My middle school was basically a prison
Had to go through metal detectors in and out
Had guards stationed at every exit and throughout the halls
Couldn’t use the bathrooms without being accompanied by an adult, which of course, we didn’t have enough of to let kids go when they had to
When I got to high school and basically had the exact opposite experience, I was agog
I boogied out of the american public school system right at the beginning of the build up of the mini surveillance state they were starting to set up for kids. You could up and walk out of school if you wanted to and no one was going to stop you. We used to fuck off during class in high school and go wander the halls. Things I’m certain kids can’t get away with today.
When I was in high school the videography class filmed parodies of The Matrix and The Godfather which involved running around school with fully realistic pistol replicas
When I was in elementary school, kids would bring their hunting rifles to school on the first day of deer camp. They were supposed to leave them in the office, but I feel like that didn’t always happen. This wasn’t super common, but I remember it happening when I was in 4th-6th grade
Not really sure why, it seems like it could be left with the parents and they could bring it when they picked up the kid.
“Timmy you are now old enough to engage in the most important ritual of being a gun owner: telling everyone else you have a gun.”
“Even though you may not be old enough to drink, you can still do a farcical re-enaction of the civil war with those guns…”
It is especially farcical if they can’t drink.
yeah same here. i was basically able to transfer from one high school to another to escape it since it wasn’t yet distributed equally in the county i lived in.
so my freshman thru junior years were under increasing security to the point of actual violent suppression (security guards assaulting students for being too alternative looking, it was post-columbine hysteria)
senior year was wandering the halls, do whatever free for all because that principal was near retirement and just dgaf
My senior year English class was last period and kids would slowly trickle out the door saying they had to goto the bathroom and then just not come back. She just told everyone not to say where they were coming from if we got caught.
Yup
Shit was wild
Still remember the time the 7th grade vice-principal threatened to suspend all the 7th grade boys because someone drew penises on a bunch of our science textbooks
They literally dragged us out of our classrooms to interrogate us about it
I was a very short, chubby autistic kid, so I broke down crying so hard they ended up calling my mom to come get me
American Vandal but real
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I went to public schools in Kkklanada and reading this is just so wild to me. I had none of the going through what sounds like an airport security and as long as I asked with a please at the end, I’d be allowed to go to the bathroom (~85 to 90% of the time with few prick of teachers not allowing).
When I was in high school I came and went as I pleased. If I hadn’t been given a lot of leeway I would have dropped out for sure. My grades were fine, I just didn’t want to be there if I didn’t need to be. I just talked to my teachers, got the whole semester worth of class work at once and just had to turn shit in when it was due and show up for tests.
My only saving grace was my seventh grade teacher was my 3rd grade teacher, so at least she was nice to me that year
Can confirm here in the UK we have zero security whatsoever. Kids come and go as they please. Many kids leave school to go to local shops for lunch.
Many kids leave school to go to local shops for lunch.
I remember being allowed to do that, but the nearest place to eat was far enough away that even if you had a car you couldn’t make it there and back in time without rushing which kinda killed the vibe.
Ahh I can’t say I know that many schools that don’t have local shops within 5minute walk even if it is just a small spar or something, often with a fish n chip shop or something next door not that they were ever open during lunch, for whatever reason every single fish n chip shop in the country seems to be closed until mid afternoon except in the beach towns.
I went to public schools in Kkklanada and reading this is just so wild to me.
also Canadian. we didn’t have any of this metal detector bullshit, but they did start putting cops in high-schools
Man I swear if I ever raise a kid I’m being absolutely sure to tell them, “I’m going to the bathroom” is a statement, not a request.
My elementary schools bathrooms stalls were tore down, by other kids, so if you were taking a shit everyone saw you.
And of course they called you gay for taking a shit, not them looking at you.
Both my middle school and high school had metal detectors but the middle school didnt security guards and cops. The security guards werent bad, more often then not they were a friendly third party adult that kids could talk to about #realshit and none of them were there to break up fights or cause kids problems. The cops were cops.
I really feel bad for kids growing up. If it’s not some white supremacist hopped up on Ben Shapiro gunning them down in the classroom it’s the school resource officer busting their skull for smoking a cig behind the track. Not to mention the libraries that are now converted into mini-prisons and all the books are burned.
All I had to worry about growing up in school was what was for lunch in the cafeteria.
Didn’t really happen to me. When I was in HS before I dropped out all I was thinking about was dealing with harassment for being trans. But that’s an eternal problem, isn’t it.
libraries converted to mini prisons
Hwhat
Dumb as shit. I encourage all my students to take a skip day (or just to stay home for a day whenever they feel like they need a break). High school seniors in particular should be encouraged to make decisions like adults, and also to chill the fuck out. It’s good for them.
This, oh my God. The public schools in the US are a complete joke, but by far the worst offender is the fact that high schools don’t try to encourage teenagers to see themselves more and more as autonomous adults, and trying to really get the message that they will be “free” soon, and what it means to be free and to start making your own decisions. I really could have used this type of training as a neurodivergent.
I’m in my 30’s and I still don’t feel like an autonomous adult
this society is absolutely wretched about allowing people to have agency in their own fucking lives. the housing / cost of living crises gotta be fucking a lot of people up.
The valedictorian at my high school seemed like this impossible standard to live up to with his frightening intelligence. He went to a nice college and got his PhD thereafter. He was attractive, athletic, and ambitious. He’s a friend of mine. I saw him struggle to find employment after his post doc recently.
Like consider how his unbroken streak of scholastic excellence in post-secondary education didn’t translate to worldly success. Meanwhile my ass getting mid grades, doing drugs (often with the valedictorian after high school), and being interested (not even fascinated, I just thought it was neat) with being a CIA agent managed to convert that into a job at Langley. I took a 2 year detour because I thought I wanted to be an ESL teacher! He ended up finding a job and it pays modestly better than mine with less upside potential because I have a sales component (I get a commission for convincing my handlers that a leftist’s posts are good enough to inject them with nanobots and cringe takes).
So ultimately, my point is that even if you were to have aced every single test and piece of homework in highschool the value of your scholastic success pales in comparison to making decisions like an adult. You’ll make more money, you’ll have better relationships, you’ll feel more at peace. I value three things in terms of career success
: 1) are you qualified/can I afford it? It can’t JUST be a confidence game. 2) find a problem, solve a problem. Use whatever resources you have at your disposal, but solve something for someone. 3) imagination/ambition. How could this be more awesome?and grades in high school aren’t on the list
Good bit
Aren’t high school seniors like 18 in the US, wtf
17 or 18, usually.
Means you can try them as adults!
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Wait cops actually do this? I thought it was just a game mechanic in Bullsworth Academy. What the fuck, dont they have better shit to not do?
Edit: I feel like i need to establish that I am not kidding. Me and my friends thought it was a fun over-the-top piece of world building. We joked about it because we thought it was so funny that cops would be so aggro upon seeing a child during school hours.
Cops do this quite a lot. Here’s their protocol:
What a literal fucking loser.
If it’s anything like the cops where I live, I make 5 more dollars an hour than them working in a bakery. Pigs can’t even pay their bills opressing us.
You best believe they have alternative sources of income. They’re a gang, but legal. Every PD in the country is running some sort of extortion, bribery, or racketeering scheme or some combination
They do it to get their rocks off.
Yeah but just think of the obscene amount of overtime they collect.
Trading more of their time on earth so they can opress people longer, to cover the bills so they can watch Dancing With The Stars with their family that secretly hates/fears them
What a fucking dork
I really lucked out missing all this surveillance state shit. I honestly feel like it stunts a kid’s development in ways we don’t understand yet - I was able to get myself to and from school, completely unsupervised, from fourth grade onwards (and yeah I occasionally skipped days Ferris Bueller style), and nowadays I’m aware of high school kids who’ve literally never done anything like that before.
(and yeah I occasionally skipped days Ferris Bueller style)
holy shit. I’m only in my early 30’s and I can’t imagine getting away with skipping an entire day – or more importantly where I’d have been able to go in my wretched car-based city as a minor on a school day without any money etc.
there is definitely too little room for shenanigans like that in our lives now
It helps that I wasn’t doing it nine times a year, more like once or twice, so the administration had bigger fish to fry. I remember when I was seventeen driving up to the school and seeing that they were checking everyone’s bag, saying “fuck that”, and simply turning around and driving home. I don’t even think I had anything, I just balked at the idea of being searched.
They’re acting like this a prison break.
Is it not? School is prison.
True, but this just feels too on the nose.
Just claim you’re sick lol
I’m not joking, in my graduating class (long ass time ago now but still in the post 9/11 era) in order to call off sick on senior skip day they required a doctors note beforehand, otherwise you couldn’t graduate.
Some kid puked on the floor in the hallway because, well, he was sick, but wanted to graduate. Based dude that he was he chose to stay even after they tried to send him home because “I need to graduate.” He missed the bathroom a few more times that day. Absolute fucking legend. I don’t think it changed anything except for completely ruining the cleaning staff’s day, but when you’re that age and you’ve got a message to send you send it how you can.
Requiring a doctors note before something is like… yeah, I plan to be sick on these days
I think it was like if you had a surgery or something.
“I’m planning on going on a bender and being too hungover for work on Saturday, doc.”
probably the only way to use it effectively
This note was written in advance therefore you planned this and are not genuinely sick. Catch 22.
One of my dislikes of catch 22’s titular catch is couldn’t you plead insanity for some reason unrelated to going into the air? Like “every time I hear machine-gun fire, I curl into a ball” or something? I will fly with a white flag hanging out the window and surrender to the soviets. Other odds and ends
Won’t the state just let me be free if I only use slightly different phrasing to get off on a technicality? ofc not that is lolbertarian thinking.
There are multiple catch 22’s in the book and it is sometimes rationalized with tortured logic and other times just a mantra repeated while they beat you.
Surrendering to the soviets in Italy might prove a challenge but I guess you’re just built different.
I think I watched half the movie as a kid. Maybe I should give it another shot.
Idk, you could just fly elsewhere. If you keep deserting and they’ve stopped doing battlefield executions, you’ll get some prison time and probably survive the war. It wasn’t necessarily about where you flew to, just getting out of a 50% death chance.
Finally, someone’s bringing those monsters to justice! I didn’t feel safe with teenagers having fun without my permission! /s
Seriously, what happened that made this country hate fun so much? I grew up an Italian Catholic and not even we were all guilty about feeling happy this much.
We went two tracking on my senior skip day. Can’t find you when you’re a mile or so in the woods
you know i had to do it to em
