My 9th grade class had a test on capital letters today.

[Leo Luncid]

It all started with this one assignment; a review on a book. Before winter break my teacher said that we had so much lack in grammar and writing we had to learn "what 5th graders already know" in the second half of the school year. Yes, we have to be told that a letter is always capitalized at a beginning of the sentence. Then there's going to be use of words, knowing the word "pronoun," punctuation, and stuff like that, maybe even realizing there's a whole different meaning for the word "arcticle." It really feels like I'm flunking back in time for a person who hasn't been before, but I did learn something new now and then. All right, there are a decent number of things I could've known before. Along the side, I was surprised the teacher has to answer to the class what "pronoun" means. (Student:"Oo! I know! A noun that lost it's amatuer status!")

Yet to me this seems to somehow just came out of the blue. Hopefully I'm not the only one who went through this sort of thing before. I guess it goes to show, those of you who actually got a few low grades in English or writing; or just slack at capitalizing a letter or two (and I'm not pointing at those who don't spell and punctuate correctly in this forum, because there are people who don't know how to type efficiently, and that's a different story), I hoping that's not because of irresponsibility, because you might be going through the lesson again... In middle school.

[Sarah]

You had to go over capitalization? I'm glad I took honors English in 9th grade, then. I never learned or used terms like "article" and "infinitive" until I started taking Spanish, though.

[tiddy ogg]

I remember when starting to learn French, being baffled by all the tenses, imperfect, past historic, and all that sort of thing. I remember thinking, "We don't have all that in English." Of course we do, and you just grow up to accept things like "I would have had..." without thinking about it.

[Mafia Salad]

I remember in tenth grade when my art teacher asked the class if we knew what colors were. The whole class just looked at her with that ever so popular "Are you serious?" look. I thought she was joking. After about 15 seconds of awkwardness and silence she said "Oh, so nobody knows what colors are" and spent the next 30 min explaining the color wheel and rainbows and such. It would have been funny if she was doing it because she didn't like it when the class doesn't answer her questions, but I think she genuinely thought we didn't know what colors were.

It's one of my fondest memories of High School, my flakey ex-hippy art teacher pointing to a poster on the wall saying "this ones yellow". Good times, good times.

[SekoETC]

Haha, idiots... that's what all the chatspeak does to them. I understand if someone writes with just one finger and thus can't reach the shift keys, but if I found out someone was writing essays with a pencil and didn't know how to use capital letters, I'd totally lose respect towards them. Like - you learn it on second grade or what? Or is the American school system really so rotten they won't teach basic things anymore?

About colours: It's surprising how ignorant many people can be today. You'd think it's logical yellow + blue makes green but even older kids can be totally puzzled by it. I knew the facts before I even went to school. I also knew the names and correct order of the planets in our solar system (exept the ones after Pluto found only lately, now do those even have names?)

Anyway, here comes a painful memory! I knew what a mallard looks like, since we'd gotten 4 sets of flannel bedding with pictures of them - a Christmas present from my brother's godmother. So, when I was in pre-school (in my country pre-school starts in the age of 6, and real school in the age of 7), we were supposed to make duckies out of white clay and stones. After the stone was coated with the clay and you'd attached a clay head to it, we let them dry, and then it was time to paint them. So we were told to mix brown. But I wanted to paint it like a real mallard, so I was mixing green... *sniff* and then the teacher came... and she told me "that's not brown", she thought I didn't know how to do it... and I had to mix brown like everybody else, and paint the whole bird an ugly brown, because it's an ordinary ducky, or a female mallard, but not a mallard drake... After all, how could a stupid kid even know what a mallard looks like...? Why did they have to oppress the young artist like that? Why does everybody have to fit in the same mould?! *buries her face into her hands*

[tiddy ogg]

Yeah, that's what you remember from school. All the injustices and ignorance, however minor, of your teachers.

[SekoETC]

...And classmates.