did know one kid that was absolutely savant-like, except that he didn't have the personality issues most savants have. he was the nicest guy you could find. he was with our class until second grade when they realized what they were dealing with and, while i don't know what happened in between, he graduated from UF with a double major in chemical engineering and mathematics of some sort the same year i was accepted.

HaHa. Now, that is how it is done.

Ima4nic8or: I smell a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand she is ranting/whining about the school system not really doing a good job of teaching students. On the other hand she is a product of that system and clearly writes and applies critical thinking skills very well. I would argue that her speech is proof that the current system works reasonably well.

If she read John Taylor Gatto, I am going to guess her parents played more a part. You don't see his books in school libraries. He is a favorite of homeschoolers.

xpennyroyaltyx: I teach English at a high school. I try very, very hard to provide opportunities for students to pursue their own interests, to read and write about things that interest or inspire them, to show me what they know in the best ways that they know how, using their talents, strengths, and abilities.

I have actually gotten in trouble with district and admins. for this.

Most of the time, all my work results in the most frustrating, plagiarized, slapped-together fail you have ever seen in your life. So I don't know what student body she represents, but sign me up to teach there, where young people are open-minded and waiting with baited breath for opportunities to better themselves outside of the mandated educational paradigm, because most high school students I know just don't give a shiat.

Yes, but remember your class is one of MANY they have during the day.

And it is one year of many MORE that they have been in the system.

You're kinda waging an uphill battle likely.

/or the kids in your district are just douches.
//it happens.

Rodeodoc: Wait until she finishes fou ryears of college (that mommy and daddy will pay for) and takes her shiny new Arts degree to her data entry job.

If she's valedictorian I'm pretty sure there are some scholarships somewhere...

kenoshaillini: It's really a shame that the best and brightest minds of our generation are here on fark making fun of this girl. Farkers are obviously the most street smart, money wise, well hung and gifted individuals in the land. Pity our knowledge is wasted hurling insults and not changing the world, for we know everything and those on the outside know nothing.

I never claimed to be street smart, money wise, or gifted.
I hope she doesn't believe everything she said either. In the end kids are so much more fortunate in every way in this country, and no school system will be perfect. I took my kid out of public school but I see the products of it every day and I have to say, even though I'm glad I took him out, it's a great opportunity for so many to learn so much if they so choose.

nk kknow one thing she didn't learn, public speaking. That shot was way too long. It's graduation not the State of The Union or a Castro speech to the party.