This Episode Should Have Been Called "Tracking," Not "Hothouse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                            I get why it was called "Hothouse."  It was about the intense competition between students at Norwood, a private school for the gifted, where from Sarah Hyland's Emmy caliber performance, even they are made to feel dumb.

                               

                            I don't know if this goes on in public schooling today, but in the lower grades one was put into reading and math groups.  I was always in the high groups, even in math, which I was weaker in than reading.  No surprise there, considering how things turned out.

                            But when junior high began, in the seventh grade, I naturally thought I would go in the high group.  By the second day I found I was in the second highest; friends I had known all my life were even lower.  I think it had to do with socioeconomic factors, and even though my family was not blue- collar, I came from the school where the children of the blue-collar workers went.

                             I was humiliated for the next two years.   It was sadistic. It was like the administration then was saying, "OK, you are in puberty now, so we have got to reign you in, until things calm down."  I resented every day of my two years in middle school.

                              Things improved in high school and went better for me, as I was more recognized then.  But Hyland's performance took me back to that time in middle school, and while I never killed anyone over it, as she did, or wanted to, I wanted to tell the administration exactly what I thought.   But I lacked the self-confidence then to do so.

                                  Of course, it does not matter now, as I showed up most of the so-called high group kids.  If administrations are still doing this, STOP!  Or watch Hyland's performance and see what it can do to a student.

                                   I did not condone her actions, but I completely understood how she felt!!!!!!!!!!!