I always received booklets at the beginning of the school year. As I had friends who went to different schools I know that this was a standard thing in our county and they received booklets as well.

And yes, those stupid things were 20 pages long.

yes I'm aware of that particular business practice, although I think buyouts are usually far more effective, unless you resort ot out and out layoffs.

But the objective of these schoolboards is not to "get kids to quit" it's to get them to sit down, shut up and pay attention. Now if you've got yourself a handful of bright, motivated young people that's not terribly difficult, but lets face it...

it's a building full of teenagers.

also, I never got a booklet. huh. Well I might be wrong on that end then, however I'm quite sure that if a school district is going to issue booklets, the number and variety of rules will not appreciably effect the cost of those booklets.

Yes it does.

Fine, a lightbulb, a transformer, and, I don't know, uncoded wiring throughout the building that needs to be pulled out and repaired.

I don't even know what an electrical engineer does--but every minute you spend doing something is a minute you spend NOT doing something else.

This is why you get in trouble at work if you sit on your ass drinking coffee instead of doing actual work.

I don't get how this is a hard concept.

Like Pocheros and Blues, I also got them every year, and they were 24-40 pages long.

Like two pages spent on classes and shit, maybe four.

The rest spent on legaliesing the shit out of the rules. First they list them, then they list them in lawyer talk.

Edit: They may have handed the booklets out on the third week.

You know, when you weren't there, anymore.

you see this is funny because... right now I'm sitting on my ass drinking coffee.

and I'm not getting into trouble! ha haha!

I don't know where this image that every work day is filled to the brim with all kinds of important work comes from, but I don't think it's from the engineering field. A lot of times things come in spurts, like you've got to write up an implementation plan for a new system that takes you three solid months of work and then...

well then you sit on your ass drinking coffee.

but I"m quite sure that schoolboard policy makers have PLENTY of time to get done what they want to get done. The issue isn't time, it's motivation.

also yes, that's entirely possible.

I mean seriously, fuck high school. Just go get your GED at 15 and take community college for two years, then transfer to whatever university you wanted to go to. You'll save money and time.

By piling on loads of crap, you get students to realize how little individual power they have and give up. Eat shit and grin. Frankly, I STILL don't take shit, but I spent a LOT of my time from 7th year on really defining myself and actually doing some growing after being stifled for over half my life before that. Essentially, when I finally got to dress how I liked and pick and choose the classes I wanted to take, it really helped me define myself and turned my entire life around. Before that, my grades were terrible and I was miserable because of my situation. When I was free of all my previous baggage, I went from being picked on to being popular, my grades spiked and stayed there, and I was a much happier person.

Basically, via a combination of being allowed to grow and getting away from an asshole principal who only got anything done when we threatened legal action, and then only the bare minimum to shut us up, I became essentially a new person. THAT'S what I feel comes from being free of idiotic rules and strictures. If I hadn't had that turnaround, I'd probably have jumped off a bridge.

to be fair, I'm the guy that advocates dropping out of high school and doing your own thing, it's probably best that you don't listen to anything I say.

And the more rules you pile on the more frustrated they are. Frustrated people don't pay attention.

And this isn't a contributing factor, nor is this a problem we should worry about. Okay.

Ah, right-o. "I am not apart of the group being shit on and thus do not give a rats ass about them." Even if the education these young people get can have a dramatic effect on the world at large. Well, no more point to the discussion then.

Honestly, if you can pass your GED, SAT, and ACT with high marks at 15, this is probably not a bad option. Sure colleges might think for a second "GED and high school drop out" but then they'll think right after that, "But high test scores at 15?" and on to college you go.

I don't think most people would be capable of it, though.

it just sounds like a lot of dramatization about the evils of the man, man.

Yeah, it sucks. I get that. It sucked for me too.

But I don't understand this idea that people have that they are owed some kind of uncommon respect. Sure, basic human decency, great. I don't want to be randomly assaulted or threatened, to be fed and all that other good stuff. I think the line starts to blur when you assume rights like "I don't want to be treated like an idiot."

Now that sounds like a totally reasonable request, and yet how many times does fulfilling this request lead schoolboard policy makers scratching their heads and wondering how the fuck some 7th grader managed to gund down 14 people.

In a perfect world all high school students would be allowed to do whatever they wanted all the time, and of course whatever they wanted to do would obviously coincide with what society expected of them, in a perfect circle of super happiness.

In the real world, young people as a group are notoriously volatile and difficult to focus. When faced with a large body of them, and the task of educating them, I don't really think it's all that far fetched to just go ahead and assume that yes, they are all idiots until proven otherwise.

The GED is a total cakewalk by the way. And you don't need to take the SATs to get into community college.

You should pretty much know everything you need to ace the GED by the end of 8th grade, then you can just take your general ed stuff in community college, fill in the knowledge holes you might have right around advanced math and science, and then take the SATs and transfer to a university.

Which tends to have nothing to do with whether or not they treated him like an idiot, and more to do with whether or not they ever bothered to give a shit about him and the treatment other students gave him.

Edit: When I had taken the GED they had just upped the difficulty on it in my district. It still wasn't hard, and I figure a ninth grader could probably PASS it, but I think they'd probably do terribly in the math section which had some dual variable algebra and whatnot, and the 'write an entire essay in whatever time you have left to take the test' section would probably screw over a few.

Keep in mind when I took it I face rolled it in about a quarter of the allotted time, but there were other students in the room who seemed to be struggling, so I figure it's gotta be challenging to some/most.