Mr. Roberts showed clear favoritism to the football players in our class, and would call on them far more often and let them speak far longer than the women. He even once marked me down for saying the Viet Cong were from south Vietnam. When I protested, he told me books can be wrong.

This guy was awful, a reason to panic about public schools, teacher tenure, and how broken our education system is. And yet, I learned a tremendous amount about gender discrimination by being subjected to the jockocracy of his classroom. This brings me to reason number one as to why high school is good for us outsider and radical types.

Going to high school allows us to intimately experience the dominant culture, including all that is in need of reform. Seeing sexism up close and personal, as I did in high school, from teachers and students, helped me understand what I need to fight against.