Low Self Esteem Issue 9: No More Teachers, No More Books
No More Teachers, No More Books
Written By Aphex Twin
June 7th, 1996
[*] LSE NEWS [*]
First Of All, I'd Like To Say That You Can Find Issues Of Low Self Esteem On The Following FTP Site: FTP://FTP.EText.Org/pub/Zines/LowSelfEsteem, Thanks To The Operators Of The EText Archives For Giving This T-File Collection A Home. You May Also Request An Issue By Writing EMail To Me At The Following Address: PARKER_LEWIS@HOTMAIL.COM, You May Send Me Mail Concerning Comments, Flames, Or If You Want To Write Something For Low Self Esteem.
I Was Looking Through Old Issues Of Low Self Esteem And I Encountered Many Errors In My Typing, Mainly Because My 'S' Key On My Keyboard Doesn't Get Printed Sometimes, And I'll Be Re-Releasing Old Issues Which I've Corrected, I Know That I Should Have Corrected The Errors Before Releasing The Issues But Sue Me, I'm A Lazy Bum.
I Haven't Written An Issue Of Low Self Esteem Lately Because Of Something Called School. That's What The Theme Of This Issue Is Going To Be, That Wonderful Hell Called 'Sc-Sc-Sc-hool', The Mere Word Makes Me Stutter. Over Here In Portugal School Is Diferent From Most Other Countries, I'll Be Explaining How The School System Works Here And I'll Be Giving A Little Commentary On It.
Let's Start At The Begining, Over Here You Enter School At Grade 1, There Is No Junior Or Senior Kindergarden. When You Pass The 6th Grade You Move To A Secondary School, After Completing The 12th Grade You Can Go To Work Or Go To University. No Matter What Grade Your In, The Portuguese Have No Problem In Flunking You And In Making You Repeat The Year, I Myself Had To Repeat 2 Years, So Now That I'm Supposed To Be Completing The 12th Grade, I'm Only Completing The 10th Grade. In The First Day Of Entering Grade 7 Or University At A New School There Is Always The Initiation (sp?), Although Most Schools Elsewhere Don't Allow These Actions To Take Place, Here In Portugal, They Just Play Blind, And Don't Do Anything About It. Some Stuff Done To Victims On Initiation Day Include, Getting Spat On, People Throw Shit And Piss At Them, They Get Covered With Girls Perfume, They Get All Painted, And Other Such UnCivilized Actions, Even People In University Who Should Know Much Better Still Participate In These Things. Let's Move On To Something Else.
From The 10th To The 12th Grade, At The End Of The Year They Have Special Exams Which Count For 30% Of The Final Grade, This Special Exam Is Called A 'Global Exam', In This Exam, There Appears Questions From The Entire School Year, The Reason Why I Haven't Released An Issue Of LSE In A While Is Because I've Been Studying For These Global Exams, There Is 1 Global Exam For Every Subject And The Exam Days Are All In The Same Week, So On Monday You Could Have Math Then On Tuesday Physics, And So On, Giving You No Time To Study The Hundred Or So Pages Of Every Subject Of Problems You Last Gave Some 6 Months Ago In Which You Don't Remeber Nothing, It's Really Frustrating.
Here In Portugal There Are No Special Schools For People You Have Trouble Learning, So People Who Have More Dificulties Are Put In The Same Class As BrainStiens And If They Can't Keep Up Than Too Bad. The People Who Have Trouble Learning, The School System Just Flunks Them And Puts Them Back The Year, Eventually The Person Will Get So Unmotivated That They'll Quit School, And Not Be Able To Get A Proper Education To Get A Proper Job. In My Class Last Year I Had A Guy That Was 21 Years Old And I Remember When I Was In Grade 9 I Had A Guy Who Was 23 Who Eventually Dropped Out Of School To Become A Farmer. The School System Here Doesn't Want The People Who Have More Dificulties To Pass, They Keep Them Back And They Keep Them Out Of A Good Life, The School System Only Wants To Pass The Brain-E-Acks And They Want The Portuguese Society To Be A Society Of Intelectuals. Over The Last Few Years I've Noticed How There Seems To Be More And More Students, There Are Alot Entering The Year And Few Passing The Year, Because Of This The Schools Are Becoming Over Crowded, One Day It's Going To Get Really Ugly.
In The End Of The Twelveth Grade The Students Still Have To Take The Global Exam And On Top Of That They Have To Take A Further Exam Which Englobes The Entire Program Since The Seventh Grade, I'm Lucky That I Don't Have To Worry About These Exams Yet Since I'm Still In The 10th Grade But My Friend And Fellow Vandals Member 'MegaDevil' Has To Take These Exams This Year, I Sure Wouldn't Want To Be In His Shoes.
So Far I've Completed 3 Of The 4 Global Exams, The First Global Exam Was Portuguese And That Went Shit, My Second Exam Was Fisics And That Also Went Shit, Today I Did The Global Exam Of Filosofy, It Went Pretty Good, Next Week I Have Math And That Will Be My Last Global Exam, After I Complete The Math Exam, School Is Over And The Summer Holidays Begin, Yahooo....
Well That's About It, For My Comments On The Portuguese Education System, There Is Nothing We Can Do About It, You Either Go With The Flow Or Eat Dust, They Have Us By The Balls And We Are Powerless To Fight Back, And Since Most People Accept The System (Since They've Never Seen Anything Else) And Alot Of People Fear The System, Revolution Is A Utopia.
Later G's
-- Aphex Twin
