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When I was young, they decided (after having tested me) to put me in 2nd grade classes for half of the day. I’m not sure why they made the decision to have me straddle between the first and second grade, but I did find out, much later, that they wanted to do it again the following year, only my mother prevented it by telling them to put me in one grade or the other. They left me in second grade, with a teacher whose faculties were beginning to unravel—think Miss Wormwood, only with schizophrenia.
It was interesting to see a lot of the same material presented twice, if only because I could compare techniques from one year to the next, but apart from that it was a complete and utter waste of time. Grade 2 Take 2 was when the rot set in on public schooling. I completely grasped the routine of the education system and so was able to predict the answers they were looking for. After that it was only a matter of time before I lost interest completely.
They eventually did jump me, from grade 6 to 8, which was a social lifeline (my chronological peers were like these Reagan Youth types, which depressed me to no end), but that’s another story.
Remembering the textbooks (In olden days, they would have called them “primers”) brought this back. I always had those books completely read within a week or two of starting the school year, when they were supposed to last until May.
