I swear, I was gonna slap one of them.

[QreepyBORIS]

Okay, story time for the CT boards.

In English 9 Intensive, we are reading Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 (among many, many other books). I rather like it, too.

As those who are familiar with the piece of literature are aware, it denounces....a whole ton of things. It is one of the most anti-media, anti-government, anti-a whole lot of stuff books I have ever seen. But focus on the government and media are particularly strong. Oh, and Parlor televisions, too. Giant, 3d, totally-immersive televisions that you are INSIDE of. They are portrayed to be quite bad in the eyes of Montag.

If you are a bit dense, Parlor = TV = Media.

So, anyway, we are reading it in class. The teacher tells us to get into pre-arranged discussion groups (about 6 people in size). This is our third discussion of the book, having one per week. This is also the last one.

My group was filled with sort-of competent people. Like, C-B grades. I think I was the only person in the A-range in my group (another one of the groups was most of the really smart people, minus myself and about two others). That's nothing to really complain about, though. The past two times our groups met, they sort of discussed things, and maybe a good idea or two was brought forward (by someone other than myself [omg narcissism]) in total.

But THIS time was much, much different. I guess the more talkative group members, whom I will call Sarah McIntyre and Emily McEvoy for their personal protection, did not really feel like discussing the Bradbury novel's high points (NOTE: oops, I think I actually used their real names. Sorry). Okay, fine I've dealt with worse.

Well, I spoke too soon.

The English teacher came to our group after about a minute to prompt discussion, as nobody was really talking about anything relevant at this point. Okay.

So he asks us to discuss (as a group) how the media is portrayed in the book, particularly in the Parlor setting.


And these two girls start TALKING about their FAVORITE TELEVISION SHOWS.

Oh, I **** you not.

They say things along the lines of "Oh, this reality TV show is so wonderful! It's on at 8:30 on channel (x) on wednesday nights!" They then proceed to write said things down on their hands.

The situation I was viewing could NOT have been more ironic. Or sickening/saddening.

Uuuaaaagggghhhhh.



And after about 2 attempts to get them to get themselves back on track (failures both), I give up. Then group discussion time ends (right before I was about to join discussion with the smart group, damn!), and I shuffle back to my regular seat.


Ugh.


God.





Please tell me that this is an isolated incident, and that most of the world is NOT that STUPID.

I hope it is. Those two kids are usually not remarkably dumb, and are rather tolerable at most times.

But oh, my god, what a day.

[psychic25]

I feel for you.

For the last month or so, I've been sitting next to this girl in my Geography class. Now, I think that she usually IS really stupid. For example, I'll give you a conversation that occurred between her and the teacher. We were talking about Italy.

Teacher: And so what else do they have in Italy?
(other random person): Isn't Venice in Italy? Like, with the gondolas?
Girl: What's a gondola?
Teacher: It's one of those boats they have on the canals. Have you ever heard of them? The canals in Venice? You know, I've heard that you can actually get married in a gondola.
Girl: Wait... what's a gondola again?
Teacher: It's a kind of boat... There's usually people in them- the gondoliers.
Girl: Ohh... I've heard of those. Where did you say they were?
Teacher: Uh... in Venice; it's in Italy.
Girl: And you can get married in one of those?
Teacher: Yup.
Girl: That'd be kind of cool, to be married in a... in a... what were they called again?

By this time, the whole class, including the teacher, was laughing at her.

Also, today, we had a pop quiz. She looked at it, read it over, answered about three or four questions (out of thirteen) and pretended to be finished. Then, when it was time to correct, her friend marked her paper all correct by writing in answers for her as the teacher said them. She got 100%. She was one of the few people who did.

My friend, who actually has a three-digit IQ, got a 77% (minus 3).

I hate people like her.

[Freak83]

Umm in school I find there's always a few sterotypical idiots who think they have to live high school life a certain way. They are the ones corrupted by media and society. There's a pair of retards like this in my band class who I can't stand. Luckily for me they play Tenor Sax and I play Percussion so I don't have to put up with them. My friend sits right next to them though and does.

Basically it's not isolated, there's idiots like this everywhere in high school. You're lucky if you can get into a class where there isn't any at all.

[psychic25]

That's why I like honors classes. I haven't run into any idiots in my honors classes. Note that Geography (for me) is the only history class available at my grade, so everybody gets mixed together.

[Mindfields]

Please tell me that this is an isolated incident, and that most of the world is NOT that STUPID.


1. Thank you for saying "most"
2. Sadly, most of the population IS that stupid.
Example:
Today, my History teacher showed us a video of her son's band (in which he is the lead guitarist of). I sit surrounded by girls in this class, lucky? No, only 2 out of the 7 I'm surrounded by are hot, and they sit at the far parts of my..."surroundation range"...of course, thats not a word, so I'll shutup about them.
Anyways, apparently they are all attracted to my History teacher's 26 year old son. What's worse is that one of them thinks she has a chance with him. So, I am taking that girl to the concert on Saturday, to prove that she is ugly and will never score with an older guy.
I think I might be tooooo harsh, but you know, she thinks she has a chance...

[c117]

I can't stand some of the people in my drafting class, though they are a little more tolerable than your classmates... most of them think using ctrl+alt+delete to close the lock software is L33T H4X0RZ.

[talisman]

one thing I don't get: you were TRYING to discuss the book? The way it works where I come from... when we get in groups in english class, we just fake it. It is a decent book though.

[QreepyBORIS]

Yeah, High School (well, the average intellect of a high schooler) has made me much more angry and critical.

I mean, I was bad before, but I feel that some of these people deserve someone rebutting and rebuking them at every turn. I wish they did not.

I cannot be the only asshole here who does that. Because it feels SO unavoidable to do, most of the time.


EDIT: Talisman, I could see times when I would do that. But I do rather enjoy having intelligent, real-life conversations with other people about one specific thing.

That was not exactly possible earlier today, unfortuantely.

Another "discussion" that sidetracked EVERYONE IN THE GROUP BUT MYSELF was "How do you think humanity will have progressed 5 billion years from now?" Aiieaiitngipdrnpdnbipdn. Five billion. People making honest-to-God predictions of HOW ADVANCED we would be. And then one of them related it to a totally different book from the one we were supposed to be discussing.


Argh.

[jewpinthethird]

I have had many experiences like that. Luckily, the majority of my high school classes have been Honors or Advanced Placement. This is the first year were I am actually taking a "standard college prep" enlgish course. The people in the class, for the most part, well, I wouldnt call them stupid, just ignorant. A lot of the kids are actually quite bright, they just dont apply themselves.

There are these three girls in my copmuter literacy class and they DO NOT SHUT UP. I am not exaggerating, the entire 2 hour block I had the class, there wasnt more than 1 minute of silence from them. I dont really have a problem with people talking, except they also happen to be LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS. Seriously, the extent of their conversations is either about "how they hate a certain bitch" or "a certain bitch hates them and they dont know why." When they arent talking about "bitch-ass hoes" they are insulting people who are in the class, or telling people to "shut up, you stupid ho." I wanted to say (and dont take this as being racist) "Quit being a goddamn stereotype. Maybe that is the reason people f*cking hate you. I know I f*cking hate you AND I DONT EVEN KNOW YOU. Quit talking about how f*cking great you are and use proper english for once."

Seriously, the fact that there are people like that in the world is just sad.

[Arch0wl-R2]

My group was filled with sort-of competent people. Like, C-B grades. I think I was the only person in the A-range in my group (another one of the groups was most of the really smart people, minus myself and about two others).

This part stood out to me.

While you have a valid point, you judged their intelligence solely on their grades.

I seem like an intelligent person to a lot of people, and I am, but I get barely-passing D's in Algebra 1. Your grades do not represent your intelligence, as I've seen tons of people which I am tiers smarter than but those same people have infinitely better grades than I do.

[alainbryden]

Grades = Applied knowlege + Motivation.

[Squeek]

YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW MUCH CRAP I PUT UP WITH.

You think I'm rough on grammar here? What do you think I do with retarded people that don't catch mistakes that Word doesn't catch? They get their papers back after a peer review and they get all pissed at me because there's like 3 marks per sentence. Incorrect citation, grammatically incorrect sentence structure, misspellings, misuse of punctuation, lack of puntuation, excessive amounts of punctuation. NAME IT.

Of course, my paper has 3 marks on it and their "corrections" are wrong, so I STET it.

Another such example is just like you said. In my high school English course, we always broke into groups to discuss things. Our group was the ONLY GROUP to ever accomplish anything and we had fun doing it too. We read stories in a heavily-accented British accent, or as Mr. T / Fat Albert / Yoda / insert famous person/thing here. We overhear other groups as we talk about Family Guy once the assignment is done:

"omg did u heer about (this guy)?"
"no omg wat he do?"
"omg he liek todally omg"
"OMG"

That's the jist of it. Just thinking about how those idiots made it into some college scares me. EVERY DAY I put up with this sensless patter. Then it came time for an exam, and SUDDENLY they shape up...sorta.

"OMg teecher wats on the exam is there a curve how much of a curve why isnt there a curve whats going to be on it is it multiple choice is it true false are there essays what does it cover how many questions tel me now plzz so i can do all the things to prepare for it now instead of the months beforehand we had during class plz"

Anyone who disagrees is wrong. I still hear this in college. Hey, morons, the test is going to be things you were supposed to be paying attention to during class. Nothing else. The professor isn't going to ask you to write a three page essay on the Angkor Wat if you never went over it (if the class even has a clue what that is -.-).

Love this topic. I'll rant more later. Dinner is now. Ranting is later.

~Squeek

[Kilgamayan]

In all my college experience, the people who asked about curves for exams (myself included) weren't so much stupid as they were simply lazy.

Like alain said, Grades = applied knowledge + motivation. The motivation part is why I dropped so far from last year to this one.

Take my DiffEq's class, for example - didn't do a single homework assignment all year and ended up with a C-. But you saw yourself that I'm not ignorant on the subject when we played Manhunt a couple months back.

[Tasselfoot]

No one brought up that it is likely that in 5 billion years our sun will die and our planet will be engulfed by the cosmic growth of the star before it dies. So, the correct answer is that we better have SPF 25,000,000,000 if we want to survive 5 billion years from now.

I hated english class, I hate essay writing, I hate having to write for a grade at all. I wish every class I had was like Finance and Physics.... 99% math. So, I'll ignore that entire portion of this thread. I do however discussing a good book. I've never read Farenheit 451, so I have no ideas about the book. I would just like to take this time to say that HHGTTG sucks.

Tass out.

[Tps222]

I was watching Chris Rock a few nights ago, and he pointed out somthing that made sense. America is average. In school, there are about 5 smart kids in the class, 5 idiots, and the rest are all just in the middle; and that is what America is, a country of people in the middle. While it does bother me to hear people complaining about the easiest thing, I am sort of glad in a way. The dumber everyone else is, the better I'm going to be at life. Let everyone be a B student, while I get my A's, go to college, and get a better job then them. Let them drop out, less competetition for me.

I was about to say the same thing about the sun.

[QreepyBORIS]

My group was filled with sort-of competent people. Like, C-B grades. I think I was the only person in the A-range in my group (another one of the groups was most of the really smart people, minus myself and about two others).

This part stood out to me.

While you have a valid point, you judged their intelligence solely on their grades.

I seem like an intelligent person to a lot of people, and I am, but I get barely-passing D's in Algebra 1. Your grades do not represent your intelligence, as I've seen tons of people which I am tiers smarter than but those same people have infinitely better grades than I do.

And as they do not apply themselves in this class, how useful is their intellect if they do not exhibit it?

One of the people is quite bright, but a slacker.

The rest I assume are getting B-C grades because of their apparent intelligence. :P I do not know their grades.


And Tass, I DID mention that the sun would eventually fail to fuse with itself, AND several other important issues.

And Sarah M's reaction was something along the lines of "It was opnly hyothetical!" or "It was just about this one book I was reading, sheesh!"



More pain for me. =/

[JurseyRider734]

Luckily i'm not in too many normal classes, just my math class. Yeah, there are stupid people in there, but they are also a grade ahead of me. Some of them two grades ahead. My other classes have been Computers, Gym, and honors classes. I haven't had to put up with too many stupid people...just people who like to debate with me even though they're wrong. That pisses me off. I know how you feel, though, because it used to be like that for me in elementary school.

[QreepyBORIS]

Exactly, Jurs. It's straight out of elementary school. =/

[Jealousy]

Another "discussion" that sidetracked EVERYONE IN THE GROUP BUT MYSELF was "How do you think humanity will have progressed 5 billion years from now?" Aiieaiitngipdrnpdnbipdn. Five billion. People making honest-to-God predictions of HOW ADVANCED we would be. And then one of them related it to a totally different book from the one we were supposed to be discussing.
At least this is an attempt to look smart from these kids. They sound like an intelligent bunch of idiots, if you follow. At my school when the extremes are put into discussion groups (by extremes I mean focused and intelligent kids as compared to kids that act like they've been beaten into submission), the smart kids generally become wallflowers while the cavemen discuss the latest colour of their urine. There's not a trace of legitmately placed conversation in respect to the subject of the discussion at hand. If it's not about bodily functions its about their favourite star being a hermaphrodite, or the recent price increase of top line catheters. Consider yourself lucky.

[deltro300111]

Gah... I know the feeling, I think I have a bigger problem with stupid teachers though.

For a few days in band we had a substitute teacher (I have four hours of band on A day and 2 on B, so I had to suffer through band somehow) Well, first day in Jazz Band, he said to everyone that he was going to change the way we did things. He moved us to the center of the normal symphonic band set up- quite a few of the less then intelligent members of the band were annoyed with this (It seemed to me that he'd never heard "When in Rome do what the Romans do.") so I sort of let this annoyance go. Out of rebellion, we all began to play our instruments horribly out of tune, pulling out slides, lowering/heightening notes half-steps, and overall sounding like crap.

This might sound sort of harsh, but this wasn't any of the band members first encounter with "Mr. MeHalfwit, as I prefer to call him. In an act- obviously to reaffirmmy hatred of him- he began to tell me that the loud trumpet solo (Marked fortissi-issimo, or triple f) at the end of "In the Mood" isn't the climax of the song. The quiet (Pianissimo) long tone held by the low brass/bari sax is. I argued with him for a while, often smirking and talking down to him, as if he were a 6th grader in beggining band.
At the end of band, he pulled in all the 1st chairs of the band, and talked to us, told us about our 'responsibility' as leaders. Apparently, he didn't realize that if everyone around you is telling you your an idiot, you probably are, and you need to stop whatever you are doing wrong, no- he didn't get it, for the last half of the week, he never figured it out.

Fast foward to Friday, during symphonic band- everyone is constantly laughing, and playing incorrectly, even the slightly stuck up 2nd chair (one below me) trumpet, who never joins in the fun of messing with the band director. Toward the end we started to cut loose more and more, by the last run-through everyone was playing random notes, loosely based on the rhythym of the song; and shooting hornets at the bass drum/gong, and the band director himself (:D I got one on his stand, he didn't notice, even when I- and a few people around me burst into laughter, during the count-off for a song)

Yea.. stupid people suck.

[QreepyBORIS]

Another "discussion" that sidetracked EVERYONE IN THE GROUP BUT MYSELF was "How do you think humanity will have progressed 5 billion years from now?" Aiieaiitngipdrnpdnbipdn. Five billion. People making honest-to-God predictions of HOW ADVANCED we would be. And then one of them related it to a totally different book from the one we were supposed to be discussing.
At least this is an attempt to look smart from these kids. They sound like an intelligent bunch of idiots, if you follow. At my school when the extremes are put into discussion groups (by extremes I mean focused and intelligent kids as compared to kids that act like they've been beaten into submission), the smart kids generally become wallflowers while the cavemen discuss the latest colour of their urine. There's not a trace of legitmately placed conversation in respect to the subject of the discussion at hand. If it's not about bodily functions its about their favourite star being a hermaphrodite, or the recent price increase of top line catheters. Consider yourself lucky.

And I am a LITTLE lucky in that regard--that it could have been worse, that's just the thing. The mere FACT that it could have been worse is very, very discouraging to me. I know they were ATTEMPTING to be smart, which I appreciate to an extent, but if you do that, then seriously, you have to do RESEARCH on what you are trying to have an intellectual conversation about. They had no fleeming clue, and basically just put out an awful lot of stuff which was painfully obviously not true. =/

But, whatever. I am probably being too bitter about this, but still, rampant idiocy is something that I do not entirely approve of.

[TheTypist]

I know what it's like to be the only one on topic too. It's a burning, frustrating feeling, as if you're about to explode because you have so much to share no one will listen. Yes, the others misbehaving and being off-topic can be very annoying. Right there, right there you have a group of people, capable of accomplishing a task far greater than just one person alone. Yet, the potential is wasted.

But I've noticed that we all seem to attribute the cause to either the raw intelligence of the stutents who are off-topic, or pure malice. But there have to be other things as well. What if some have the intelligence to stay focused in class,without the motivaton? Or, scarier to think of, what if some people are not incapable, but too afraid to quiet their minds enough to think about the heavier subjects?