I've come to the observation that the key element to a classroom's atmosphere is respect. A respect between both the teacher and students, as well as the students between themselves. When a class holds a certain standard of respect, I find it to be more motivating. A place I feel welcome is a place where I feel I can work. This overlooked aspect of environmental influence in respect to accomplishment is one of the most blatantly absent aspects of almost every public school class in the United States. I say the United States specifically, only because that is the only public school system I have personally experienced.

It makes me sad to think that perhaps one of the easiest forms of human compassion and support escapes so many of us because of some disturbing need many people seem to have to torture and humiliate their peers. There is no suitable punishment, or really any viable solution in the first place, to take care of the plague of immaturity and baseless loathing between some students based on nothing but difference. Fear of difference is the root of Intolerance and Intolerance is the root of prejudicial assumptions, as these assumptions serve nothing but to cause foolish children to ridicule others to bolster their own ego.

This "Missing Exchange" of respect between us forms a very perceptible atmosphere of distrust and hostility that does much more than just make time spent in the classroom uncomfortable, it subtracts from your ability, or rather your will, to do work or even function normally in the class itself.

This detrimental atmosphere is one of the reasons I left High School and took my GED test 3 months from the end of Senior year, scoring over 96% in every subject compared to all the graduating Seniors in the country. I was so tired of the overly hostile environment and the constant attempts of others to insult and taunt me. I had gotten to a point where I was literally so demoralized and fed up with the environment I was forced to go into every day, that I ended up outright refusing to do the work. A year later I find a college that I meet the qualifications for and found myself in a place that was not hostile, that supported me and held a friendly atmosphere. I hold high grades in all my core classes and look forward to working on my next project. Through personal life experience do I form this observation, one of the many frustrations of life leads me to this question:

In This Life, Must the Environment We Deserve To Learn In Only Come at the Cost of Thousands?

The most depressing part is that I have not once experienced a situation outside close and extended family, that contradicted the answer of "Yes."