#public schools are wild

[viridianv0id]

please tell me more about the science class stuff

Oh i would LOVE to!! ill put this under a cut but some warnings first: Mentions of: eating gross things, illegal activities and animal death/ unpleasant pest control methods

So, this is not in order and is probably over the course of my science class and marine biology class because memory is a BITCH but the teacher was the same for both

of course, there was the gunpowder incident which i already talked about, that was really fun at the time

we also had set off a expired boat flare, which seems innocent at first as our teacher was just showing us how it worked - but setting off a flare when you aren't in an emergency is VERY illegal here in Australia and he was at genuine risk of getting in trouble if we were caught

the amount of times we did chemical experiments with lighting highly flammable metals ( i dont remember the name rn) without any safety equipment (yes i looked at the light and burned my eyes)

also doing that one experiment with a metal that explodes in water at a larger size that was ever actually allowed

we ate things like sheep brain, crocodile tail, fish eggs fresh from a dissected fish we did that class

EDIT: i should mention I DID NOT EAT THE SHEEP BRAIN OR FISH EGGS i did eat the croc though and it was nice! tasted like chicken with a nice texture

we cared for over a hundred rainbow trout, thats nothing crazy it was just cool and i loved feeding them

our school had its own mini farm that held actual animals, sheep, llamas we even had cows at some point

sorta fun story about the cows but its not fun at all actually and upset quite a few kids we had the class a couple times a week and one day when we came to class the cows were just suddenly gone, not too unusual sometimes they just weren't at the school, but on this day our teacher decided to have a bbq and what did he bring to this bbq? beef. fucking. sausages.

we all thought it was the cows, looking back now it wasnt the cows, it was too soon after they were gone for it to be that but it still upset us kids

there was this one time i broke a cinder block! literally split it in two we had a small rat infestation in the fish shed and to take care of it our teacher threw the rats out to us for us to kill (we had to, couldn't release them or keep them) so a few of us took some turns throwing the cinder block and when it got to me and i threw it down the damn concrete thing just snapped in two. yeah.

thats all i can remember right now at least, science/marine bio class was a fun time and the teacher was honestly great and if it wasn't for the fact i was poor i would of had my boating license at the age of 16

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[insufferablemod]

i want a fic abuot alpha dave getting cancelled on twitter so bad...

[conceiteddemon]

Do you guys think that Mina has to. Like. Go to school now

[ktkat99]

I just found my yearbook from elementary school and unlocked a MEMORY.

For context, I still live in the town I grew up in and it's so small that I have to drive forty minutes away to grocery shop. If I go past the town I shop in at all and have to give the name of the town I live in, nobody's heard of it.

The school I attended was so old that on the last day of school every year, we'd gather at the front of the building and be sent off by our principal PULLING THE ROPE OF OUR ANCIENT SCHOOL BELL.

I say these things to emphasize that our school was small, unheard of, underfunded, and old. And we all knew it.

So we were all gathered in the gym one day for another of those "sell cookies for the school" fundraiser assemblies, and after our principal got done showing us all the cool prizes our top selling students would get, she then announced that if we made enough as a school, then we would get a visit from

THE.

HANNAH.

MONTANA.

As this was right at the height of her fame, and by far the biggest name in pop culture to a bunch of elementary school students, we lost our minds.

We worked our butts off, raised money, sold cookies.

And WON.

We reached our goal!

We won a visit from Hannah Montana!

And then the day came and we gathered in the gym, and the music started, and out came

Our principal.

Dressed in a cowboy hat and jean jacket.

She halfheartedly danced to the opening of a Hannah Montana song while the teachers and some students clapped politely, and then held up a piece of paper and cut the music.

What was on the paper?

A letter from Hannah Montana apologizing for not being able to make it?

Some secret prize?

Maybe she was so impressed with how many cookies we sold that she would be performing a whole concert for us just outside and this was all just our principal having a laugh??

No.

It was our morning announcements.

We were then sent back to class with no further explanation.

To this day, I still don't know if she thought we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, or if she just didn't think we'd ever reach our goal, but we never tried near as hard for any fundraiser after that.

[doctorbrown]

MCFLY JULY ‘24 ⸺ 「 30 / 31 * BLIND SPOT 」

April 16, 1991

“Mom’s gonna lose it when she sees that,” Verne says, scrunching up his face as he studies the nasty bruise swelling up around Jules’ left eye. It’s gnarly—so much so he reaches out to touch it, prompting Jules to swiftly smack his wrist away—purples and reds and blacks blossoming out from his eye, his upper eyelid swollen, encroaching on the eye itself, and Verne whistles, not envying his brother’s position.

That looks like it hurts.

Last time that happened to him, his face ached for days and Curie only made it worse, trying to help with the bruising by licking it clean. It was almost as bad as the scolding lecture Mom had given him.

“I know,” Jules says, heaving a sigh of resignation well older than his twelve years. “I don’t know what’s going to be worse, her worrying about this and sitting us—”

“—You! Don’t drag me into this, it wasn’t my fault this time!”

“—down for another one of her lectures about why we shouldn’t let ourselves get provoked into fights with the other kids or the look on Dad’s face.”

“Mom,” Verne answers without a moment’s hesitation, “no question. Dad only freaked last time ‘cause the school called him and made him come down there and made it sound like something bad happened to you.”

All the kids in the school had talked about it for a week, how crazy old Doctor Brown burst into the school like a madman and chewed out not only the principle, but the teacher who’d allowed such an incident to happen right under her nose.

Peter Weintraub spent the whole next day telling anyone who would listen that Doctor Brown got so angry he threatened them with one of his creepy death rays and Verne nearly marched all the way to the upperclassman’s lunchroom to even out Peter’s stupid, smug face with a second black eye.

God, he really hated that kid sometimes. And Jules had to sit in classrooms with him every day. The thought nearly makes Verne shudder.

Jules barks out a sound between a huff and a laugh. “Yeah, Dad doesn’t get angry often but he really wasn’t happy that day. But that just gave Peter another reason to start running his mouth like the jerk he is.”

Verne kicks a rock in their path, sending it flying down the street. “He musta messed up real bad this time if you hit him after you promised Mom you wouldn’t.”

Throwing his head back, Jules lets out the loudest, most exaggerated sound of exasperation and disgust a twelve-year-old could possibly manage. “He started going off about Dad again! And not with the usual stuff either. I still hate it that people think Dad’s just some crazy failure ‘cause we can’t tell them about the You-Know-Whats or all the other cool stuff he’s been inventin’ for them, but you know what he says.”

That it doesn’t bother him because it’s nothing he hasn’t heard all his life, and probably in far worse ways than anything these kids can come up with. Verne nods, understanding all-too-well.

“So fine, he can say whatever he wants and if the others laugh with him, they don’t know anything. But this time he went too far, talking about how Dad’s too old, sayin’ stuff about Mom, and I just lost it.” Jules goes to rake his hand down his face and thinks better of it at the last second, diverting his energy into following Verne’s lead and sending a rock hurtling down the street with all the pent-up anger he can summon. “Next thing I know I’m hitting him and we’re yelling and—ugh, Mom’s gonna kill me.”

“Mom’s not gonna kill you. But she is gonna give you That Look that makes you wish you could steal one of Dad’s Machines.” Suddenly, Verne snaps his fingers, taken by a brilliant idea. “I bet Uncle Marty’s got some makeup at his place we could use to cover that up. And he won’t rat on us to Mom and Dad.”

[quatregats]

Okay hear me out. What if Hornblower and Lady Barbara but they're high school math olympians and also have a crazy psychosexual rivalry with each other

[hairtusk]

^^ people who have never handled a rescued bird of prey in their entire lives

[vulpinesaint]

it is a truth universally acknowledged that if you raise your child catholic they will turn out fucked up and strange. there are many ways in which this end can be achieved but rest assured no matter what path your child follows in life they'll always be weird about god

[shy-girl04]

Harrow school boys watched by local London lads, 1937. Photographer - Jimmy Sime

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)

[ave-immaculata]

why should catholic schools receive public funding when that means everyone is paying for them, even non-catholics who wouldn't send their child to a catholic school?

they shouldn't, I think it's one of the worst things to have happened here

however, here you are able to select which board (public or Catholic) your vote (for trustees and stuff) will apply to and your taxes will support. you're only allowed to "opt in" to the Catholic board if you self identify to the government as Roman Catholic (don't even get me started on this) and unless you call and switch, your ballot and taxes reflect the public board only

there's also a lot of confusion since a lot (like a lot) of non-Catholic families send their kids to Catholic school but because they won't self identify as Roman Catholic, they don't get to vote on the school boards trustees lol

[kaoharu]

actually being asian to me is having been made fun of for lots of asian things i did before it got cool and now its like. hrmmm ok white people

[onlyfangz]

what i dont get with the colleen ballinger alleged grooming accusations is if you wanted to brush all of this under the rug why in the fuck would you make an earworm of a song to do it? i have had the chorus stuck in my head since it came out, and every single time it gets stuck in my head, i’m reminded about how much of an evil creep she is.

[freddyfreeman]

Talking to my dad in Florida about how there’s still a pandemic going on has got me feeling like a flat earther… genuinely might as well be for how much of a wall of denial I’m hitting.