Oh, school has always pissed me off as well, for pretty much the same reasons.

Back in primary school, we had this system of 'kangaroo classes'. Basically, the 'smart kids' got one afternoon a week in which they got time to work on harder problems, projects, or extra subjects. It was pretty fun, but for a reason I never found out, the program stopped during my final two years.

In secondary school (the Belgian equivalent of middle school+high school), there are virtually no extra options for kids that work faster than others. The educational system hardly gets any money from the government for that kind of 'optional extra's'.

Not funny. It tends to get frustrating. I've bored my a off during five whole years, and right now I'm trying to do my final at home, studying the matter by myself...

Actually, it was one of my teachers who suggested that. I was getting so bored, annoying the hell out of teachers by asking tricky questions was suddenly surprisingly fun. So, well, auto-schooling was pretty much the only option left. And as a surplus, it will teach me how to study in a disciplined fashion, something I hardly did before.

[/rant]

PS: My most 'notorious' achievement:
We were doing calculus in Math, the product rule of derivatives. Teacher starts explaining the proof, which took a whole page in the book, and was full of ugly tricks. At the end of class I walked to the front, and scribbled a three-line proof on the blackboard. (using 'forbidden knowledge' of partial derivatives) Small victory against the evil system.

Like Mapar007 Australia has Primary and Secondary school. I'm currently in Year 8 Class 1. We also have something like the "Kangaroo Classes": We have "A-stream" and "B-stream"classes. There are 8 classes in Year 8 and 3 of them are A-stream classes consisting of the top 90 students (out of about 200.... I think). We do have a separate program called GATS (Gifted And Talented Students) which I'm in () and we go on "Educational Excursions" around the year (We watched a 3D Egypt Documentary at the start of the year) and at the end of this year we are going to a theme park. We also have a Merit system were you collect Merit....cards... and when you get 30, 50 and finally 150 you can apply for Bronze, Silver and Gold certificate, respectively. You use this certificate to be able to go on 2 extra excursions a year: One at easter to go to a carnival and one near the end of the school year which is a theme park (Yes, that's 2 if you have Bronze/etc and are in GATS )

Back to the A-stream/B-stream, it is important to note that the classes are based on the top 90 academic performance, not the top 90 worthy students. Even though we are A-stream the class behaves extremely unsatisfactory eg. One kid stuck scissors into the Science power points and poured water on them and turned the power point on. One girl is a slut and has apparently made a porn movie of herself.

Several students in my class are on "Levels" which range from Level 0 (Good) to Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and then a suspension. To advance one Level you must get 5 "Risk Entries" which teachers can make onto your profile via the school database. At one of the Levels you receive a book were you must obtain 5 "Satisfactory" comments for your behaviour in one Period (52 minutes).

This concludes the exciting adventures of my school life.... Just kidding, there's more!

Our assembles are held every Tuesday after the first Lunch brake and are meant to be about the latest information, but really, is the sport's departments chance to crap on about sport. Every Thursday we have an extended Roll Call which we alternate doing different things every week. On Week A we talk about PBS (No, not the TV Channel....) which stands for Personal Behaviour System which are just a bunch of signs on the wall with classroom expectations (And too bad it's not the TV channel). Week B (Week A and B have different periods on each day) we have a Year Assembly which our Year Advisor talks about 2 or 3 things and then we sit there for 5 minutes until Period 1.

Have I reached the character limit yet?

@Mapar007: Nice move on the partial derivatives proof! Sorry to hear that the system is so frustrating. At least you've successfully learned the skill of teaching yourself, which will serve you very well when you get to whatever the Belgian equivalent of college or university here in the US is. Thanks for explaining.

@Lucas W: Yeesh, you'd think all these people with behavioral problems wouldn't manage to take enough time away from their problems to do well at their work. I'm fascinated by how regimented and mathematical everything seems to be, right down to the database of each student to track your disciplinary actions. We used to have assemblies when I was in elementary school and high school, although I'm happy to say for the most part they were quite fun and interesting, especially in elementary school. Every class would put on a play every year, one a week, there would be visits from interesting people, and there was even a Andean condor that would visit. Sorry to hear that everything's so painful.

@Lucas W: Yeesh, you'd think all these people with behavioral problems wouldn't manage to take enough time away from their problems to do well at their work.

They don't do well at their work.

" it is important to note that the classes are based on the top 90 academic performance" <-- wouldn't that imply that they do? Or are there just fewer than 90 students who are actually good students?

Well, it is official

I dont get my computer clubs or courses, but I can do something like it

in research science, I am doing a topic on computers
in science club I will be the programmer of the Robotics team
In CAD I use a computer and will learn NXT 2.0

That's awesome, way to go! Glad to hear it; how did you manage to get NXT 2.0 into a CAD course?

I have no Idea, apparently all CAD computers have it, so I assume we will learn it

I guess, but that would imply to me that you also get to play with Mindstorms robots, which sounds pretty cool to me.

Cool

I should say so! Cemetech will have to be your after-school programming club, then, since there's none available.

lol, sure thing

What exactly is the syntax of NXT?

Actually, there's a bunch of different things you might be using to program, from high to low level:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms_NXT#Programming

I like

Lego.NET it is alike to C#

Also had a similar situation this year, however, I was REALLY asking for mine.

I had planned on taking AP Physics C, AP Stats, AP Calc BC, AP Gov, AP Comparative Gov, AP Lit, CAD, and Gym... No lunch...

At first, they denied me CAD, because there wasn't enough people to run it. I was upset, but I can say now that a lunch is a VERY good thing.

Then, they made me choose between AP Physics C or AP Lit. Being the Math and Science nerd... I picked AP Physics, and am now being forced to take Regular English (our school has 4 levels, prep, regular, honors, and AP).

At first, I tried to be optimistic about it, thinking I could have a mental nap time at the end of the day. I was wrong, it's more like mental sandpaper if such a thing exists.

I really shouldn't complain though, as Physics, Calc BC, and Gov are only offered once a day. I think the end of the year is going to be academic suicide though... but I have a feeling it will be worth it.

Moral of the story? You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.

Also, I'll probably be learning Lego.net as well for Science Olympiad this year. I've always wanted to play with 'em, and it seems now I might have a chance.

oh it does
rant time
the school i have been sent to is a charter school for the "liberal arts"(which btw are anything but liberal and involve no art whatsoever). i've been at this school for the past 5 years (7th-11th, now starting senior year), and have had that experience for every day of every class i've ever had. our school is incredibly poor, and what money they do have is spent on moving things and putting them back in the exact same place again(only with less functional value), painting the same room a progressively worse colour every year(it is now a sort of pea soup green, but paler and more bile-ish), planting trees that die instantly from heat stress... only to be replaced by more trees, and paying a man 30k a year to make sure the books on the libr'y shelves didnt hurt themselves(well, that was back when we had a libr'y. now it's an extra classroom for 6th graders). in order to handle all these expenses, they do without having extracurricular classes(or even fixing the leaks in the roofs[the water filters through the fiberglass and burns when it hits your skin; at one point, we had 2*4's erected in several classrooms to keep the entire ceiling from collapsing], the mold in the carpets, and the exploding bathrooms). the classes we do have are ridiculous as all the smart teachers either avoid the school entirely or are fired because nobody likes them. our first 3 weeks of "calculus" were spent on learning boolean logic, for christ sake, and our last class of the day is taught by a sixth grade teacher who has us spend the first 30 minutes of every class STRETCHING! at first(7-9th grades) i was able to cope very well with this situation, getting a's with the occasional b+. however, as of late, it has reached the point where the only way i can maintain some semblance of sanity is by staying up all night drawing/reading/programming/writing my book/watching dr who (XD) which results in my being asleep at school... which results in my not hearing what busy work we're supposed to have done in the morning(this year we have to write and defend a 20 page paper about PLATO[yeah, the dude that heard voices in his head and spent his entire life making fun of everyone] in regards to john milton's paradise lost[because that makes SO much sense] and defend it in front of a board of insane, former-ivy league fellows). this results in my getting sh*t grades, which results in my feeling like sh*t, which results in my staying up even later to hide from it all, which results in even more sh*t grades, and so on ad infinitum. now college is coming up and i havent the foggies idea as to what im supposed to be doing(because we dont have a college councilor). regardless, though, this summer i have a plan to actually teach myself some useful things(im saving up for a computer and am going to borrow my friend's calculus books which he used to teach himself a couple of years ago[he is ridiculous, and will be majoring in high energy physics stuff; i already told him that im totally going to mooch when he gets the royalties for figuring out anti-grav and all that jazz =D. after that we plan to open a book shop])


as a side note, i tried that FIRST robotics thing once(joining a community team, because of course my school has never heard of it) and couldnt stand the lego programming (or the fact that the adult leaders told everyone exactly what to do[and weren't all that good at any of the stuff themselves{they spent the first couple weeks struggling to make something work until i brought up an alternative solution that we were able to get working in one day}]). i probably should have stuck with it, though...

Wow shmibs, that sounds utterly horrendous. Does your school board or the equivalent know how bad the situation is at your school? I'm sorry to hear that the situation has driven you to not excel to your full potential, but high-energy physics sounds like a very respectable path to pursue. Feel free to ask us anything you want to know about physics and calculus and all that, of course. Regarding FIRST, my main experience with it is having helped coordinate a massive FIRST tournament in Brooklyn about a year ago. I definitely could see what you're saying about the adults trying to tell the kids on the teams what to do.

shimbs, wow. Poor school indeed, I did have a few laughs though, especially at the colors of the classrooms and the dying plants etc.

However I don't think learning Boolean Logic and Plato is that bad at all. Especially in the current society which is so incredibily specialized that it's just scary. I think it is very good to have some wider knowledge then what reaches your current intrests, simply, because ,because of that you will get new intrests!

Not that I am trying to defend the rest of the mentioned things your school screws up but I am just trying to point out I'd be wise to have a broad knowledge.

You see, I intend to become a walking wikipedia (but with all the information correct) .

I don't agree with Plato's views, but they are interesting objects of study.

I'll have to agree that they're an interesting object of study, although it's been so long since I last read any of his works or opinions that I can't make a judgment call about whether I agree or disagree with his views.

@Matthias1992: [citation needed]