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Title: How Science Fiction Saved Me From Hell -- I Mean Jr. High
Source:
The Bob Circus 3,0
URL Source: http://home.att.net/~bob.wallace/jr-high-hell.html
Published: Jul 15, 2006
Author: Bob Wallace
Post Date: 2006-07-15 15:45:28 by YertleTurtle
Keywords: None
Views: 152
Comments: 13
When I was in school it wasn't called "middle school" but "jr. high" and it comprised 7th, 8th and 9th grades. When I was a senior in high school the administration put the freshman (9th-graders) in with us, so I assume jr. high then consisted of only the 7th and 8th grades. Why this was done, I really don't know. I doubt this shuffling would have made my difference in my case. Seventh grade was the worst grade I ever experienced, and I can't see how having the 9th graders transferred into high school would have affected me for good or bad. But 7th grade, I guarantee you, affected me, and only for bad. Much to my surprise, I had a pretty good time in 6th grade, especially the last half. Being only 11 years old, I naively assumed there would be a linear progression. If 6th grade was this good, then 7th grade should be even better! And 8th grade, still better! And so on. Was I shocked when I got into 7th grade. One of my friends, raised 300 miles from me, once asked me, "Was 7th grade a kind of hell for you?" Yes, it was, and I couldn't figure out why. Compared to 6th grade, it was a sheer drop straight down, like one of those fjords in Norway. Years later, I realized what the problem was: I was unusually intelligent, imaginative and sensitive. So why was I in classes with kids whose IQs were slightly over 100? And sometimes, maybe less? When I was in 8th grade the boy behind me was 16 years old. To everyone's relief he dropped out soon after the school year started. I had nothing in common with most of the kids in class. I didn't want to be friends with them, and the schoolwork bored me so badly I ended up being one of those boys with low grades and high standardized test schools. I consider public (read government-run) schools to be a modern version of the Greek torturer Procrustes. He had a bed, and those who were too short to fit, he stretched; those who were too long, he chopped. Everyone fit, but nearly everyone was mutilated. When I was 12 or 13 I sneaked into my file at school and saw a special notation: "IQ 126." No genius, but an IQ of 125 is the mean average for doctors and Ph.D.s. Even now I remember the surprise I felt: I had no idea I was so smart. Not a clue. After all, hadn't all my grade-school teachers put comments on my report cards about what a lousy student I was? Of course, every teacher and administrator in my entire school career completely dropped the ball in my case. They didn't have a clue, either. They assumed I should make good grades. I didn't. In their minds, a high IQ automatically meant good grades. Not once in my entire public school career did any teacher ask, "Why is someone so smart doing so poorly in school? Is there something wrong?" Something, wrong, yes. I remember one of the greatest shocks I ever got in my life was when a guidance counselor told me, "According to your test scores, you could go to Harvard or Yale." Who, me? The idea had never entered my head. To me, especially with boys, a high IQ, coupled with imagination and sensitivity, and somewhat of a desire to take risks (in other words, me) is a sure-fire recipe for poor grades. The teachers and administrators were the adults, supposedly, and I was 12 years old. They didn't know what they were doing, and I was the one who paid for it. So what got me through jr. high school, then? One thing: science fiction. The feeling I got from it is called "the sense of wonder," and the dilemma is that if someone hasn't experienced it, I cannot explain it to them, and if they have, there's no need for me to. To me, that feeling is composed of wonder, awe, imagination, absorption, and even a kind of love. I got that feeling only from science fiction: I did not get it from school, or church, which I ceased attending when I was 12, being bored nearly to tears by it. Now as to why I got that feeling, I don't know. Why any boy gets it (and it generally tends to be boys), I don't know. But whenever I see a kid reading a science fiction book, I know that kid is different, what most people consider an oddball. I don't. It's other people I consider oddballs, the ones who lack imagination and intelligence and sensitivity. The writer Stephen King, writing about his growing up, said he considered people without imagination to suffer from "a kind of colorblindness." I believe the same: to me they are missing out on an infinite world that goes from the beginning to time to the end of it, from one side of the universe to another. I realize now my disillusionment with jr. high forced me into being lopsided: for close to three years I lived almost completely in my imagination. That's not a good thing. While I did do such early teen things as roller- and ice-skating, and attending an occasional party, for the most part I lived in my imagination. For me, it was an escape from school. Being an escape, it was also a consolation. I went from being an extroverted and funny 11-year-old to an introverted 12-year-old. I didn't start to get back on track until 10th grade. My transformation had nothing to do with anything except jr. high school. And it happened within a month of starting 7th grade. I knew I would be considerd such an weirdo in school I never mentioned my reading habits. A perfect example of what I would have encountered was when some adults entered my room at home, saw my library of perhaps 100 books, and exclaimed, "Have you really read all those!?" Now if I had had 100 albums, it would have never occured to them to say, "Have you really listened to all those record!?" I still remember the names of all the authors I read: Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, A.E. van Vogt. Larry Niven. I could go on, but you get the picture. I still have some of the original paperbacks books I had when I was 12: Keith Laumer's hysterical It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy, Clifford D. Simak's All the Traps of Earth, and Rudyard Kipling's The Mark of the Beast. I have four copies of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Fighting Man of Mars, the ACE 1963 version with drawings by Roy Krenkel, Jr. I plan on cornering the market. I was especially fond of Asimov and Ellison, not so much because there was anything special about their writings, but because they wrote about their personal lives. I felt I knew them. Ellison, in a collection of his short stories, wrote an introduction titled, "How Science Fiction Saved Me From a Life of Crime." I knew what he meant; his early teens were worse than mine. Much, much worse. He came from a hideous small town, and once ran away to join the carnival. "There's someone out there who's like me!" I remember thinking, even though he was at least 20 years older than me. It was like being on a deserted island for years and suddenly seeing fresh footprints. I also got that feeling of a Sense of Wonder (yes, it should be capitalized) from the original Star Trek, which I encountered when I was 12. I can't tell you how badly I wanted to be on the Enterprise, as long as I wasn't the "Ensign Jones" who beamed down and never came back because he ended up having all the salt sucked out of his body or else was bumped off by a guy in a white gorilla suit with an ice-cream cone upended on the top of his head. If I could have been Captain Kirk I would have been on the Enterprise like a shot. Making out with a green-skinned alien girl in a skimpy outfit? Oh, yeah! No problem! Things picked up for me in high school, when I was 15 and a sophomore. If I could have gone from 6th grade straight to 10th grade, things would have been fine. Of course, it's not possible to skip from being 11 to being 15. For me, and I'm sure many others, that's an unfortunate thing. A terribly unfortunate thing. In high school there were parties, girls, drinking and drugs. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll! I had a blast, although that blast was always on weekends. We also swam, sailed our sailboat, rode horses and mini-bikes, and in general lived a life that was a cross between Animal House and American Graffiti. Why could this not had happened when I was 12? What I learned, I taught myself. I learned grammar from the back of a dictionary when I was 12 and 13. I still have that dictionary: "The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition." The copyright is from 1950. Yet, in school, I simply could not pay attention in English class. I had to do it myself, at my own pace. Once thing I noticed, even in those days, is that upon entering high school my reading of science fiction almost ceased. Not totally, but by about 90%. I had other things to do, just as fun. But I still occasionally had that desire to withdraw into myself. It's a desire I have, even today. Without a doubt, there is something wrong with our schools, and has been for a long time. This wrongness is so pronounced I have for years believed the public schools should be closed down. When my jr. high years consisted of living in my imagination, and my sr. high ones consisted of beer and wine and Everclear, and little brown pieces of hashish-and-opium, clearly there is a problem. A big, big, problem, one that affected not just me but many other kids. We need a lot more freedom in schools, and a lot less bureaucracy. That means waving bye-bye to having the government involved, and don't let the door hit you in your butt on the way out. And don't come back, ever. Why are kids in school for 12 years, anyway? What does it take 12 years to learn? Ben Franklin, at the age of 12, was an apprentice making soap and candles. He didn't turn out too badly, as neither did Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Or any of the other Founding Fathers, none of whom spent from ages five to 17 in public schools. When I graduated high school I couldn't do anything useful. I could build a house, but that was because my father was a general contractor and I had helped build houses since I was 12. I couldn't work on a car, something I taught myself when I was 20. For all practical purposes, I could do nothing. What exactly did I or anyone else learn in those 12 years? Nothing, really, besides learning to read and write, and some arithmetic and math. And all that was before 4th grade. My whole time is summed up in the movie, Ferris Buehler's Day Off, when the kids are staring dully at Ben Stein, as he drones, "Anyone? Anyone?" No one knew the answer, and neither did I. Something certainly needs to be done for the more intelligent, the more imaginative, and the more sensitive. They need to be scooped up and sent to live with their own kind. As things stand now -- and as they stood in my time -- they're just very irregularly shaped pegs that are supposed to fit in some very square holes.
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#1. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
did this have anything to do with puberty? in my case it did. 8th grade was much better for me than 7th was. :P
As for WWIII, let's try something new. All I'm saying is give isolationism a chance.~~Pissed Off Janitor
Not really. I just despised school, I despised the kids, and I despised the teachers. Believe or not, I started puberty when I was 11, in the sixth grade. It didn't bother me much. I liked the new feelings. I don't consider the problems teenagers have to be "normal." They're the fault of a society that has forgotten how to deal with them.
"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal
i was in school only because i had to be. i did little study and lots of socializing.
As for WWIII, let's try something new. All I'm saying is give isolationism a chance.~~Pissed Off Janitor
That's exactly what I did. Every culture in the world has initiation rites for boys when they're about 11, 12 -- right at puberty. For all practical purposes, they become men. We've lost that. Instead, we put them in 7th grade, and then wonder what the problem is.
"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal
IQ=a test that means absolutely nothing. Nil. I served with folks that had tests scores so high they were off the chart-and most couldn't pour piss outta a boot with the instructions on the heel. Also met some folks that had a lot of natural talent and common sense and was surprised to find out that their test scores were so low. I think it is just another way to put people in pigeon holes. Hell, maybe I just like being around people that are dumber than me?
They mean something. The military never talks about it, but they have used them extensively for many decades, and have decided someone with an IQ of less than 70 will not be allowed to join, because they're so stupid they can't learn the most basic things, and put peoples' lives in danger. You'll never find someone with an IQ of 85 ever being a doctor. They're lucky if they can drive a truck or a forklift.
"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal
You need a trip to Field Station Berlin (if it still exists)...you could be surrounded by geeks with IQs over 140...you'd scream like hell to be outta there in a week. Nothing but whiners, flamers, and candy assees for the most part. And maybe you've met some smart doctors, lately all I've met are ones that don't give a crap or can't speak English. I'll hang with the average Joe any day. In fact before it's all over, I'll probably just end up hanging.
Matter o'fact, there is a retard living down the street that I'm considering letting do my prostrate surgery.
At least the female role is improving in the new SciFi. I was a bit of a tomboy, and found the uselessness of the females protrayed in SciFi really wearisome.
Never read Robert Heinlein, I take it?
"Benjamin Franklin was shown the new American constitution, and he said, 'I don't like it, but I will vote for it because we need something right now. But this constitution in time will fail, as all such efforts do. And it will fail because of the corruption of the people, in a general sense.' And that is what it has come to now, exactly as Franklin predicted." -- Gore Vidal
One or two.
you're right, Sodie..i've often said intelligence (considering of course that it's average at least) is highly overrated in terms of being a success in life. social skills, personality (or EQ), and common sense are much more important, imo.
As for WWIII, let's try something new. All I'm saying is give isolationism a chance.~~Pissed Off Janitor
This is almost a blueprint of what I went though in jr high 7th grade, then my 9th or freshman year in high school. I would ace the achivement tests, then the school would place me in the top classes, and I would struggle. I didn't fit in with the others. 8th grade I was dropped down one level, and did very well. My freshman year in high school was worse than 7th. It was a diasaster, I got placed again with a bunch of high IQ geeks, but by sophmore year, I figured a few things out about the system at school, and people in general. My junior and senior years were smooth. I got to pick the classes I liked and was good at. English, humanities, pysch/sociology, art were my better subjects. I still had no use for school in general and never planned for any schooling later. Never took any pictures for the yearbook, no dances or activities, no act tests. I swam for a year on the swim team, but quit for other individual interests. I never went to graduation and told them to send my grad papers in the mail. Mark
Things picked up for me in high school, when I was 15 and a sophomore. If I could have gone from 6th grade straight to 10th grade, things would have been fine. Of course, it's not possible to skip from being 11 to being 15. For me, and I'm sure many others, that's an unfortunate thing. A terribly unfortunate thing.
#2. To: christine (#1)
did this have anything to do with puberty?
#3. To: YertleTurtle (#2)
#4. To: christine (#3)
i was in school only because i had to be. i did little study and lots of socializing.
#5. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
When I was 12 or 13 I sneaked into my file at school and saw a special notation: "IQ 126." No genius, but an IQ of 125 is the mean average for doctors and Ph.D.s.
#6. To: Soda Pop (#5)
IQ=a test that means absolutely nothing. Nil.
#7. To: YertleTurtle (#6)
#8. To: All (#7)
I'll hang with the average Joe any day.
#9. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
#10. To: robin (#9)
At least the female role is improving in the new SciFi. I was a bit of a tomboy, and found the uselessness of the females protrayed in SciFi really wearisome.
#11. To: YertleTurtle (#10)
#12. To: Soda Pop (#5)
#13. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
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