So, i'm reading up for my upcoming SAT in early fall of this year and
I was reading through the grammar and vocabulary section and many times i had to just scratch my head when i looked at some of these words. Not that I'm saying that i have a low vocabulary but some of these words on the SAT sound like they've been made up by 89 year old admission officers at Princeton University.

As i'm reading these words, I come to the conclusion that public high school education is a joke. Most of the material in the SAT book i have had to learn on my own. Including some of the Algebra and Vocabulary words. I realized that most of this stuff wasn't even taught or just looked over as too hard for the students, which is a shame because i take in new material pretty quickly. (granted that i had learned everything i needed to know, i would be going through this book rapidly)

The problem is, the teachers have become lazy, go way to slow on the standards, or underestimate their students to a point where we are missing out on vital information that could help us in future exams. Sure, there is the occasional airhead that is behind all of the class, but does that mean, teachers have to oppress the rest of us that want to learn?

Does/Did anybody feel this way during their years in high school?

(perhaps this is some conspiracy made by the republicans to dumb down the younger generations so there wont be any more new liberals trying to make their way into government

Something a bit related I always thought was a bit of a conspiracy to keep out lower class people, was the entrance test for eleven year old children at my local grammar school. The test had many questions that were highly biased, I forgot the exact ones now, but they were things like:

A chukka is a time period in which sport?
Complete: Veni, Vidi, ?

Things that most eleven year old children at government schools would have no clue about, as they don't teach classics/latin or Polo in those schools.

I always thought that pure maths/logic, and reading comprehension would have been better things to test on.

It was kind of a catch-22 situation. I needed to go to an elite school to learn these things, but couldn't get into an elite school unless I knew them.

That whole video was a great find, but go to around the 5:40 mark. That's what got me.

From the sustainable development plan:

"Generally, more highly educated people, who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people, who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat to sustainability."

And to the OP. No, there are some teachers who will do all they can to actually educate their students, but i haven't seen one since I've moved out of jersey and stopped going to the state covered private school. The curriculum gap between that school and the one i just graduated from is very sad. Even the public schools out there were better.

Maybe having outdated textbooks isn't so bad after all?

One day our homeschool group was together, and the group, ranging in age from 8-11, were all talking about how they felt their only 'socialization' problems had to do with the fact that their friends in public school could not UNDERSTAND THEM.

They were ALL complaining that their friends in public schools did not have the vocabulary skills that they did. One girl said "I think my friend needs a dictionary when she comes over. I get tired of talking to her, she's always like "What does that mean, what does that mean?"