There is zero tolerance, very little respect for individuality.

School sucked in the 70s as well.

My high school did not even have lunch. They cut the school day from 6 hours to 5 and let out at 1:10 pm to avoid feeding kids. I learned more by skipping class and hanging out in the public library or taking LONG walks and observing the world around me.

I had a similar thing happen to me at graduation and I was pulled out of lines, cap and gown...had to walk all the way to my counselor's office to be told that I hadn't completed my punishment of over 200 hours so I couldn't graduate. It didn't matter that I had more credits than required and could have graduated early or that my test scores were in the upper 5 percent...I was missing an hour. He was wrong, I'd completed that hour and placed ithe proof on his desk earlier that day, the breeze from his window blew it off his desk.

It was the only time I ever saw my counselor the whole time I was in high school...and this was supposed to be a good district.

It's been going on a long time. This was '65.

As memory serves, but doesn't reenlist, 1953, fourth grade. Teach rambling on about nature stuff. She said that bats were birds. I raise my tiny paw and teach called on me. "No Miss Whatever her name was. Bats are mammals. They have hair, teeth and their babies are born alive. Birds don't." She damned near screamed at me, "How dare you contradict me! Go to the principal's office NOW!" So I wound up in Grendal's Cave because I "sassed" a teacher. Worse, parents are called about their offspring's faux pas.

Fortunately, my mother was a woman of great good sense, had respect for her kids and no awe of authority. The next day she accompanied me to school and got some things straight, including the correct classification of bats. Miss Whatever her name was ignored me for the remainder of the year which suited me fine. In my 10 year old opinion she was too dumb to pay any attention to.

and was not aloud to walk because I had only gone to that school for 1 year, they wanted "class dues" for all four years of high school and I told them to get it from the other schools I had Attended. They were not even going to give me my diploma! My father had to talk to a lawyer! End of the story is they had to give me the diploma but wouldn't let me walk....Assholes.

Well said !

Generally not every bright, and overly obsessed with rules, regulations and procedures. Not real big on common sense.

And they are always scared shitless of lawsuits.

not surprised the nailed it since they seemed to nail reality but especially the scared shitless part in the "leave no child behind" era where the funding was threatened.

I know from experience he'll never forget being left out.

I hope he goes on to excel in life.

He probably doesn't want to hear it right now, but let him know that I believe things really do get better for people who are different after high school.

Glad he's got you by his side right now.

And I agree about life getting better after high school too!

I never quite fit in and now I realize that's a good thing.

Being different is something to be proud of.

I'm so glad that your brother has you there by his side too...

is as old as the American Puritan ethic. As American as apple pie.

Australia got the convicts, we got the religulous dissenters.

There is not a doubt in my mind that the Aussies got the better part of that deal.

Calvinists..

The Calvinist tradition gave us free public schools (everyone has to read the Bible as salvation is individual not collective).

The Calvinist tradition gave us local welfare (though you had to publicly take the pauper's oath to get it).

The Calvinist tradition gave us participation by all in the public governance.

I remember ungrad in the states, Chem 101 was designed to fail freshmen students, weed them out of professional programs..there was no handy way to appeal your grade, and registration was a cattle call. Students in Australia practically get concierge service by comparison. The key difference being, the Uni actually wants you to succeed. Too bad the U.S. Corporate model is leaching its way in...

In general it's a conservative/authoritarian behavior to be happy to see others punished. Grave-dancing is a good example.

pm me if you don't want to put it online.

Most school districts are hotbeds of nepotism, pay to play, etc.
Board members run for election just to give their family and friends jobs and lucrative contracts. It is very very rare to find anyone on school boards who get there and then try to improve the schools.
IOW, I bet if your brother had a different last name, his late paper would not have been an issue.

I almost didn't graduate. I was waiting on one grade to pass and they let me participate in the graduation ceremony, with an empty diploma folder (so it looked like I was graduated with the rest of the class), but I got my final grade and diploma later. I was a failing high school kid because of emotional problems from being molested at home. I later went to college and had almost a 4 pt GPA (3.96, and I was on the dean's list).

Failing high school is not always the fault of the student, and no student should be humiliated like your brother. My high school got it right, but that was a long time ago.

Everything about this country has become punitive lately...thanks to the gop.

Tell your brother to stop worrying about it and just go excel at whatever he chooses from now on. Don't let this define him.

"Failing high school is not always the fault of the student."

Everyone is regimented to be the same but nobody is.

Add to that administrators structured to have an adversarial role to the faculty (even though they're paid by the same taxpayers) and you have a recipe for failure. Top that off with administrators and teachers who believe their adversarial role should extend to the students and the parents and you end up with kids acting out.

I know I shoved a few potatoes in some exhaust pipes back in the day.

Its the behavior of the classmates showing up from you "battle buddies" as most of these guys/gals joined right after high school so there is a lot of adolescent teen behavior -- the rumor mills, cliques, or pranks etc. People would call me over to their bed and when I arrive they're showing me their "stuff", I just felt way too grown up for this despite being only 19 at the time. I really hate the BS rumor mills but add to that is when you make a mistake the rest of the unit hates you because everybody is doing push-ups. The drill instructors (depending on which ones, the guy from the Bowflex commercial was a real jerk, threw coffee on someone the unit after us) didn't bother me nearly as much the people behind me or next to me in formations.

On edit -- one aspect of what you say compares very well to the regular Army because the asschewings were worse from someone coming back from an asschewing, particularly for being chewed out for someone's mistake they made under them (Though it could have nothing to do with them like DUI on a weekend)

does some other teacher get to decide what his English teacher can accept?

I can read it that the first teacher wouldn't let the English teacher accept it.

Or the first teacher would have, but the English teacher wouldn't.

When you have 160 kids, you can't have 160 different sets of rules for 80 different assignments over 18 weeks. Esp. when you've helped kids, bent over backwards to accept late work, and still they can't have the simple decency to get things done.

Even the example above where the missing hour was done but the "wind blew" the form off the principal's or advisor's desk is typical. Don't hand it to him. At the last minute put it there and expect that he'll comply with the demand to fulfill his duties perfectly. The kid has rights; everybody else has responsibilities and obligations.

Nice to be special. As one student this year put it, they feel 'empowered.' As I retorted, 'dictatorial.' They get to college or get a job and have a real, real hard time.

A lot of my students' attitude towards their jobs was, "I hate my dickhead boss. Let him fire me, sometimes I screw up on purpose just to piss him off."

As a language arts teacher myself, I was trying to figure out why any other teacher could tell me not to accept a paper, or why I would let someone decide that for me.

last day of school. I may remember putting it on his desk the same day but that may not be what happened. I do remember it being almost impossible to work off all those hours before graduation and I had to ask many teachers for jobs to cover me so I could do it.

I'm not sure what you're saying, that I felt entitled? I had no way to contact him and there wasn't anything to put on top of the paper to secure it. I was worried it would blow off because it was breezy. Now I would have closed his window but then I was not confident enough to do something like that.

I didn't know I had more credits than I needed to graduate until many years later. I could have graduated early and avoided the whole thing.

Anyway, I'd like to hear a bit more from you so I understand what you're saying.

Thanks.

I found college to be way easier (though that can depend with how many credits you give yourself but the environment & talent of the instructors, including the information) and jobs especially so -- I'd say the military was too but was very hard at times (being away from the woman I made the decision for -- she didn't ask me or even like it when she learned but I remember getting the selective service thing in the mail thinking military as the last thing I'd ever do. I even deployed and would almost say I'd prefer to do that than grade school but I lost so much there, too much but I like myself as a person as my ethics are way up even though my friends are way down. Plus the military brought back the high school shit (I had my GED when I was in 16 enjoyed life -- including back breaking day labor shit til I joined when I was almost 19 and was like oh no when the high school shit showed up)

I think he was the senior advisor or something. It was a messy paragraph, apologies.

I don't really understand why, if he earned a diploma, someone would keep him from the ceremony, outside of some sort of serious conduct violation. Not for an essay that didn't stop him from earning his diploma.

My mom went after the school district pretty hard, and nearly tore herself to pieces advocating for him. She was pretty stressed the last few days. It sounds like the principal was going to let him, but the district stopped it.

On the plus side, he's a good day since, and I think having someone there with him helped a lot. And he's allowed to go to the all night grad party tonight, because that's not a school function

If you don't trust someone else, your more likely to think of them as being bad and thus deserving of punishment.

Americans have a lack of trust for each other, which is poisonous to society. And unfortunately there are a lot of people taking advantage of others, ripping off others, and doing other crimes in our society.

We send people to prisons were this is multiplied with the thriving underground economies and it comes easily with the help of guards that can easily be bribed and the opportunities where a pack of cigarettes can be sold for several times the amount paid for, hell the drugs like a gram of heroin can be sold for a few hundred while you pay $50 in the street. An inmate will get beaten if he is suspected of "whistleblowing" on the underground economy. Fiction has nothing compared to reality.

I wish there was something we could do, but this will have to do for now:

Most that I do remember is a teacher clearly going against the wishes of the administrators to tell us the founding fathers were slave owners and the myths of Columbus and the indigenous populations and Thanksgiving. This was my 6th grade Social Studies teachers and even remember the frustrations coming into class. She didn't like the idea of tests or felt differently on learning, can't remember the actual reason but it went from no tests to she let us make up our own tests. Ask our own questions and answer the questions from the textbook but some may think this is a horrible idea you certainly are learning hunting for a question to ask yourself.

My 8th grade social studies teacher -- the only thing I remember was bring a pencil to class or detention. I remember his name to, a notorious hard ass. I fell behind in credits from switching schools where the credits didn't follow or apparently stay with the school I switched back to (someone screwed up, could be lazy mom -- don't know, don't matter as summer schools would require to graduate so I went to Tempe High with the year-round schooling which made it possible and LOVED this model, the breaks in between but waking up early to ride a bus several miles and back with all the homework they give I dropped out and got my GED right away -- passed in the top 60-70%. Life was so much better, work and everything. It wasn't until I joined the military the high school shit came back, I always preferred adults. My friends after school were 17-25 when I was 14-15+.

Anyway, I did attend Community College and let me tell the classes were more interesting, engaging, informative, and believe it or not easier.

I remember well the introduction from our Economics course instructor that is simply on education and the part I remember well on learning that when you learn something and it fade, you know where to look to get back what was gained which is so true. Working jobs performing tasks that you only had to be told once or twice how to do and get paid was so much easier than school, not to mention the high school shit.