Comrades and Corkscrews

There is an epidemic going on that is buried under every epidemic that comes up every day about very imaginable thing that could be wrong with the world. The social hierarchy of academics. First, something very important needs to be established: There are a loads of people in the world that are highly adept at performing well in a school situation that includes tests, quizzes, studying, repetition, memorization, and without a doubt, no matter how much one would try to deny it, a certain degree of hard work, but hard work nonetheless. Now, we are going to focus on the group of academic-oriented people within the top 20% of their school. It goes without saying that when people don't like school, it's because they like something else. And they're probably way better at what they do than the smartest asian kid in the pre-calculus class they're failing. That said, the asian kid could run circles around them in algebra equations. To each his own. Now, there is a fundamental problem with the way society is taught to weigh certain abilities and skills: For one thing, school is required for everyone to be academically educated to be accepted in the working world to make money to buy a car, house, have kids, and continue the process with some important non-economic factors I left out. The main problem with this is that school is designed in a particular way that only certain kids can excel at it, leaving the rest to struggle with the method designed to further one's academic learning. So one kid may have to work harder to understand a concept and skill than another, making for an extremely unbalanced system. To think it could be so stupidly designed makes my blood boil. There are 16 personality types in this world, but there aren't 16 different dynamics of education. Why is that? Well, the school system is run by those who excel at it's process and method of "teaching". A valedictorian of her high school class once said in her speech that she wasn't the smartest, she was simply "the best at doing what [they're] told". And that's what school is. A test of how good you are at doing what you're told. Now, I have said what I feel about how screwed up the education system is and how that makes it highly inefficient. But it's widely accepted. Why aren't areas of the arts accepted as a serious form of learning? They are "extras" that are always cut from funding when money is tight. They're the "easy A classes". Your parents probably never beat you for getting a C in cooking class, or drawing and painting or jazz band. But then again, you probably would never have a C since your grade was (hopefully) based on participation and how well you tried in class. Now, the hierarchy of elitists that roam at the top of the food chain in class rank and GPa and SAT scores are mixed. there are some people who are down-to-earth, work hard, break their backs to be at the top because they were probably whipped as a child, taught that failure is a disgrace and the only option is being the best. Asian countries have an extremely bad case of this, as was brought to my attention by a friend who went to school in Vietnam, where they will kill themselves because school is so overwhelming. And I am not kidding. Doesn't that make you sad? Depressed? I don't even know how to respond to that. At least in my country we can still enjoy our lives and be happy. Think about the cost to being at the top pf your class: Wake up, school, homework, some kind of food consumed, homework, homework, bed, no sleep, repeat. Now, think about kids who go home, watch TV, do some homework, eat dinner, more tv, homework, computer, phone, sleep a decent amount, wake up, and go to school. I think I'd opt for the second choice, but the firs translates to high academic integrity. Enough of that, this is the part that bothers me: Those highly competitive kids at the top who rip each others throats out to be #1, always fighting, always studying the extra hour, taking the extra summer course, whatever it takes to eat anyone in school. And they're filled with malice. It's a subtle malice that they bury beneath their mountains of math homework, but if you can catch a glimpse, it's an ugly one. And they have flocks to group together with. They can only associate with the academically gifted that perform on their level of insanity. They look down upon others, and they look without sympathy. They scoff at skateboards, parties and IM. And the icing on the cake to this perverted system is the way the ranks of smart kids that are below the cream of the cream of the crop look upon them. They talk about them as if they were a new planet found with human life. They are looked upon as super-humans in it's a tragedy. I hear endless conversations going on about college, rank, GPA, complaints about doing above average instead of the best. And don't ask them about their quiz if you did better, or they just might not show up to school the next day. I am tired of analyzing the situation, and I have given up on being hung up on who's ahead off who every week, because it's insignificant, superficial, and it makes me wonder why people don't want to talk about anything else that matters. There's a life waiting for you beyond academia and it's called the real world, which is what I'm trying to prepare for. And I'm not going to let school get in the way of my education.