You two are only a few years younger than me. I left public schools in 1993 during the 6th grade, but not over academics. I wouldn’t think of sending anyone there now.
It is good to know that there are two Conservatives around my age. Sometimes I feel like a lonely Conservative on this island especially this blue island of Palm Beach County. I guess that is why I write song lyrics, in order to rant to somebody whoever about all of the wrong things in life, including Liberalism.
Perchance if it isn’t too personal why did you leave your School? I was thinking about leaving mine for a little bit and moving to California because I got bored of the school atmosphere and everything around it. It is quite funny hearing educators say that students learn all at different rates yet that is why Homeschooling is such a great idea.
I also got very disillusioned by school after returning from a Summer Performance Art camp, and learning that the school administrators can do anything to the students. Yet even Mrs. Pickley(I think that was her name) was hated and yet she probably stopped at least a little bit of the misbehavior that everybody else ignored. It made me think of a gulag however, I wasn’t happy at all being there and some events made me less happy.
Which leads me to another story(I hate boring people with my long rantings but my tag-line is who I am). I am a special-ed kid in a way, I have this disability called asperger’s syndrome. I also have PDD(Pervasive Developmental Disorder) so I had close ties to the Special Ed office in High School. It was during these talks and negotiations of some sort that I had an empty space in my schedule.
My parents and I worked out that that would be study hall time. I would go to a school within a school called the Hannah Moore school which was a school for those who had autism(a form of what I have). It was a small room outside of the Administrator’s office and was taught by 2-3 people including a guy named Mr. Beers(that was his name I think).
During the class I would do whatever I had to while sitting down on the ground or in a desk as the 9th and 10th graders(I was a Senior then) would listen and respond to him and the female teacher(Mrs. Zander). Unfortunately the political dynamics sometimes came out as the only person who seemed remotely Conservative was Mrs. Zanders while everybody else made constant Bush jokes. It was also during 2004 and man do I hate election years as they bring the worst out of people.
I usually try to keep my calm as I am not one to go off the pot or to respond to politics because they are irrelevant and I am a guest. However, like anything else, it was leading up to a fuse that bled. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.(I am very opinionated and also super-sensitive to politics)
I also for a while wasn’t too much going to the study school because either it was too noisy or I didn’t need to but the Administrators wanted me to stay there until class ended. Well, one day Mrs. Zanders wasn’t in the classroom but Mr. Beers was. For some reason all 4 students got into a Bush bashing event along with Mr. Beers.
I tried to tell Mr. Beers and everybody that he isn’t that bad and then he screamed to me about Michael Moore and how he tells the truth, the 59 lies of Bush, and also that Moore tells the truth because he cites his sources. It is almost like a Social Worker or public educator to be so Liberal, but it surprised me because nobody I knew was that full of BDS. Even my Liberal History teacher and my Socialist teacher in Journalism were actually very thoughtful in what I was doing(even when I wrote an article on where Homosexuality came from he was OK)
This guy however screamed and screamed and I screamed also because I felt overpowered. I then ran out of the room(he screamed that I was going AWOL which I sort of took as another Bush bashing joke), crying(yes grown men can cry. Especially if it is one of the first times I had a group of people gang up on me because my views were unpopular) to see the school Psychologist(I saw a lot of them in the 10th grade BTW). I told her the whole story and I think she sided with me. Maybe another problem was that I didn’t talk to many like-minded people at that time(my first exposure to a public forum online was the Instabark at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler blog)
However I had to go back to the room, apologize to Mr. Beers(I gave him the whole BS apology hand-crafted, I think even Mrs. Zanders realized that I was as stiff as stone but that was the only way I could escape penalty was to apologize) and walk out.