Discrimination in grading and too high expectations

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A pic of me when I graduated as the best 10 students from my middle school.

 

    The world gets dark but not our voice. Our voice matters. As youth, we are often unheard, ignored, but on the other hand, we are the same creatures from God –Human--.

    Our mental needs warmth too as well as our body’s temperature needs. Hi, I’m Anggi, 16 years old (still 15 actually but this year will be 16 ). Many people assumed me as a smart human being in the academic field, but none of them know how I suffered from their high expectations toward me.

 

“Ah..this girl must be the winner!”

 

When I'm not in the winner list

 

“Oh look at that girl, she must be too overproud so that she failed. C’mon leave her alone, maybe it’s a time for her to be a failure”

 

    I meant, due to their high expectation toward me, they often humiliate me when I don’t achieve what they expected to me. It makes me sad sometimes and feels like I want to erase all of my achievements previously so that they would never expect me that high. People said we have to be smart, well but do they know that it’s impossible to stay like that smart, and do they know how society does toward us (Included me)? Humiliated. Yeah, it’s a fact. When I get what they expected, they praise me like a baby newborn, but when I fail in a little thing, they even disappear from my world and discriminate against me.

 

Am I the only one who burden this? Is it a shame to be an imperfect human being?

 

    Can we appreciate people? Where are the words “Good job” then for a failure person who is surrounded by the unachievable expectation he/she got from either family or friends? What’s the point of school if the stupid students are being ignored while the smart ones are appreciated? Schools ought to bring equality to their students, it goes the same as a society ought to. At least we need to put discrimination like that to the end ASAP.

     Next, I’d like to direct you to discrimination in grading. Following migrationpolicy.org, experiencing discrimination can provoke stress responses similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. Children who experience discrimination from their teachers are more likely to have negative attitudes about school and lower academic motivation and performance and are at increased risk of dropping out of high school. Nowadays, I feel like we go to school not for real study, but for the score only. We often don’t understand the materials as ‘not really smart’ student in the class, but the teachers just assumed that we are too ignorant to understand the explanation, too stupid. Meanwhile, for the smart kids, the teachers are willing to teach them carefully until they get it. How discrimination it is. As a result, many students cheat on their exams just for the sake of ‘Score’, not for the ‘Knowledge’.

     To sum up, it affects our mental health. It comes from school and unachievable expectations in society. This online class during pandemic even overburden our academic performance. Giving scores to students can be a good way to increase their effort and hard work. But too much expectation and standard from teachers, family, friends cannot be more dangerous for our mental health. We can have bad and toxic attitudes due to those conditions. It’s not because of our desire to change our attitude itself, but that toxic environment just reflects our attitude.

     Dear teachers, relatives, friends. When we win, don’t praise us like that if you keep humiliating us when we fail another time. Toxic mental health can affect something bad that no one could expect before. Your words reflect our attitude.

We love expectations but too many expectations from society to us is a way to kill our future
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