The national outpouring after the Columbine shootings has forced us to confront something we have suspected for a long time: the American high school is obsolete and should be abolished. In the last month, high school students present and past have come forward with stories about cliques and the artificial intensity of a world defined by insiders and outsiders, in which the insiders hold sway because of superficial definitions of good looks and attractiveness, popularity and sports prowess.

The team sports of high school dominate more than student culture. A community's loyalty to the high school system is often based on the extent to which varsity teams succeed. High school administrators and faculty members are often former coaches, and the coaches themselves are placed in a separate, untouchable category. The result is that the culture of the inside elite is not contested by the adults in the school. Individuality and dissent are discouraged.

But the rules of high school turn out not to be the rules of life. Often the high school outsider becomes the more successful and admired adult. The definitions of masculinity and femininity go through sufficient transformation to make the game of popularity in high school an embarrassment. No other group of adults young or old is confined to an age-segregated environment, much like a gang in which individuals of the same age group define each other's world. In no workplace, not even in colleges or universities, is there such a narrow segmentation by chronology.

Given the poor quality of recruitment and training for high school teachers, it is no wonder that the curriculum and the enterprise of learning hold so little sway over young people. When puberty meets education and learning in modern America, the victory of puberty masquerading as popular culture and the tyranny of peer groups based on ludicrous values meet little resistance.

By the time those who graduate from high school go on to college and realize what really is at stake in becoming an adult, too many opportunities have been lost and too much time has been wasted. Most thoughtful young people suffer the high school environment in silence and in their junior and senior years mark time waiting for college to begin. The Columbine killers, above and beyond the psychological demons that drove them to violence, felt trapped in the artificiality of the high school world and believed it to be real. They engineered their moment of undivided attention and importance in the absence of any confidence that life after high school could have a different meaning.

Adults should face the fact that they don't like adolescents and that they have used high school to isolate the pubescent and hormonally active adolescent away from both the picture-book idealized innocence of childhood and the more accountable world of adulthood. But the primary reason high school doesn't work anymore, if it ever did, is that young people mature substantially earlier in the late 20th century than they did when the high school was invented. For example, the age of first menstruation has dropped at least two years since the beginning of this century, and not surprisingly, the onset of sexual activity has dropped in proportion. An institution intended for children in transition now holds young adults back well beyond the developmental point for which high school was originally designed.

Furthermore, whatever constraints to the presumption of adulthood among young people may have existed decades ago have now fallen away. Information and images, as well as the real and virtual freedom of movement we associate with adulthood, are now accessible to every 15- and 16-year-old.

Secondary education must be rethought. Elementary school should begin at age 4 or 5 and end with the sixth grade. We should entirely abandon the concept of the middle school and junior high school. Beginning with the seventh grade, there should be four years of secondary education that we may call high school. Young people should graduate at 16 rather than 18.

They could then enter the real world, the world of work or national service, in which they would take a place of responsibility alongside older adults in mixed company. They could stay at home and attend junior college, or they could go away to college. For all the faults of college, at least the adults who dominate the world of colleges, the faculty, were selected precisely because they were exceptional and different, not because they were popular. Despite the often cavalier attitude toward teaching in college, at least physicists know their physics, mathematicians know and love their mathematics, and music is taught by musicians, not by graduates of education schools, where the disciplines are subordinated to the study of classroom management.

For those 16-year-olds who do not want to do any of the above, we might construct new kinds of institutions, each dedicated to one activity, from science to dance, to which adolescents could devote their energies while working together with professionals in those fields.

At 16, young Americans are prepared to be taken seriously and to develop the motivations and interests that will serve them well in adult life. They need to enter a world where they are not in a lunchroom with only their peers, estranged from other age groups and cut off from the game of life as it is really played. There is nothing utopian about this idea; it is immensely practical and efficient, and its implementation is long overdue. We need to face biological and cultural facts and not prolong the life of a flawed institution that is out of date.

-Leon Botstein
Taken From American Culture, 1997

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I’m not sure if this has ever been posted here, but I feel that it’s important for the Flood to see this, knowing how many American High School students frequent this site, and knowing of the ever increasing number of Canadians, Australians, English, and the New Zealanders, not everyone understands how American High School works.

This is an adequate description, perhaps even more so today than sixteen years ago, and I am in concurrence with the author on many, if not all, points.

ITT: Discuss this piece’s ideas and improve upon them.

Discuss users you miss.

Mordo will be fine.
They're always fine.

We'll all be fine.
Nothing is bad.
Everything is good.

It's a terrible day for rain.

This user has been blacklisted from posting on the forums. Until the blacklist is lifted, all posts made by this user have been hidden.

Amber is the fossilized sap from trees. Many of the golden pieces were found along the seashore and called "sea gold" because they were believed to have come from the sea. Some pieces hold insects and plants inside. When rubbed, amber gives off an interesting odor and is magnetic.

If any of you have ever read the comments in my styles, you know they're straight, to the point, and maybe even a little cryptic and unexplanatory.

But while trying to leet hax0r up my post count, (no success yet ;-;) I read some of the jscript comments on certain clauses, and discovered not only explanations of what clauses did, but why they were there, and even little jokes and smileys and what not.

Perhaps I should take the same consideration into my work?
Thoughts?

Haha, I've caught you.

Now, instead of a shitpost, let's have a comprehensive discussion on the dynamics of communication on this forum.
It seems that we've finally managed to eliminate parody threads (mostly), but the vast quantity of le ebin ruse ems and call out threads are growing exponentially.

I am one of the most guilty of this, and am all for a good shitpost, but things need to start shaping up.
Mods are starting to clamp down on shitpost activity, and excess will begin to lead to bans. Just look at Flux.

We need to clean up the drama and try to keep the meming in concentrated points.

I know that coming from me this is the definition of hypocrisy, but there is a lot more important and informative discussion that could be going on than this.

Unfortunately, I come only as the bearer of problems, and therefore need those who respond to this thread to drive solutions.

This is very important, because if we don't get these issues worked out, it will likely result in the death of Sep7agon.

This time for real.

>walk outside into the freezing cold and begin my two mile trek to work
>get there, and realise closed for President's Day
>Walk half a mile back to Walmart
>buy a green sweater
>go to Starbucks
>sit and start reading book while drinking shit coffee
>Get a text message

"Hey, I'm back in town"
"Oh, uh..."
"Well I just figured I'd say something..."
"No, it's just I didn't think... y'know"
Well, I mean, there are no hard feelings between us, right?
"Oh, no."
"Of course not."
"I was just thinking..."
"Maybe you'd wanna hang out?"
"Oh yeah, sure that sounds fine"

"Maybe you'd wanna go for Sushi?"
"That sounds great :D"
"You know, I've missed you a lot"
"Yeah, uh, me too."
"I can't even remember what I was angry about"
"The last time we were together?"
"yeah, me neither"
"Well, sushi tomorrow, okay?"
Yeah, I'll catch up with you then.
"Thanks, Tru, here I was convinced you hated me!"
It helps that you so adorable, Sol ;3

Isn't that just the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me?

Post what your valentines surprise was!

This year, he says he's 53.

WHICH IS IT OBAMA?

Like, seriously?

Cheat should introduce a new field called the shitpost count.
Users with a higher shitpost count would gain access to special shitposting capabilities, such as an autoreply button that calls people faggots or let's them know that they're cancer.

When you reach Mythic Shitpost Status, it even alternates in rainbow text and different font options.

Is Dustbin right?

Is Korra Shadows?