Honors Programs and Self Depreciation

I think a lot of my problems with learning new tasks and giving up on things I'm not immediately good at comes from being placed in advanced/honors programs starting in 3rd grade and continuing through all of my educational experience (even past high school, graduating honors with my associates degree and the same with my bachelor's as long as everything works out).

I'm not saying this to brag, honestly I'm kind of bitter over it. I was tested for learning disabilities in elementary school and the results were the opposite of what my school expected. The tests concluded what my mom had been telling my school, which can be summed up to I was weird and nerdy, as I scored off the charts academically but was mostly "neurotypical" otherwise. Essentially I was just really socially awkward and instead of my school working with me on that, they just wanted an excuse to shove me out of the classroom and into an alternative program because I wasn't responding to social interaction the way they wanted me to.

With the postmodern educational system's obsession with standardized testing and putting children in diagnostic boxes, when I wasn't placed on the autism or ADHD spectrum, I was shoved into honors programs.

This is problematic both because it ignored my needs as someone with what schools refer to as "behavioral problems" because I didn't fit the norm of the stigmatization that comes with those (I was constantly starting fights with other students and lashing out on teachers by middle and high school but being an honors student no one wanted to even bother addressing it because it didn't fit their ideas of the binary between "problem students" and "honors students"). This whole situation was also ableist as fuck on the educational system's part considering anyone should be able to be in an honors program regardless of how "neurotypical" they are and people on the autism/ADHD spectrum are excluded from these programs based on ableist assumptions of their abilities, as if I was placed on either of these spectrums, which there is nothing wrong with, my education experience would have been drastically different.

Back to my struggles with learning new tasks though. Essentially, honors programs put my academic achievements on a pedestal while not engaging in enriching education. It was all about test scores since I was going to school in the age after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that took away from all programs except those rigidly focused on teaching for writing and math standardized testing. As I was able to constantly pass tests with high marks, I was never engaged with by teacher's beyond telling me I was doing great.

This resulted in me not knowing how to study for exams when I needed to because I didn't during high school and I wasn't encouraged to because I passed my tests regardless. When I entered college, studying was a foreign concept to me, so I purposely stayed in disciplines more focused on reading and writing, my strengths, than entering into the science programs I craved because I knew I wasn't prepared for that type of learning and field of study.

Additionally, whenever I tried to engage with activities outside of academics throughout my K-12 experience, my family and teachers would tell me I should just stay focused on school as it was "what I'm good at." I tried to play basketball and when I struggled due to being clumsy and kind of overweight, my family pulled me out of the program and told me "it was okay I was bad at sports because I was good at school," resulting in my never attempting athletics again because I assumed I would fail.

Other tasks, like my trying to learn instruments, draw, or play videogames, were and still are all affected by my socialization to think if I'm not immediately good at something like I am with academics, I should just give up. I neglected hobbies I loved like guitar, viola, and drawing because when I wasn't quickly the best at it compared to my peers, I told myself I must be a failure.

Essentially, the postmodern emphasis on standardized testing and academic achievement is eliminating the ability for students to not only pursue creativity, but develop the skills they need to engage with disciplines outside of those they pick up quickly, and it's a scary thing to reflect on.

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