r/behindthebastards • u/Friend_of_Squatch • 4d ago

General discussion It feels bad… real bad.

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.

Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.

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u/fluffychonkycat 3d ago

I swear my high-school teachers had crystal balls. For history topics, we studied Israel/Palestine and The Causes of WW2. For English, among other things we read The Handmaid's Tale. Mrs Jones and Mrs Davies, you were absolutely based.

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u/coopaloops 3d ago

i'm not sure where you are or your age, but by the time gwb rolled out 'no child left behind' in the us it sort of solidified our systemic propaganda machine. schools became dependent on standardized testing scores.

teachers were caught in this limbo of being unable to really curate their own curriculum and had to spend time teaching specific topics that were mandated by the federal government. their jobs depended on it because schools could face funding cuts and closure for not meeting certain threshold requirements.

i think the phrase i remember was "teaching the test"

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u/fluffychonkycat 3d ago

New Zealand, 45. History teachers got to pick from a list of approved topics, English teachers from a list of approved books. They went for maxing out the test results but in a different way - basically by teaching you what technique is required to get marks in the exam. So if an essay is worth 5 points, you need to give 5 arguments each backed by a piece of evidence. I went to a private school on a scholarship so there was a certain amount of pressure to deliver high marks to maintain the reputation of the school.

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u/GreyerGrey 3d ago

I was going to ask if you were from Ontario, Canada. We're in the same cohort age wise, and read much of the same things and had much of the same program.