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Can anyone here who had an overall happy experience during their primary and secondary schooling comment as to what your experience was like? What type of schools did you attend? How were your relationships with your teachers and peers? How involved were your parents in your schooling?
I attended public schools in wealthy districts, then a magnet school whose admissions policies are occasionally a matter of public controversy (yes, that one). My high school classmates were without a doubt the smartest people I've ever met, and I say this after having spent years around STEM graduates of elite universities. There was no shortage of advanced coursework to keep us nerds from getting bored, and we were given more freedom than we would have had at a typical school e.g. we could eat lunch anywhere, including off-campus, free periods were provided during the day for clubs and activities, and an independent research project was expected of all students. The teachers were generally competent and reasonable, and a decent fraction of them had PhD's in scientific disciplines.
When I was there the demographics were about 50/50 white/Jewish and south/east Asian, with every other group a rounding error. There was a clear divide between kids with tiger parents who had been pressured into attending and those like me who wanted to be there and whose parents were comparatively uninvolved, with the former having an overall negative experience and the latter loving it. I did not witness a single fight throughout my schooling, which I think would come as a shock to older generations or people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Some kids drank or did drugs (weed and LSD, mostly) but my friends and I were squares even by that school's standards, so I don't know the details. Everyone in my graduating class went to college, so even kids whose parents weren't able to help much with the application process obtained the requisite knowledge from their teachers or peers.
Are you saying it is typical in the US to restrict where students can eat lunch?
So typical that reading this comment made me go "wait, it's not like that in Europe?" For a country whose selling point has supposedly always been freedom, I had so little that, when that technically changed after high school, it was like one of those wild animals bred in captivity with no concept of how to live in the wild. The most freedom I got was on that one high school band trip to Universal Studios Orlando, in which I was the goody two-shoes stopping my 16-17 year-old companions from trying to order alcohol from a restaurant that seemed more than willing to believe that the tall guy in the group was actually 21.
... Wait, what freedoms do I have that Europeans lack? I guess I could get a weapon if I wanted?
You can own a weapon. Attitudes towards recreational drug use are far more liberal. You have less concern over police brutality and the justice system needs a warrant to surveil you. You have far greater freedom of speech. You can hire and fire notionally who you please, and it’s easier to get a job because of it too. Religious freedom laws are much more comprehensive. If you are a parent, you are allowed much more latitude in deciding what is best for your child, even if not in agreement with the government.
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