School Elitism

I remember in my high school, they had different classes for 'smart' people and 'dumb' people. In the 'smart' class they would tell you some crap about how 'smart' you are, and be laxer on discipline. in the 'dumb' people class, most teachers wouldn't really care, and they would do everything, but actually tell you that your were stupid, because that would be politically incorrect. I wasn't a teacher's pet or anything, but somehow I got labelled smart. Regardless of what grades I got, teachers would keep telling me that I was smart. I don't wish to refute them. Regardless of what they thought about me, or what I actually did, they would still cling to that belief. I couldn't believe how big an idiots they were.

The same goes for elite colleges. Supposedly, their students are smarter. They seem to work to tell their students that to some extent, and lots of people seem to believe it. At times it does seem only the elite schools are allowed to teach certain things, but there is still a lot of crap out there about this junk. It seems the school system is meant to impose a hierarchy upon society. How the heck did this get setup?

I've been in the gifted program my whole life, and I must say, its EXTREMELY different from regular classes. I attended a middle school with a gifted program, and in the 6th grade we had to take a special class which basically taught us that we are different, freaks of nature, and probably will neer have friends. Our textbook for the class was called "The Gifted Kid's Survival Guide." I'm all for interesting and higher level thinking courses, but let's just relive the holocaust and force us to be branded while walking through the hallways. (The books were bright yellow, so there's that Jewish-Holocaust analogy for those of you who have never seen the book.)

It's insane, to say the least.

I can see the need for different teaching methods. What I don't see is a difference in funding. I was in the gifted program but it wasn't to special, all we did was write stories and solve puzzles. Oddly enough my local middle school has full fledged special ed. program for students who aren't as sharp as the other students. On the other hand the gifted program was a once a week thing with very few members, and only lasted about 90 minutes. I don't see a hierarchy forming though, an hierarchy would mean that students get into classes based on parentage. However I have seen that in many cases students are placed into different levels at an early age and it stays that way. The way many Elitism systems work it becomes difficult to move up the scale.

I had mainly honors classes.

It took a bit in Jr High to break in, mainly because the work was so easy in the "normal" classes I'd goof off for most of the class since I'd have the work done.

In high school I had english, math, science honors and whatnot. History never bothered me since they were pretty much crap anyways. Nothing I couldn't learn by not reading myself.

The "elite" classes and "normal/dumb" classes are not what bothers me. It's the systematic removal of ART from schools that bothers me. Art teaches people to look at thing differently, think outside the box, and fosters independant thought.

It prevents the chalk board system of education from permiating everything for students all day.

I took art my whole life, attended Savannah College of Art and Design for two years, and continue to draw, paint, and write all the time. I'm worried that the systematic removal of art is more to remove independant thought than to save a cheap buck.




[edit on 19-10-2004 by The Big O]