Rosa tells Claudia she sucked at school, too. Claudia is shocked because Janine said Rosa was the smartest student in the class. Rosa says school doesn’t come naturally, so she has to work hard to do well.
This was me. School was hard because I was so advanced (I'm not just saying this--I was tested in high school, thrown in the higher level classes, and then it was decided that I was "too young," and so put back in my grade level's classes, and in elementary school, was sent to the higher classes) that focusing was hard. So I ad to work my ass off to make myself focus. It sucked.
Do her teachers not tell their students ways to remember certain things?
Claudia hasn't bothered to train herself to remember what she doesn't care about.
It’s still an F. Okay, so I’m not sure if it’s an improvement.
It's an improvement. Going up another tenth would be passing.
But Mrs. Kishi said they didn’t realize how badly Claudia was doing in the last chapter.
Claudia has never done well in school. Her parents hold a lot of blame here. Hands-off parenting doesn't work. I'm not saying helicopter, but be involved!
Claudia’s parents say that she’s working hard.
Makinf excuses for her isn't going to help. She hasn't even been bothering to do the work to begin with.
As far as I’m aware, don’t you have to be sixteen to drop out of school?
Legally, you can't stop out until you're either 18, or graduate high school, or get a GED. However, people try dropping out all the time. A friend of mine let her 12-year-old drop out since the kid, like Claud, wanted to be an artISTE (but lacked skill in a serious way). Uh, well...the state didn't take too kindly to that, and the kid was put back in school.
I can see Claudia having an argument with her parents about dropping out of school because it’s useless because she’s going to be an artist.
That was the justification, though it's wrong, AND my friend agreed with her daughter and was stupidly proud of her daughter for deciding to drop out.
Also, can they really demote Claudia back to seventh grade in the beginning of the year?
Yes.
Can someone really just tell a student, “You’re doing really badly. Go back to the previous grade?”
Yes.
But if Claudia was incapable of understanding concepts she should have grasped from sixth and seventh grade, how the hell did she pass them?
This is the problem with 60% being a passing grade. Most people can guess and scrape by with a 60%, and a report card of all D's passes you automatically to the next grade. It doesn't mean someone's understanding the material. By the time it's caught, it's often too later to do more than drop back a grade or two.
Now, though, all the Common Core testing has fucked things up. Too much time is spent testing and not enough time is spent teaching material that's worth a damn. Why do you think I homeschool? Well, have my daughter in a homeschool hybrid. School now is a disaster, but when this book was written, when school was less of a disaster, you just needed to guess well enough to get 6 out of 10 right.
Claudia talks shit about how babyish her classmates look.
Jess and Mal are a year younger....
when she does her homework, she finds out she actually understands it. Maybe eighth grade was moving along at too fast of a pace for Claudia.
What likely happened is she picked up just enough in eighth grade for seventh grade stuff to start making sense. This would be a good time to form good study habits and a solid educational foundation for the next year.
This was me. School was hard because I was so advanced (I'm not just saying this--I was tested in high school, thrown in the higher level classes, and then it was decided that I was "too young," and so put back in my grade level's classes, and in elementary school, was sent to the higher classes) that focusing was hard. So I ad to work my ass off to make myself focus. It sucked.
Do her teachers not tell their students ways to remember certain things?
Claudia hasn't bothered to train herself to remember what she doesn't care about.
It’s still an F. Okay, so I’m not sure if it’s an improvement.
It's an improvement. Going up another tenth would be passing.
But Mrs. Kishi said they didn’t realize how badly Claudia was doing in the last chapter.
Claudia has never done well in school. Her parents hold a lot of blame here. Hands-off parenting doesn't work. I'm not saying helicopter, but be involved!
Claudia’s parents say that she’s working hard.
Makinf excuses for her isn't going to help. She hasn't even been bothering to do the work to begin with.
As far as I’m aware, don’t you have to be sixteen to drop out of school?
Legally, you can't stop out until you're either 18, or graduate high school, or get a GED. However, people try dropping out all the time. A friend of mine let her 12-year-old drop out since the kid, like Claud, wanted to be an artISTE (but lacked skill in a serious way). Uh, well...the state didn't take too kindly to that, and the kid was put back in school.
I can see Claudia having an argument with her parents about dropping out of school because it’s useless because she’s going to be an artist.
That was the justification, though it's wrong, AND my friend agreed with her daughter and was stupidly proud of her daughter for deciding to drop out.
Also, can they really demote Claudia back to seventh grade in the beginning of the year?
Yes.
Can someone really just tell a student, “You’re doing really badly. Go back to the previous grade?”
Yes.
But if Claudia was incapable of understanding concepts she should have grasped from sixth and seventh grade, how the hell did she pass them?
This is the problem with 60% being a passing grade. Most people can guess and scrape by with a 60%, and a report card of all D's passes you automatically to the next grade. It doesn't mean someone's understanding the material. By the time it's caught, it's often too later to do more than drop back a grade or two.
Now, though, all the Common Core testing has fucked things up. Too much time is spent testing and not enough time is spent teaching material that's worth a damn. Why do you think I homeschool? Well, have my daughter in a homeschool hybrid. School now is a disaster, but when this book was written, when school was less of a disaster, you just needed to guess well enough to get 6 out of 10 right.
Claudia talks shit about how babyish her classmates look.
Jess and Mal are a year younger....
when she does her homework, she finds out she actually understands it. Maybe eighth grade was moving along at too fast of a pace for Claudia.
What likely happened is she picked up just enough in eighth grade for seventh grade stuff to start making sense. This would be a good time to form good study habits and a solid educational foundation for the next year.
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