Sorry for the delay in adding new posts. I've been a bit under the weather but it has nothing to do with depression unless I'm so depressed my immune system is down. Been sick a lot lately with flu and colds.
Once again this is slightly out of order but it's at least the correct town.
I didn't think much of Iowa schools after having moved to so many different places in Iowa. They were way behind Minnesota and it was boring for me. They didn't have advanced classes for the above average student back then and damn few now but more than there used to be.
I'm pretty sure I was a school teachers worst nightmare. Highly intelligent but I was starting to just not care what happened at school or anywhere else. When I started school at LeMars I had an A average and when I quit I had a D average.
I slowly but surely went downhill every semester and I had become a huge discipline problem for teachers. What do you do with a kid who just doesn't care what the punishment might be and doesn't show up for the vast majority of them anyway.
They tried detention because I skipped a lot of school but detention didn't work because I just didn't show up for it. Then they decided to suspend me from school. That made me laugh. Why would you suspend someone for skipping school? Stupidity at it's finest as it's exactly what I wanted. I didn't have to go to school and I didn't get in trouble for it.
Few incidents stand out in my mind but there are a couple. One teacher got so angry at me he threw me up against the wall. Lol, I dared him to do it again because if he'd touched me again I was going to try to kill him with my hands. Yes, I was capable. OTOH he had good reason for what he did but good reason or not you as a teacher should never put your hands on a child except to protect yourself. I was no threat to him until he threw me against the wall.
I'd just missed the top of his head when I threw a humongous spit ball at another kid. It was bigger than a golf ball and smaller than a baseball. I missed the kid I was throwing at and just happened to hit the board right above his head. He was pissed to say the least.
The other teacher I remember very well was Mrs. Harker. She threw me out of her Algebra class for not being able to do the problems. Heh, I could get the answers just fine but I couldn't show on paper how I got the answers. She told me I'd never be able to do more advanced math until I could show how I got the answers.
I wasn't failing the class but she threw me out anyway. She had a preconceived notion that everything had to be done the way she wanted and I couldn't do it. I think I should have been left in the class until I couldn't get the correct answers anymore. That was not to be tho.
Bet you can't guess who the remedial math teacher was. Yep, the same one who'd thrown me against the wall. However by then he was pretty much smart enough to leave me alone. Mostly I read other books in his class. Sheesh, remedial math was so easy I could do it in my sleep.
So I hated school and I quit as soon as I could. There's more to tell about school but this is enough about it for now.
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Monday, June 11, 2007
School in Fairmont and the gauntlet
My stepfather, who I always called Murphy as that was his last name. I never did call him dad but my sister did from about the first week after he and my mother got married. Lol, used to piss my mother off that I wouldn't call him dad. She beat me a few times for it.
Mof when my daughter, who was given up for adoption, found me one of the first things she told me was she didn't know what to call me. I told her using my first name was fine. Her dad was the person she had known since she was a week old.
Murphy has some relatives in Fairmont too. One of them farmed and had 3 or 4 boys, one was a DJ at the local radio station, and a girl or two. I used to be required to play with them as they also had a son my age.
Back then they were strict Catholics, didn't eat meat on Friday, except fish. BTW, how is it that fish isn't meat? Never did understand that one. Heh, it was all so a mortal sin for hem to set foot in another church. They all went to Catholic school.
Back then you could still bring visitors to school so on a day that public school was off but the Catholics had school Pat invited me to come to his school so I could see what it was like. I didn't really want to but Murphy insisted so I went.
It really wasn't all that much different from going to public school except it was a lot more strict and the prayer times during the day and the religion that was taught. They were about a year ahead of the grade levels at public school but that wasn't a problem for me. I got it all. While I won't get into what I think of the education system I will say if I had kids they would go to a private school or be home schooled. Education was better for them that it was for us public school kids.
The food in their cafeteria was no better than the food in public school tho and they didn't have quite as much recess as we did at my school. So we went out and played at recess and it was pretty rough play. Not so rough I couldn't deal with it but because I was a visitor I was getting the usual crap.
About the time recess was getting over the boys lined up in two lines with enough space for a person to walk between them. I was dared to go between the two lines while they got to hit or kick me on the way through. Pat had told me this was going to happen and I think he wanted to see, as the rest did, if I had the balls to do it or if I was to chicken. Lol, little did they know.
So I got into my position and I stood there waiting for my advantage to come. It was going to be a very small, slim advantage but I wanted every chance I could get. So I waited and they started calling me names and making fun of me. Heh, boys will be boys.
Then all of a sudden the end of recess bell went off. Just what I'd been waiting for but not for the reason they thought. I knew it was going to distract them when it went off and that was my minimal little advantage.
When the bell went off I punched the guy on my right and took off down the line. I made it about half way before they recovered and started hitting and kicking, I hit a few more but mostly stayed hunched over with my head down and ran through the line.
I made it all the way through but the last guy in line stepped over right in the middle of the path so I just lowered my head and ran into him like I was a fullback going for the goal line. He went down in a heap and thee I was, through the gauntlet, with a minimum of damage and I'd managed to hurt at least two of them plus the guy at the end of the line.
Forgot to tell you but my step cousin was in the line too. After that I got treated with respect by all of them for the rest of the day and by most of them for the rest of the time I lived in Fairmont.
I had a few fights with some of them and a few with the public school kids but it didn't take them long to learn that I wasn't afraid to take some damage to inflict even more damage on them so after the first few months I mostly got left alone.
One of the big differences about Murphy was he didn't like fighting so he'd beat me for fighting instead of losing a fight. Didn't matter as I already didn't care, winning a fight and making others leave me alone was more important than any beating Murphy was going to give me. Him using his fist and feet on me didn't make me more compliant or even scared, it just made me tougher and better able to handle the pain of it.
BTW, I never took the opportunity to visit my step cousin at his school again.
Mof when my daughter, who was given up for adoption, found me one of the first things she told me was she didn't know what to call me. I told her using my first name was fine. Her dad was the person she had known since she was a week old.
Murphy has some relatives in Fairmont too. One of them farmed and had 3 or 4 boys, one was a DJ at the local radio station, and a girl or two. I used to be required to play with them as they also had a son my age.
Back then they were strict Catholics, didn't eat meat on Friday, except fish. BTW, how is it that fish isn't meat? Never did understand that one. Heh, it was all so a mortal sin for hem to set foot in another church. They all went to Catholic school.
Back then you could still bring visitors to school so on a day that public school was off but the Catholics had school Pat invited me to come to his school so I could see what it was like. I didn't really want to but Murphy insisted so I went.
It really wasn't all that much different from going to public school except it was a lot more strict and the prayer times during the day and the religion that was taught. They were about a year ahead of the grade levels at public school but that wasn't a problem for me. I got it all. While I won't get into what I think of the education system I will say if I had kids they would go to a private school or be home schooled. Education was better for them that it was for us public school kids.
The food in their cafeteria was no better than the food in public school tho and they didn't have quite as much recess as we did at my school. So we went out and played at recess and it was pretty rough play. Not so rough I couldn't deal with it but because I was a visitor I was getting the usual crap.
About the time recess was getting over the boys lined up in two lines with enough space for a person to walk between them. I was dared to go between the two lines while they got to hit or kick me on the way through. Pat had told me this was going to happen and I think he wanted to see, as the rest did, if I had the balls to do it or if I was to chicken. Lol, little did they know.
So I got into my position and I stood there waiting for my advantage to come. It was going to be a very small, slim advantage but I wanted every chance I could get. So I waited and they started calling me names and making fun of me. Heh, boys will be boys.
Then all of a sudden the end of recess bell went off. Just what I'd been waiting for but not for the reason they thought. I knew it was going to distract them when it went off and that was my minimal little advantage.
When the bell went off I punched the guy on my right and took off down the line. I made it about half way before they recovered and started hitting and kicking, I hit a few more but mostly stayed hunched over with my head down and ran through the line.
I made it all the way through but the last guy in line stepped over right in the middle of the path so I just lowered my head and ran into him like I was a fullback going for the goal line. He went down in a heap and thee I was, through the gauntlet, with a minimum of damage and I'd managed to hurt at least two of them plus the guy at the end of the line.
Forgot to tell you but my step cousin was in the line too. After that I got treated with respect by all of them for the rest of the day and by most of them for the rest of the time I lived in Fairmont.
I had a few fights with some of them and a few with the public school kids but it didn't take them long to learn that I wasn't afraid to take some damage to inflict even more damage on them so after the first few months I mostly got left alone.
One of the big differences about Murphy was he didn't like fighting so he'd beat me for fighting instead of losing a fight. Didn't matter as I already didn't care, winning a fight and making others leave me alone was more important than any beating Murphy was going to give me. Him using his fist and feet on me didn't make me more compliant or even scared, it just made me tougher and better able to handle the pain of it.
BTW, I never took the opportunity to visit my step cousin at his school again.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
School problems, intelligence and stupid teachers
I said on another post I liked school when I was a kid because it got me away from the abuse at home. It allowed me to find more books to read to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. However there were still major problems even at school.
One day in first grade we were given an assignment to color some pictures of the pilgrims. They were on a mimeographed piece of paper and we all had the same ones to color. The teacher gave us our instructions and then the whole class started coloring.
I was coloring away, going outside the lines and getting the assignment done quickly when the teacher came over and watched me for a minute. She started talking to me telling me I need to color better and to stay inside the lines. Then she walked away and went to help someone else.
A few minutes later she came back to me to see if I was coloring inside the lines. Lol, I wasn't and she got really mad at me for it, chewed me out for not following her directions, called the classes attention to what I was doing wrong and in general embarrassed me. This was my first introduction to the stupidity of teachers and school. After all the anger at me for coloring outside the lines I didn't understand the problem. I'm sure you don't see it here either. I'm pretty certain you are just seeing me as a stubborn kid doing what he wanted to do instead of what the teacher told me to do.
Well, you are wrong. You see, it didn't make any difference if we stayed inside the lines or not because the last instruction the teacher gave us was when we were done coloring the pictures we were to cut them out!
As grade schoolers we had to walk about two blocks to the high school for hot lunch. Now you can't even begin to imagine how bad hot lunches were back then. Particularly instant mashed potatoes. For gravy they grayed up some ground beef, added water to it and put this stinky mess over the crappy mashed potatoes.
That stuff was so bad I couldn't stand to smell it let alone eat it. Another few things I wouldn't eat were liver and green beans. No matter about those tho. I had eaten everything on my tray but the mashed potatoes and crap gravy and went to scrape off my tray so I could get outside and play.
One of the teachers took exception to my throwing the mashed potatoes away and told me I couldn't and that I had to eat them. She escorted me back to my seat and told me I couldn't leave until I finished them. Being a tad bit stubborn I never touched them and lunch hour got over. She still wouldn't let me leave. In fact she told me she was going to sit there with me until I ate them.
I told her I wasn't going to eat them and we argued about it for a long time. Finally around 2 hours later I told her if I ate them I was going to puke and she said no I wouldn't. Just eat them and get it over with. She kept telling me as soon as I ate them we could leave and I kept telling her I'd puke. Finally I took one bite, tried to chew and swallow it and guess what. I puked all over the place and all over the tray. Guess what, she finally believed me and I got to throw it away. Never again did they try to force me to eat something I didn't like.
In 9th grade I had the best teacher I ever had. Mrs Harker was my algebra teacher. Really nice lady. However I had a major problem with algebra, at least to her. You see I could figure out the answers in my head but I wasn't able to put the steps to solve the problem down on paper. Heh, I have that problem with a lot of things. I can see it but I can't get it down on paper how I reach my conclusions.
My grades in algebra for getting the right answers were straight A and my grade on my report card was a F. At the end of the semester she informed me I was being removed from the class because I couldn't show how to work the problems out. So here I am getting throw out of class because I can't work the problems yet I never had a wrong answer.
Her rationale was if I couldn't show my work I'd never be able to move up to calculus or trig or anything else. This really irritated me because she wasn't even going to give me the chance to see if I could do the work in the higher math. So because I couldn't show my work I ended up in math for dummies class. I never bothered to do even one paper in that class because it was so far beneath what I was capable of. It was like being in second grade to me. BTW, I passed the class because I got straight A's on every test.
By then I hated school and when ninth grade was over I never went back. Yep, one of the smartest kids in school and I quit. Schools were still teaching to the lowest level and they had no idea at all what do do with someone like me who was highly intelligent and so bored by it all. It's better for kids now but still not as good for the ultra smart as it should be.
They still want everyone to conform, do what they are told and they still teach to the slowest person. It's no wonder intelligent people quit school. I also heard I'd never get anywhere without a high school diploma. Yeah, right. I passed my GED on he first try while I was going to computer school in Massachusetts in 1965. Never studied for it and never got my GED diploma because it cost 5 bucks but I did keep the piece of paper with all of my passing test scores on it for years. I probably still have it somewhere. I just took the test to show them I could pass it, having the diploma didn't make a bit of difference to me.
Was I successful? Lol, I doubt you think I was after I told you about all the trouble I got into but yes, I was very successful. I've owned 4 different business and made money with all of them. The last one was an internet business and I made close to two million dollars in 6 years. Here's a quote for you. "A child educated only at school is an uneducated child - George Santayana". After I quit school I never quit learning and haven't quit to this day.
While I'd never, ever, tell anyone quitting school is a good idea I do know that you can be quite successful without having formal schooling. I've taken so many courses and so many seminars thru work that I could get college credits for that I have more than enough credits to have a college degree. Lol, no, I don't have one. It's just another piece of paper and I wouldn't go thru all the paperwork I needed to do to get it.
Any kids reading this, STAY IN SCHOOL. I was lucky, smart, highly curious and stubborn plus I have a huge fear of failure. Not everyone can do what I did. Some days I do wonder what my life would have been like if I'd have had better parents. For sure it would be very different than what I have now. There's a depressing thought for today. ;)
One day in first grade we were given an assignment to color some pictures of the pilgrims. They were on a mimeographed piece of paper and we all had the same ones to color. The teacher gave us our instructions and then the whole class started coloring.
I was coloring away, going outside the lines and getting the assignment done quickly when the teacher came over and watched me for a minute. She started talking to me telling me I need to color better and to stay inside the lines. Then she walked away and went to help someone else.
A few minutes later she came back to me to see if I was coloring inside the lines. Lol, I wasn't and she got really mad at me for it, chewed me out for not following her directions, called the classes attention to what I was doing wrong and in general embarrassed me. This was my first introduction to the stupidity of teachers and school. After all the anger at me for coloring outside the lines I didn't understand the problem. I'm sure you don't see it here either. I'm pretty certain you are just seeing me as a stubborn kid doing what he wanted to do instead of what the teacher told me to do.
Well, you are wrong. You see, it didn't make any difference if we stayed inside the lines or not because the last instruction the teacher gave us was when we were done coloring the pictures we were to cut them out!
As grade schoolers we had to walk about two blocks to the high school for hot lunch. Now you can't even begin to imagine how bad hot lunches were back then. Particularly instant mashed potatoes. For gravy they grayed up some ground beef, added water to it and put this stinky mess over the crappy mashed potatoes.
That stuff was so bad I couldn't stand to smell it let alone eat it. Another few things I wouldn't eat were liver and green beans. No matter about those tho. I had eaten everything on my tray but the mashed potatoes and crap gravy and went to scrape off my tray so I could get outside and play.
One of the teachers took exception to my throwing the mashed potatoes away and told me I couldn't and that I had to eat them. She escorted me back to my seat and told me I couldn't leave until I finished them. Being a tad bit stubborn I never touched them and lunch hour got over. She still wouldn't let me leave. In fact she told me she was going to sit there with me until I ate them.
I told her I wasn't going to eat them and we argued about it for a long time. Finally around 2 hours later I told her if I ate them I was going to puke and she said no I wouldn't. Just eat them and get it over with. She kept telling me as soon as I ate them we could leave and I kept telling her I'd puke. Finally I took one bite, tried to chew and swallow it and guess what. I puked all over the place and all over the tray. Guess what, she finally believed me and I got to throw it away. Never again did they try to force me to eat something I didn't like.
In 9th grade I had the best teacher I ever had. Mrs Harker was my algebra teacher. Really nice lady. However I had a major problem with algebra, at least to her. You see I could figure out the answers in my head but I wasn't able to put the steps to solve the problem down on paper. Heh, I have that problem with a lot of things. I can see it but I can't get it down on paper how I reach my conclusions.
My grades in algebra for getting the right answers were straight A and my grade on my report card was a F. At the end of the semester she informed me I was being removed from the class because I couldn't show how to work the problems out. So here I am getting throw out of class because I can't work the problems yet I never had a wrong answer.
Her rationale was if I couldn't show my work I'd never be able to move up to calculus or trig or anything else. This really irritated me because she wasn't even going to give me the chance to see if I could do the work in the higher math. So because I couldn't show my work I ended up in math for dummies class. I never bothered to do even one paper in that class because it was so far beneath what I was capable of. It was like being in second grade to me. BTW, I passed the class because I got straight A's on every test.
By then I hated school and when ninth grade was over I never went back. Yep, one of the smartest kids in school and I quit. Schools were still teaching to the lowest level and they had no idea at all what do do with someone like me who was highly intelligent and so bored by it all. It's better for kids now but still not as good for the ultra smart as it should be.
They still want everyone to conform, do what they are told and they still teach to the slowest person. It's no wonder intelligent people quit school. I also heard I'd never get anywhere without a high school diploma. Yeah, right. I passed my GED on he first try while I was going to computer school in Massachusetts in 1965. Never studied for it and never got my GED diploma because it cost 5 bucks but I did keep the piece of paper with all of my passing test scores on it for years. I probably still have it somewhere. I just took the test to show them I could pass it, having the diploma didn't make a bit of difference to me.
Was I successful? Lol, I doubt you think I was after I told you about all the trouble I got into but yes, I was very successful. I've owned 4 different business and made money with all of them. The last one was an internet business and I made close to two million dollars in 6 years. Here's a quote for you. "A child educated only at school is an uneducated child - George Santayana". After I quit school I never quit learning and haven't quit to this day.
While I'd never, ever, tell anyone quitting school is a good idea I do know that you can be quite successful without having formal schooling. I've taken so many courses and so many seminars thru work that I could get college credits for that I have more than enough credits to have a college degree. Lol, no, I don't have one. It's just another piece of paper and I wouldn't go thru all the paperwork I needed to do to get it.
Any kids reading this, STAY IN SCHOOL. I was lucky, smart, highly curious and stubborn plus I have a huge fear of failure. Not everyone can do what I did. Some days I do wonder what my life would have been like if I'd have had better parents. For sure it would be very different than what I have now. There's a depressing thought for today. ;)
Monday, March 19, 2007
Schools, intelligence and depression
While I was beaten and molsted all of the summer before I stared school so I couldn't wait to start school. If nothing else it was going to get me out of the house and to a place where I wouldn't be hurt. Life was going to be better going to school than it was going to be at home.
Guess what? School had a major problem with me. The way I'd been raised and was being raised none of their rules scared me. Besides, it was kindergarten so what could go wrong. Lol, everything could go wrong. While I wasn't truly disruptive I was the toughest kid in my grade and also one of the smallest.
Then they discovered another bad thing. Not only was I the toughest, I was also the smartest. To be honest with you I don't believe being labeled smart is a good thing. My brain never quite worked the way other peoples did and I didn't see things the same way other kids did. To put it simply, I didn't quite fit the mold the school had nor was I like the other kids.
Don't get me wrong, I liked going to school but I was radically different. I spent 58 years wondering what made me so different from other people. Why I could see things they couldn't and why I couldn't make them understand.
To digress a bit here, I finally found out last year why I was different, why I had/have no patience with people. I've had a lot of court ordered personality tests and when the net came along I took a few on the net too. One day I stumbled across this place http://keirsey.com/ and they have a test which will tell you what type of temperment or persnality you have.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. " —Henry David Thoreau
Not only don't I hear the same drummer as everyone else I don't even come close to hearing the same band and very, very few hear the drummer I hear. I discovered that being intelligent wasn't my only problem but this explained it to me. http://keirsey.com/personality/ntij.html Unfortunately for me less han 1 in 100 people have these same traits.
I can not only see plan A in it's entirety, at the same time I can also see most of the permutations of plan A and at the same time see plan B, C and D. Some of this is done with intuition and some of it is done with knowledge. To put it simply I an see a master plan and all the backup plans and possibilities very easily. I almost always have a plan and a backup and a bckup for the backup. They just spring full blown, into my mind.
The problem with that is it's very difficult for me to explain to other people how I arrive at the conclusions I do or to even justify, in a way they can understand, what I do. People almost always laugh at me because I'm different but what they don't realize is I'm laughing at them because they are all the same.
Once again, a shrink told me I was on the outside looking in and wanting in and I took exception to that. To me the people on the inside were/are locked in and behind walls and I was outside of their walls and free to go in any direction I wanted to go. They were in societies version of prison because they all conformed. Sheep!
Anyway, school discovered that I was very smart. with all of heir stupid tests they determined that I had an IQ of 140. Argh, now they had high expectations because I was 5 points over genius level on their charts. I suspect I'd be much happier if I was less smart and my brain couldn't do the things it can do in problem solving or seeing solutions or being able to make decisions.
That was also very depressing and I suspect is part of what causes my depression now. Still no one understands me and I seldom take the time to explain anymore.
Guess what? School had a major problem with me. The way I'd been raised and was being raised none of their rules scared me. Besides, it was kindergarten so what could go wrong. Lol, everything could go wrong. While I wasn't truly disruptive I was the toughest kid in my grade and also one of the smallest.
Then they discovered another bad thing. Not only was I the toughest, I was also the smartest. To be honest with you I don't believe being labeled smart is a good thing. My brain never quite worked the way other peoples did and I didn't see things the same way other kids did. To put it simply, I didn't quite fit the mold the school had nor was I like the other kids.
Don't get me wrong, I liked going to school but I was radically different. I spent 58 years wondering what made me so different from other people. Why I could see things they couldn't and why I couldn't make them understand.
To digress a bit here, I finally found out last year why I was different, why I had/have no patience with people. I've had a lot of court ordered personality tests and when the net came along I took a few on the net too. One day I stumbled across this place http://keirsey.com/ and they have a test which will tell you what type of temperment or persnality you have.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. " —Henry David Thoreau
Not only don't I hear the same drummer as everyone else I don't even come close to hearing the same band and very, very few hear the drummer I hear. I discovered that being intelligent wasn't my only problem but this explained it to me. http://keirsey.com/personality/ntij.html Unfortunately for me less han 1 in 100 people have these same traits.
I can not only see plan A in it's entirety, at the same time I can also see most of the permutations of plan A and at the same time see plan B, C and D. Some of this is done with intuition and some of it is done with knowledge. To put it simply I an see a master plan and all the backup plans and possibilities very easily. I almost always have a plan and a backup and a bckup for the backup. They just spring full blown, into my mind.
The problem with that is it's very difficult for me to explain to other people how I arrive at the conclusions I do or to even justify, in a way they can understand, what I do. People almost always laugh at me because I'm different but what they don't realize is I'm laughing at them because they are all the same.
Once again, a shrink told me I was on the outside looking in and wanting in and I took exception to that. To me the people on the inside were/are locked in and behind walls and I was outside of their walls and free to go in any direction I wanted to go. They were in societies version of prison because they all conformed. Sheep!
Anyway, school discovered that I was very smart. with all of heir stupid tests they determined that I had an IQ of 140. Argh, now they had high expectations because I was 5 points over genius level on their charts. I suspect I'd be much happier if I was less smart and my brain couldn't do the things it can do in problem solving or seeing solutions or being able to make decisions.
That was also very depressing and I suspect is part of what causes my depression now. Still no one understands me and I seldom take the time to explain anymore.
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