The Security Apparatus Loves Anti-Intellectualism

 The security apparatus, being proudly and defiantly anti-intellectual, always hated the fact that I liked learning, even though I could barely read.  They especially despised the fact that I took AP classes, did well on standardized tests, and learned on my own despite the mediocre schools in our area.  Here's the social studies curriculum I took in high school -

9th grade:  World Studies - the teacher was nice and probably knowledgeable (UVa history grad) but the topics were so diffuse that literally the only thing I remember is all of the students doing presentations for the entire month of February for Black History Month.  I did W.E.B. Du Bois, and she seemed impressed that I would pick him.

10th grade:  Nothing - literally nothing.  And it's not like there were options that I could have taken because there weren't.  I did however spend an entire year in Typing as well as a year of Algebra II in which we reviewed Algebra I and a year of Spanish III in which we reviewed what I had learned in Spanish I.

11th grade:  AP US History - fine but I had taught myself all of the material in 3rd or 4th grade.

12th grade:  AP US Government - learned literally nothing.  The teacher was a nice guy who had essentially been retired in place for decades.  It actually turned out to be his last year because the school system offered buyouts.  The class was always oversubscribed because it had been known as an easy A for decades.

That's it - no AP European History, no AP World History, no ancient Greek and Roman history, or contemporary world history.  And people were also annoyed when I properly viewed the every other week two period "Gifted and Talented" program as a joke because the school system hadn't bother to teach any substantive content in the first place.  The "teachers" in that program were the absolute worst - so-called Doctors of Education who liked to bloviate about things like the concepts of "form follows function" for an entire year.  At least the better classroom teachers actually tried to teach something or at least acknowledged the mediocrity of the experience.