Did school kill your desire to learn?

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Ever since elementary school, I always felt like I was being stuffed into a box. Everything was always way too easy, and they wouldn't let me progress. I learned to read when I was 4 (only a year after I learned to talk), and by first grade, I could read at a 5th grade level. There was one other kid in that class with me who could read, so when everybody else was practicing "sounds," we'd do some reading out loud thing with an old lady. But the thing is that we didn't read stuff that was as high of level as our potential.
I was also really good at math from an early age, but i was forced to be at the same level as everyone else. There were 4 other kids in my grade who were also around my intelligence level, but even so, there was no advanced math class or anything for us. In 4th grade we spent about 2 months learning how to do long division...I was ready to move on after 2 days! It was ridiculous.
Even after elementary school, it was all easy peasy. The classes were too easy, my classmates were mostly idiots, and I had no room for advancement (especially since I was underestimated for the most part, possibly because of the "autistic" dark mark on my record). I couldn't learn what I wanted, and I couldn't learn nearly as fast as I wanted to. It all just killed my spirit of learning. Now I just hate school and I dread waking up every weekday because I just think "Great, now I have to go to school."

Sorry that was so long, but what about the rest of you?

No, but it did hinder my efforts to learn beyond the approved lesson plan. At least, until after I graduated.

no

Merle

Yes. School ruined everything. And it kept ruining things, right up to graduation. I hope that home-schooling is a good idea, haven't tried it.

i feel like it has been murdering my desire ever since...i can remember. only about four teachers so far haven't stuffed info into me like i'm some empty space to be filled. lucky for me i've been fighting back the whole time. they can't kill my curiousity.

mooshy por siempre!! !!

That's the great thing about college. They don't peddle around to accommodate the slowest learners; they TEACH! In the mechanical engineering program that I'm studying, certain early courses are designed to weed people out, so that only serious dedicated engineering students continue. In the higher level classes I'm in, each lecture typically introduces a new part, or principal, or method of analysis, and we have to learn it for next time.

But yeah... Elementary thru high school is ret*d because everyone has to progress thru at the same insipid pace. I don't think that your inability to skip grades has much to do with your asperger's. I think they just really really want to keep anyone from progressing ahead of anyone else. WHY? I DON'T KNOW! Maybe it's an artifact of the "everyone is special" movement, and they're deathly afraid of hurting the feelings of those who don't excel. Maybe it makes the paperwork easier. Maybe they're worried that parents could sue the school if their kid doesn't fit in the top bracket. Whatever it is, I'm glad that whole stagnated mess is WAY behind me.

Oh, and about home-schooling. I tried it for a year back in high school. It was the most boring year of my life. You have to force yourself to fill that need for human interaction.

In first grade I did hyperlearning of English
with my sister. since then I hated every English class I gone into.
at elementary there was a group of english speakers which I gone to
but now at high school Im stuffed into a class of boring classes

School is something, I slept through (occasionally literally). But I do love learning new things in my free time!

When I was a child, school was nothing but torture, I never learned anything, but I went
back to school when I was 30, and loved it, its a completely different experience as an adult.

School did not prevented me from lifelong learning. I learned most thing about politics, government from books and the internet.

It tried damn hard, but I got it back (after I'd left, of course).

So I'd like to take this opportunity to tell all my teachers to get it right f*****g up themselves because they all failed.

school put me off learning at school so I left at 14 with no qualifications.

But I did a degree in psychology and Im now doing a masters in psychological research methods so it didnt put me of learning out of school.

I really hated school and so I home educate my 2 children.

That's what public education does; push you through the system instead of actually teaching at your level. It is very unfortunate. The people who could really benefit from learning and moving onward, with people of higher maturity, are actually held back with the rest.

Universities only except the best and people who have the drive to learn. That's why they are the best. They don't have this "your special because you are" crap. Their attitude is "your special if you prove it". In Universities, you earn an education instead of being forced to have one.

Yes, public schooling where I live is horrible. There isn't a lot of alternatives. I still look forward to learning. It's just that the other students destroyed my learning experience instead of the public education system itself.

School came much too close to destroying me. How fortunate am I to be in an upper-middle-class/wealthy neighborhood where all the Asian parents push for their kids to be accelerated, gifted or no? The upshot is stupidly easy Honors classes and insanely hard AP classes, not much in the middle.

Except that sometimes, I need that middle.

More on this used to be in the Gifted-Haven forums, except that they're down right now and I can't link to them.

Nope never has because you learn something new everyday in life to be honest.