Well, and this is coming from a kid who was in high school only last year, you guys really have got to understand that there's a hell of a lot of BS in school. Dunno if there's more or less nowadays, but homework is often times just busy work, and the same goes for the vast majority of projects. I can't tell you how many assignments I had over my six years of middle + high school education that required me to look up something in a book, and then copy it over onto the hw sheet. I mean, once in a while, as a study guide for a test or something, I can understand. All the time though?
As an AP/Honors kid, I had a much better time of it, I think, but it's still a reality. I'm not saying that what a lot of kids resort to is right, but I think I can see why they'd do it nonetheless. In 7th and 8th (and in 9th + 10th in classes I didn't like) I slacked my way through everything, didn't do homework, didn't study for tests, because it seemed like everyone else wasn't doing anything and you know what? I still came out with, in most cases, mid to high Bs (Ironically, this wasn't in regulars classes. This was in HONORS). I SHOULD have failed, let's say, The New York State Exam in Earth Science, as I hadn't opened the book the entire year. I'd hardly done anything in the class the entire year. Instead I got an 80. I should have failed Physics, considering that
1) I never opened the book the entire year.
2) Never studied for ANY test, much less the New York State one.
3) We had this homework through a site called "web assign" every week. I did what I could, and then I turned it over to my dad most of the times and he'd finish it for me. (And sometimes he'd have trouble. And he's an ENGINEER.) Why? Because it was a regulars class, and they were giving us problems that the TEACHER spent two full periods (1 and a half hours on) and he still didn't get the right answer himself. He just sort of said, "you guys see where I'm going with this." The BEST teacher in the entire physics department was ironically mine, and it was his FIRST year.
My point being, there's a major problem with our education system if a kid can get an 80 in a New York State Exam (5 points away from "Mastery") without (literally) doing a damn thing the entire year. And then there's the absurd emphasis on getting this sheet signed, getting that sheet signed, get this test signed, etc etc etc.
Then there's the issue of overzealous parents that too often push their kids into classes they really shouldn't be in. For instance, I was a mid to high B student in my Honors Math Classes from 7th to 9th grade. Yea, a lot of times I didn't do the homework, but you know why? Because the teachers had a habit of going around the room and calling on people to give out answers. And I'd rather have not done hw than do it and call out the wrong answer. A lot of times I felt like the class was going by too fast and nobody asked any questions (an interesting phenomenon I observed in Honors classes) even though a lot of people didn't "get it." I remember the resident genius of my 9th grade class told me himself that the teacher wasn't that great and he had to teach himself everything.
So, after MUCH bickering and fighting with my parents, I finally dropped down to Regulars Math for 10th grade. And guess what? I was the best student. lol. The pace was more deliberate, people actually asked questions, etc. And a lot of the teachers that my friends in HONORS classes complained about, I actually had no issue with when I had them for Regulars.
And the teachers are (I'm guessing) so overburdened that they don't really care that the individual student isn't doing well. I've been the one to get an 80 on the Earth Science Regents, but I'm also the one who got a 96 on the Chemistry State Exam and a 5/5 on my Environmental Science AP. Had the teachers maybe taken me aside, and talked to me, sincerely, about my habit of DOING NOTHING then maybe I could have changed earlier. But that didn't happen.
Anyway, I'm so glad I'm in college now. Just thinking about school makes me anxious...
/rant
So year. There's always two sides to the same story.
I did always like English and Social Studies though (even though I still never studied until around 10th grade!) I remember in 7th grade, I handed in a report that was very clearly a first draft, off the top of your head sort of thing. Didn't even go back to fix typos. There were some places were I had the same sentence or part of a sentence repeated two times in a row, there were pages missing and one page was actually stapled UPSIDE DOWN (don't know how I managed that.) And I got an 80 back with a comment, "I see the potential for future fine writing here." Which was kind of nice.