![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Educational privilege meme, part 2
Mar. 8th, 2026 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hidden_variableI’ve been slowly working my way through the remainder of the educational privilege meme; here’s the second round of answers. (Questions from the first part were answered here.)
- You were in relatively good physical and mental health.
( Read more... )
- For the most part, you were able to study and complete assignments without any struggle.
( Read more... )
- Test-taking came easily to you.
( Read more... )
- You seldom faced difficulty understanding assignments.
( Read more... )
- You read at grade level or above.
( Read more... )
- Your mathematics skills were at grade level or above.
( Read more... )
- Adults responsible for your care supported your academic journey for the better and for the worse.
( Read more... )
the family/cultural attitude towards education – and also the attitude of the peers. [added by hamsterwoman]
( Read more... )
Intellectual activities outside of school and family were available and facilitated. [added by cahn]
( Read more... )
Working above grade level was encouraged when possible and the resources were available to do this.
( Read more... )
Okay, well, everyone has been adding their own questions to the meme, so… why not one more? (It occurs to me that if everyone adds a question, we’re going to get a sort of “house that Jack built” effect in which the meme becomes unreasonably long, and also that it would become possible to trace the path of the meme by noting which questions were included in each person’s rendition.) Anyway! It struck me that none of the questions so far have asked specifically about teachers. I’m sure no one will be surprised that I have thoughts on this topic. It’s hard to pin down exactly what I want to ask here—basically the idea is something along the lines of “you had good teachers,” but, first of all, nearly everyone will have had many different teachers of varying quality, and secondly, I think there are at least three different axes along which teachers can be evaluated. Axis 1 would be the extent to which the teacher inspired/encouraged/connected with individual students; Axis 2 is knowledge of the subject matter; Axis 3 is knowledge of how to teach the subject matter (which is distinct from the subject itself!). I could go on about this for much longer, but Daylight Savings Time has stolen an hour from me and I need to finish this post in some finite time. I’ll just say I was very lucky to have some excellent teachers along all these axes at every stage of my education. Even during my very difficult 7th grade year, there were several good teachers that I remember fondly. And while there were other teachers who were just okay, or mildly annoying in some cases, I wouldn’t say there were any who had a significant negative impact on me.
As an example of someone who was less lucky in this way: a student who was in my class years ago told me about his experience in middle school math. He said he had done well in math in elementary school, but then somehow ended up in a “remedial” math class in middle school. The teacher would apparently stand there in class every day and tell the students they were stupid and couldn’t learn anything. So for years this student had thought of himself as someone who couldn’t do math. Somehow he made it past that: he got through the math prerequisites to take the most advanced physics classes we offer, and won an award for being a top physics student. But I wonder how many other students from that middle school class just completely gave up on math forever.
<\cut>
Okay, I’m going to post this now before it becomes any longer. It’s been very interesting for me to think through all these questions and write this up!
- You were in relatively good physical and mental health.
( Read more... )
- For the most part, you were able to study and complete assignments without any struggle.
( Read more... )
- Test-taking came easily to you.
( Read more... )
- You seldom faced difficulty understanding assignments.
( Read more... )
- You read at grade level or above.
( Read more... )
- Your mathematics skills were at grade level or above.
( Read more... )
- Adults responsible for your care supported your academic journey for the better and for the worse.
( Read more... )
the family/cultural attitude towards education – and also the attitude of the peers. [added by hamsterwoman]
( Read more... )
Intellectual activities outside of school and family were available and facilitated. [added by cahn]
( Read more... )
Working above grade level was encouraged when possible and the resources were available to do this.
( Read more... )
Okay, well, everyone has been adding their own questions to the meme, so… why not one more? (It occurs to me that if everyone adds a question, we’re going to get a sort of “house that Jack built” effect in which the meme becomes unreasonably long, and also that it would become possible to trace the path of the meme by noting which questions were included in each person’s rendition.) Anyway! It struck me that none of the questions so far have asked specifically about teachers. I’m sure no one will be surprised that I have thoughts on this topic. It’s hard to pin down exactly what I want to ask here—basically the idea is something along the lines of “you had good teachers,” but, first of all, nearly everyone will have had many different teachers of varying quality, and secondly, I think there are at least three different axes along which teachers can be evaluated. Axis 1 would be the extent to which the teacher inspired/encouraged/connected with individual students; Axis 2 is knowledge of the subject matter; Axis 3 is knowledge of how to teach the subject matter (which is distinct from the subject itself!). I could go on about this for much longer, but Daylight Savings Time has stolen an hour from me and I need to finish this post in some finite time. I’ll just say I was very lucky to have some excellent teachers along all these axes at every stage of my education. Even during my very difficult 7th grade year, there were several good teachers that I remember fondly. And while there were other teachers who were just okay, or mildly annoying in some cases, I wouldn’t say there were any who had a significant negative impact on me.
As an example of someone who was less lucky in this way: a student who was in my class years ago told me about his experience in middle school math. He said he had done well in math in elementary school, but then somehow ended up in a “remedial” math class in middle school. The teacher would apparently stand there in class every day and tell the students they were stupid and couldn’t learn anything. So for years this student had thought of himself as someone who couldn’t do math. Somehow he made it past that: he got through the math prerequisites to take the most advanced physics classes we offer, and won an award for being a top physics student. But I wonder how many other students from that middle school class just completely gave up on math forever.
<\cut>
Okay, I’m going to post this now before it becomes any longer. It’s been very interesting for me to think through all these questions and write this up!
@ 
@ 
@ xmen100
@ mcu100