HN and a lot of places online have wonderful people too.
The average American public school teacher? They’re not that bright and they can be petty. I usually didn’t have trouble because I was a good student.
Some examples:
- Teacher in health class said BAC wasn’t lethal until 40%, when I mentioned I think it was .4% she said I forgot to multiply by 100. On the final the multiple choice answers for lethality ranged from 10% to 40% BAC. She also had an obvious hyper-Christian abstinence only lean despite state law to teach actual sex Ed.
- Art teacher in elementary school called home and humiliated me in front of the class because I was talking about video games with another student while working on arts and crafts (this teacher hated video games).
- Middle school history teacher hated children, picked favorites, and was just generally mean, would bully kids in the class. She was worse than most middle school students.
It’s not a superiority complex, I had wonderful teachers too that cared about students and were kind. The incentives and pay of public schools are such that you get a lot of bad ones (and they’re impossible to fire).
When I tried to tell adults about what was going on they often dismissed it with condescending nonsense “oh it’s a tough age” - no some of these people you have in charge of us are legitimately crazy and should not be in charge of children.
Children have no power in school and it often sucks to be there.