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well, this is a little complicated.
i don't see any reason why kids should not graduate with a d average if that's what they earned in high school. no reason at all.
what that precludes, though, is going straight from high school into college, simply as a tactical move. this is not at all a bad thing to have happen, it seems to me. university education is largely wasted on 18 year olds. in my experience teaching at that level, most who were not already forced (and i mean that in the main) into a track like engineering or pre-med from the outset (pending their encounter with the weeder classes of course) typically had no idea at all of what they were doing in university until sometime in their junior year. and it went the same way for me---so i figure it's probably better to not start college until you're 20 or 21. by then you have an idea of why you're there. you don't simply expect it. and you always have recourse to one or another of those Redemption Narratives (you know, back then i didn't know, but then a Conversion Experience happened and Now I Have Clarity--there are a million variants of this basic narrative. admissions programs eat that stuff up)
i find it a little strange to read that fucking off in high school is the fault of high schools, though.
i did as little as possible in high school and managed to graduate with--i think--a b+ average.
i also thought high school a joke--but really, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to maintain a decent average.
to get a D you almost have to make it a mission.
so it really is your own doing if you ended up with that low an average.
high school sucks, it's dysfunctional and all that: so therefore it makes sense to do badly?
to my mind the problem with high school was that it was way too easy. way too easy and way too boring. it seemed to me an example of what happened--i'm paraphrasing a quote from someplace that i saw recently here--the village was remade to accomodate the village idiot.
if that's the case, then it requires almost no particular effort to do reasonably well.
and it's not like doing badly indicates some Grand Insight or amounts to a fuck you to the Man.
no-one cares particularly.
capitalism does not tremble.
but again it's not like a d average outta high school speaks to much beyond where your head was at when you were 17. which is typically not much of anyplace. fortunately you have these redemption narratives, and once you know that, any chump can write one. the future's wide open. everyone a movie star. yes indeed.
and social class has nothing to do with any of this.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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