Before I started high school, elementary school teachers told me that no one
cared about you at the high school. It was a different world and you had to do
everything on your own. As I started my first semester, I was working with A’s
and B’s, and great conduct. I learned a lot though. It was true; most teachers
really didn’t care about their students and followed a lesson plan that had
been in repetitive use since the 70’s. But that wasn’t a problem. I like
looking at things from all perspectives. If you know what your opposite is
thinking then you know how to outsmart them. When you assume, you only realize
that you didn’t know anything and you just screw yourself more. Sitting in my
algebra class, doing my homework every night, I realized that there is a lot of
busy work involved in this teacher’s curriculum. I don’t like busy work and
I don’t like wasting my time. I don’t like the fact that teachers were
giving me work just so they could put grades in books. So I basically decided
not to do my work and copy it. Why not? I listen in class and I understand the
stuff, so for all of second semester I never did one assignment, and passed with
a happy A. This was fantastic. That summer I took Biology. Copying homework was
one thing, but cheating on a test was going to the source of what you really
knew. True knowledge is how you apply what you learn not just knowing it. My
teacher that year couldn’t have cared less about his students, playing endless
videos while I slept. Sleep!!! Another subject that became a habit in later
months. But doing endless worksheets by copying right out of textbook was not my
idea of learning. So I just copied some more. One thing lead to another and I
was making cheat sheets for the tests. Little did I know that my friends were
way ahead of the game. They had the answers to the tests from last year’s
students. Wow. Now I don’t even have to make cheat sheets, even easier. And
who was worried about getting caught. My teacher would fall asleep during the
tests and videos. If a teacher does not teach, a student cannot learn. If a
student cannot learn he cannot pass a class. If he does not pass his class he is
considered either a slacker or stupid. So in order to survive, I had to use my
methods. What could I do? I felt lost in this biology class but again passed
with a B. I see teachers as people. Some people see them as everlasting
machines, always here to help you and explain to you when you don’t understand
things. A teacher is a person who works. Not for the money, so I’ve heard, but
for the children. They breathe, eat, and you might even see them at a restaurant
or the market. You might not see the point of all this and how it relates to
education but there is one. What is a corrupt system? If a student works hard
and gets an A he earned it. If a student cheats and gets an A, does he deserve
it? Yes. Why? A story I heard once explains it all. A man pays eight dollars to
go see a movie, another man sneaks in from the back, he doesn’t pay. My point?
Do they both see the movie? Yes. Credit is given to those who earn it, but it
can also be taken and given to those who don’t deserve it. But it is still
given. Some people see school as a place where they can get good grades. But
screw the grades. You can kiss a teachers ass, suck up, do all the, busy work,
extra credit and still end up with an A that means nothing. This year a friend
of mine received a C in one of their classes. When the news of this C came out,
my friend hyperventilated and left the room. I couldn’t understand what
happened. When my friend came back to class, he told me that he would not come
to school anymore etc… because of that C. As I explained before grades
represent nothing. I talked to the teacher after class explained my friend’s
situation and his grade was changed to a B the next day. You are supposed to
learn at school. If this is the way grades can be given then why work. In life,
you will never learn anything unless you want to. You are your own teacher.
That’s probably why I sleep in some of my classes. In my sophomore year, I was
transformed into a new person. I had seen it all. People talking there way up
from grades, every cheating technique, and I even created a schedule where I
would copy each homework assignment the class before. I never did a thing. The
truth had hit me. My grades and everyone else’s didn’t represent what they
knew. Who cares about European socialism? “I am not European, and I am not
very social” Ferris Bueller. School had become a daycare center. With all my
free time I watched plenty of TV, and read more then enough psychology books.
During sophomore year, school did teach me something. I was soon able to
associate with everyone and talk to them to get what I wanted. I first learned
how to make people laugh, even at themselves. Humor was the key to getting
people on your side. With that I learned how to piss people off, the reverse of
making them laugh. Then, how to make them think, and how to make them feel. I
basically learned how to manipulate people and those of you who know me
wouldn’t understand it or realize it because that’s the whole point, your
not supposed to know. I will never forget an experience I had. My IAT teacher
gave a worksheet and I had no resources (people), to do it for me. I went up to
a random AP calculus student. He happened to be Asian. He did not know a lot of
English but his math was excellent. I talked to this perfect stranger for about
3 min. There were about 15 problems on this page. I gave him the paper, and it
was long busy calculating work. In 3 min, there were 7 people from that class
working on this one worksheet. I will not lie; they did it in 5 min. I copied
their work got my A. The test came, I got a C, I was a happy guy. I knew then
that school was not a complete waste of time. If you look beneath the classrooms
and the students, you can see that there are three types of people. If you do
all your work, study, make sure everything is perfect, get A’s on all tests,
this taking you many hours, and still having time for band or other school
activities, you may be smart but probably lack personality. People skills are a
key element for the real world, which is where most students hope to end up. So
I think that without these skills your knowledge will get you nowhere. If you do
no work in school, smoke weed all day, and don’t even care about your classes
you will probably also end up nowhere. If you try to get A’s and try to get
all your work done, you are probably the average student. But there two sides to
this kind of student. If you let school control your life you will never be able
to be on your own. You learn to need the grade, and to be evaluated so bad that
if you don’t get what you want you cry. Those who can accept the C or the
occasional D will able to accept other problems in life. They will be able to
control their emotions and not become a slave to the system. Who is a slave to
the system? If you collapse at a C in class, or hide your grade from other
people, or have so much work you get no time to yourself, you have been
corrupted. If you can let school impact your life this much, you don’t have
one. Your life is created by a balance of things. School, family, friends, and
yourself. When one goes bad you should be able to rely on a positive from
another one of these groups. If you can’t be happy with what you are, what
your are capable of, and how good you can do something, then you will never be
happy or satisfied with yourself. When teachers see that students start
slipping, and letting there grades fall, there should be special attention
given. Questions asked, there should be some conversation. I see too many times
teachers not giving the support to students, even when they try, so they give up
and rely on other ways to pass the class. Freshman year had history with one of
my friends. He was doing great in the class when all of a sudden his grade
started to fall. He got his final grade as a D. The sad part was that when he
got that D he started crying. He told me that he really tried, he studied every
night and he still couldn’t get a good grade. There was no support from the
teacher, and he never told me his grades from his tests. If the teacher asked
him why he was slipping maybe he could have done better. A teacher should want
his students to succeed not watch them fail. Maybe they need to take a class on
that. I will never forget my friend’s words, “ but Mister Brown I tried my
hardest and I still got a D. Why?” As I said before academics is only one
aspect of school. A teacher should teach students that it is okay to make
mistakes and fail. It took 39 different model airplanes before the Wright
brothers got one off the ground. The idea I hope to express is that your grade
may not reflect what you know but how well you can B.S. your way through your
class and sometimes even how much the teacher even cares about you. This year I
am so lucky to have a teacher that knows nothing about what he is teaching.
There was not one A in his class this last semester, and he has just finished
grading the first page of a three page test and told the class that just from
the results of grading this first page no one will be able to get even a B on
the test. I ask myself what this idiot is thinking. Maybe he is not teaching the
students the material. Incompetence is an issue when it comes to teachers. Who
can teach and who cant. It is too late to change anything now, but out of 26
kids in this class 17 had D’s and F’s on the semester report card. I don’t
think anyone else realizes it but he doesn’t know the material himself. When
questions are asked, he tells the students to wait till tomorrow so he can ask
another teacher how to do the problem. The idea behind school is to have someone
so advanced in a subject, that he could share his knowledge with others and
teach them. Many teachers break this philosophy. An evaluation system for
teachers should be made. One that not only analyzes a teacher’s performance
during a single day, but maybe a five-week period. An official cannot evaluate
how a teacher is teaching by visiting for one day, this is the current system I
see being practiced. An official must see how his interaction with students are,
his clarity in explaining material, and his style of teaching the material. What
really matters, above all, is if the students learn the material, and only they
can tell you that first hand. After sophomore year I become a pro at what I did.
Repeat did. At this point I had learned how to pass classes with minimum work.
For some reason, the way school was supposed to go, didn’t apply to me. I
think it was because I thought too much about why I should do the work. Now
junior year started. The most important year in high school. I was called into
my counselor’s office and was basically told what chances I have at which
colleges. Something had hit me right there and then. If this person knew so much
about colleges and how to get in, and how to be successful, then why is she a
counselor? Maybe she loves kids, okay, but that is the only reason I could come
up with for her to want that job. All she does for me is put me in my classes
and summons me when I am a problem, but not once was a called in for merit or
recognition when, really, I have done wonderful things at this school. I decided
not to care about what my counselor said to me. The belief that good grades will
take me far vanished completely. Now I just pass for credit. What the school
fails to notice is that there are more acknowledgements for bad things students
do then good. Motivation is the key for wanting to work hard. When people are
constantly disciplined from grade school and up, they get no chance to explain
their position. They except the punishment and learn to be tossed around. If you
can’t stand up for what you know is right then you will always just be another
face in the crowd. “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you
don’t.” William Hiatt. I don’t know how clear this all is, if it makes any
sense, or if you understand it, but from all my experiences, I never leave
without a lesson. “Knowledge is power. I am a thief. I want to steal all the
information. For what? For power.” Higher Learning. My dad has told me that I
have lost control, I have no direction, and he wonders where his A student went.
The school tells me that I have gone down hill and that I lost my chance at good
universities. My friends tell me that I am a slacker, lazy, and that they see me
running a casino or doing some con artist business in the future. I am the
product of a superficial school system. A system that not only basis it’s
grades on actual knowledge but upon negotiations as well. As long as these
negotiations are made grades mean nothing. What matters is what you know and
actually learn. If can do what you want to do, then do it. If you can’t, learn
how. Even this essay, I could have gotten someone to write it for me or found
one somewhere on the Internet. I probably could have gotten a good grade too.
But much like the education system needs to be reformed, in more then one way,
so have I. You haven’t heard about my senior year yet. At first I was
continuing my pattern from prior years. But one teacher acknowledged what I was
doing. I decided to do all my work legitimately. This is proof that teachers can
influence their students to be better, not only academically, but in the sense
that they should put effort into their grade, sometimes. As a final thought you
should think about what you are working for and what you want to do it for.
Don’t let school get the best of. If you hyperventilate over a grade relax, in
this system you can always talk your way up.