Way back in the 80s when I was in highschool in my native Portugal, one of my school colleagues went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.
Now, this was a guy whose average grade in Portugal was 12 (in a scale of 1 - 20, were 10 was a pass mark).
When he came back from the US after a year he had got A grades at everything but one (were he got a B). By the way, he was no better student in the year afterwards in Portugal than before.
It always stuck with me since then the idea that highschool-level teaching standards even in quite a poor and peripheral European country were much more demanding than in the US.
So that’s why I always felt like a genius growing up. The people around me were just stupid, and so was the system that enforces their stupidity.
I was always the one ruining the curve by acing tests that everyone else got Cs and Ds on, and people acted like that was my fault. Classmates would ask me to explain something on the homework, and I didn’t know where to begin because I just couldn’t comprehend how they weren’t getting it. I would state it in the plainest terms and they’d say things like “That’s not an explanation, you just said what it is” and like yeah, any further detail than that would basically sound patronizing. (The funny thing is, people call me arrogant when I make it sound too dumbed down, but they also call me arrogant when I assume a higher-level understanding. It seems “intelligence” is the same thing as “arrogance” to some people…).
But then I go to Europe and basically feel like a dumb, backwards redneck because everyone around me has such a better understanding of the world than I do. That’s why I love Europe though, I’d rather be the dumbest person in a room full of smart people than the smartest person in a room full of dumb people.
People in the US don’t get it though. They think Europe is “posh” because all they ever see of it are shallow instagram travelers, so they think I’m a snob for liking Europe better than the US. It’s really annoying.
The US is a pretty large place, if you grew up in one of the top states for education (MA, CT, NJ) you likely have had a much different experience than if you’ve grown up in like Louisiana or Alabama. The top states are actually fairly comparable to lots of European education. Hence why the snobbery mentioned about European below is also often applied to many people/places from the Northeast.
Yep. A friend of mine had an exchange student from the US. He was shocked when he started to attend school here. In the US, he had been A and B guy, here he was below average. The other way round, one of my year-mates (if that is a proper word) went to the US. She found the AP classes boring, and her only challenge was sports.
Way back in the 80s when I was in highschool in my native Portugal, one of my school colleagues went to the US for a year in a student exchange program.
Now, this was a guy whose average grade in Portugal was 12 (in a scale of 1 - 20, were 10 was a pass mark).
When he came back from the US after a year he had got A grades at everything but one (were he got a B). By the way, he was no better student in the year afterwards in Portugal than before.
It always stuck with me since then the idea that highschool-level teaching standards even in quite a poor and peripheral European country were much more demanding than in the US.
So that’s why I always felt like a genius growing up. The people around me were just stupid, and so was the system that enforces their stupidity.
I was always the one ruining the curve by acing tests that everyone else got Cs and Ds on, and people acted like that was my fault. Classmates would ask me to explain something on the homework, and I didn’t know where to begin because I just couldn’t comprehend how they weren’t getting it. I would state it in the plainest terms and they’d say things like “That’s not an explanation, you just said what it is” and like yeah, any further detail than that would basically sound patronizing. (The funny thing is, people call me arrogant when I make it sound too dumbed down, but they also call me arrogant when I assume a higher-level understanding. It seems “intelligence” is the same thing as “arrogance” to some people…).
But then I go to Europe and basically feel like a dumb, backwards redneck because everyone around me has such a better understanding of the world than I do. That’s why I love Europe though, I’d rather be the dumbest person in a room full of smart people than the smartest person in a room full of dumb people.
People in the US don’t get it though. They think Europe is “posh” because all they ever see of it are shallow instagram travelers, so they think I’m a snob for liking Europe better than the US. It’s really annoying.
The US is a pretty large place, if you grew up in one of the top states for education (MA, CT, NJ) you likely have had a much different experience than if you’ve grown up in like Louisiana or Alabama. The top states are actually fairly comparable to lots of European education. Hence why the snobbery mentioned about European below is also often applied to many people/places from the Northeast.
Yep. A friend of mine had an exchange student from the US. He was shocked when he started to attend school here. In the US, he had been A and B guy, here he was below average. The other way round, one of my year-mates (if that is a proper word) went to the US. She found the AP classes boring, and her only challenge was sports.