Take it from a 9th grader at a magnet school, school here doesn't challenge anyone with any mind. If you ask me, its making people worse. I have considered writing about it, and I see it this way: teachers patronize students work ethic. Not as many teachers if the class they patronize, but other classes and principles. I notice that corporations and products also kind of patronize kids attitudes. Its gotten out of control. For kids, they can say "why do I need to learn 4 years of math, I don't need this". Should they take it if they, say, want to become a fiction writer? Even though I love math, I don't think they should. I think that highschool should be more about learning and not being told information. Take me, I want a degree in comp sci, I shouldn't have to take human geography, or even really eng 4.

But that is besides the point, its about the tests we have. We have too many and they are horribly structured. For example: we, in TN, have TCAPs that are around 330 questions that we take in 3 or 4 days. That's all we do. Its not fair either, because the people who don't care get 40s (you'll have to remember, they grade them in percentiles, not percent correct.) I've known people like this. Its scary that they get above a 5 when they don't try. The problem as I see it, stems from our teachers. They teach us how to pass a test, and how to be completely PC all the time. And they use very authoritative roles and abuse power just to "help us". Like in 8th grade, I had a teacher that we'll call Mrs A. She 1) never taught us anything, and by the end of the year, we had 1 unit (around 6 weeks of material) left to learn we never did. We just had to guess or use prior knowledge about the entire reconstruction period ( the entire thing). 2) literally (not joking) walked out of the classroom midday crying because a student bumped me at lunch, and my lunch spilt, and he admitted to it, but I wouldn't say sorry. I said he needs to be more careful and that I will apologize. She says if I don't, she calls the principals, and I say "go ahead". She just sends me to a room, when I get pack at the end of the period, there is a sub there and everyone has a ticket (small behaviour mark that means basically nothing ). everyone in the class because I did (although she said it was something like people were mean to her and she couldn't tell who said what) and she left and called in a sub. Crying. She tried to call my mom and talk about it, but my mom, being an actually good teacher, realizing her bull crap, even tries to call her out, which I am glad Mrs A knew her crap didn't fly around my mom. We almost talked to a principal, but ended up not as we had no more problems. There were other teachers who did similar things, but I don't have all night.