There are great teachers out there, but there are also lousy ones. Practically every kid who goes through the school system eventually experiences being Smarter Than The Teacher. In high school, I once got a calculus textbook confiscated because the principal felt it was a distraction during algebra class. It can feel frustrating, especially in K-12 when you’re virtually a slave, where the worst of teachers flex their meager power over you like it’s the only pleasure in their hollow lives. How should you react when you find yourself in this position?
By the very nature of the article, the reader may well be smarter than I am! The only real qualification I have on this matter is hindsight. So here’s the advice I’d give to my own ninth grade self, what I wish somebody had told me, the message that would have benefited me whether the messenger was Einstein himself or just another dumb teach.
School > Book-learning
Somehow this flew right over my head when I was a kid, and I suffered a lot because of it. I thought school was supposed to be a place of real scholarship. The truth is, there’s a certain basic skillset you need to navigate the world, and that’s about as far as the education part of school matters. Since you’re reading this, you’ve probably already got it. So focus on what’s really important: friendship, networking, and having fun.
If you’re an autodidact like me and want to teach yourself advanced quantum mechanics on the side, or write your own novel on the side, that’s awesome. But disentangle it from school. Video games aren’t really part of school; neither is teaching yourself Japanese or running your own business on the ‘net. School is about learning those fundamental basics (check) and about socializing with your peers.
People skills are a science of their own. When I was in high school, I could compute advanced integrals, but I couldn’t get a girlfriend. Looking back now, I wish I’d spent more time figuring out the latter! Trust me, when you go to college, there are a lot more integrals and you’ll meet them more easily, there’s no rush to get your first integral in high school.
Part of my problem was that I had built “being smart” into my personality, and I was scared to try hosting a party or asking a girl out or anything like that, because it was a totally different type of skillset and if I failed, I’d feel un-smart. That’s a big danger for smart people: fear of doing difficult new things, lest the “perfect record” be broken.
Teachers Are Human
Sure, some of them have become more machine now than man, twisted and evil, but somewhere beneath that dark shell of corrupt chalk-dust, there’s a human being. At one time, maybe they too were Smarter Than Their Teacher.
In the people skills game, the dumb and unreasonable teacher is a final boss, one of the most difficult challenges for you to test your skills against. Can you break through the cold jaded barrier and befriend the human within? Who knows, you might even be able to turn her from the dark side, get her to lighten up a bit and stop being such a prick.
You have nothing to prove
Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was always struggling to beat people over the head with How Smart I Am. Again, all part of the Smart Personality™. Looking back now, that was kind of dickish of me. Just because I knew calculus and the math teacher didn’t, that was no reason to rub it in her face. No wonder we didn’t get along!
Intelligence isn’t something you need to prove to anybody, at least not ’til grad school. If you’re really a saint, you could go so far as to pretend to be impressed by your teacher. It would make their day like crazy, and if you kept it up, you could even influence them to become a better educator permanently.
Here’s an interesting psychological experiment. A teacher, with an ordinary class, pretended that the class was gifted. Sure enough, the class excelled, all the students performing as if it really were the gifted class. When the teacher began treating students like they were intelligent, the students somehow performed better accordingly! Thing is, though, this goes both ways. Even if your teacher is dumb, try your best to do the experiment, act like they’re the greatest teacher in the world. Watch as a more gifted instructor emerges, as if by magic!
FURTHER READING
Red Pills and Blue Pills
Become More Intelligent by Doing New Things
My Home School Story