God, what an evil set of experiences you describe. (And what a good icon you have for this project.)
I'm going to spend a few minutes today being grateful for my high school. I'm sure there were mean people in it, but by the time I was 16 or 17, none of them were being mean where I had to notice, and it wasn't any kind of topic of conversation - no one sat around whispering, "Did you hear what ... said yesterday, to poor ...?"
It was a geek school. I think that makes all the difference. Once upon a time, it was a lab school*, and then I think it had a brief hope of being a School For The Gifted, but the only "Gifted" who ever came were the geeks, because it became self-perpetuating: the very smart kids who knew how to dress and who to have crushes on and were cut out to do well in high school anyhow could have gone to our school, but they were horrified at the idea. "I don't want to go there. It's full of freaks!"
Admittedly, in first few years, people were pretty mean, but in an unskilled, disorganized kind of way.
I'll tell you one thing that I, personally, helped a lot. It's not something the kids you'll be talking to have any power over, alas. The main thing was that we were 90% geeks. But I happen to believe that there was a lot of side help from the fact that we didn't have a cafeteria. The school didn't serve food, and we ate the food we brought sitting on the floors in the halls or perched in the stairwells, or outside. Every YA novel I have ever read depicting American high schools seems to point to The Cafeteria and Who Sits At Your Table At Lunch as being absolutely key in the unmanageable horror of high school.
Anyhow. We didn't sit around snarking at people, nor did we sit around fearing people. We barely sat around having crushes on peope. Mostly, we were too busy discussing whether to have a student strike because a particular teacher was boring and - we were very incensed about this - too lax in the classroom, or because they took away the ancient wooden desks we could and did write on and replaced them with modern blue things that were sort of plasticy and wouldn't take pencil marks. We were so upset. We were sure our civil rights were being abridged. We knew we weren't allowed to write on the desks, but we all felt that we should have the choice whether or not to obey that rule. And besides, the Paisley Desk had been the work of generations of students.
Geek school, represent. I would *not* have survived the kind of school you're describing.
* As the school's publicity will tell you ad nauseam, it's where New Math was invented and first taught. Now, New Math is now Old enough that most people my generation don't know what it means, so it would be fun if there were a more recent accomplishment, but still.
no subject
I'm going to spend a few minutes today being grateful for my high school. I'm sure there were mean people in it, but by the time I was 16 or 17, none of them were being mean where I had to notice, and it wasn't any kind of topic of conversation - no one sat around whispering, "Did you hear what ... said yesterday, to poor ...?"
It was a geek school. I think that makes all the difference. Once upon a time, it was a lab school*, and then I think it had a brief hope of being a School For The Gifted, but the only "Gifted" who ever came were the geeks, because it became self-perpetuating: the very smart kids who knew how to dress and who to have crushes on and were cut out to do well in high school anyhow could have gone to our school, but they were horrified at the idea. "I don't want to go there. It's full of freaks!"
Admittedly, in first few years, people were pretty mean, but in an unskilled, disorganized kind of way.
I'll tell you one thing that I, personally, helped a lot. It's not something the kids you'll be talking to have any power over, alas. The main thing was that we were 90% geeks. But I happen to believe that there was a lot of side help from the fact that we didn't have a cafeteria. The school didn't serve food, and we ate the food we brought sitting on the floors in the halls or perched in the stairwells, or outside. Every YA novel I have ever read depicting American high schools seems to point to The Cafeteria and Who Sits At Your Table At Lunch as being absolutely key in the unmanageable horror of high school.
Anyhow. We didn't sit around snarking at people, nor did we sit around fearing people. We barely sat around having crushes on peope. Mostly, we were too busy discussing whether to have a student strike because a particular teacher was boring and - we were very incensed about this - too lax in the classroom, or because they took away the ancient wooden desks we could and did write on and replaced them with modern blue things that were sort of plasticy and wouldn't take pencil marks. We were so upset. We were sure our civil rights were being abridged. We knew we weren't allowed to write on the desks, but we all felt that we should have the choice whether or not to obey that rule. And besides, the Paisley Desk had been the work of generations of students.
Geek school, represent. I would *not* have survived the kind of school you're describing.
* As the school's publicity will tell you ad nauseam, it's where New Math was invented and first taught. Now, New Math is now Old enough that most people my generation don't know what it means, so it would be fun if there were a more recent accomplishment, but still.