A wide cinematic digital painting depicting a bleak, gray, fluorescent-lit public school classroom from a child’s-eye perspective. Rows of identical desks, rigidly aligned. At the front, a giant, looming test booklet sits on the teacher’s desk, exaggerated in size like a government monument, with cold light shining on it. The walls are bare except for a faded American flag and a massive black-and-white calendar with MARCH circled ominously in red. The students appear small, nearly swallowed by the classroom—some slumped, some anxious, some staring out the window. Outside the window: a distant, lush, sunlit world of hills, rune-etched towers, and magical academy spires—Arcane Elemental Academy—glowing with color, life, and freedom. Stark contrast in color palette: inside is dull gray, beige, institutional green; outside is natural blues, greens, and warm amber light. Painterly realism, mood of emotional oppression vs. hopeful discovery. No text overlay. Wide cinematic composition.

When I realized the public school system was broken

ByTC Marti

I knew the public school system was irreparably flawed long before I became a fully-fledged libertarian in the 2020s. My first red pill came in 1997.

It wasn’t the nasty old bat who had no business teaching kids. Instead, it was what the nasty old bat said, almost from the moment I sat down in a first-grade classroom. She talked about that “big test in March.”

As for what that test was, I didn’t know. But between August and March, that’s all we heard about. “We need to be ready for that big test in March.” “You need to know this for that big test in March.”

Finally, March arrived, she handed us a thick booklet, and that damn test took a week. When we reached the last question, I raised my hand and she let me talk.

“Finally, it’s the last question on the test,” my six-year-old self quipped.

You’d have thought I set fire to the American flag in the middle of the damn place. That bitch’s reaction is one I still haven’t forgotten 27 years later. “What’s it to you,” she said, shaking a finger at me. “You got an ‘F’ on this test.”

Yeah, imagine saying that shit to a six-year-old. The woman should’ve been escorted out of the school and never been offered another teaching job.

I didn’t flunk the thing, but I spent a great deal of the next few months thinking I did. Still, I aced her classes with flying colors and got an easy promotion to the second grade. But that’s not the point. Right then and there, I knew something was wrong with these government-funded prisons posing as schools.

Every year, it was the same thing in the broken public school system

“That test in March,” my second-grade teacher said. “We have that test in March.”

Wait, what? I said to myself. We just did this last year. Funnily enough, that teacher was also a nasty old bat, just ask my cousin. That said, she liked me, even if she also hated children and held a special vendetta against that same cousin. So she explained that we had to take one every year.

Around the time the famed K and C-pop idol, Yuqi, was born, my third-grade teacher who, for once, wasn’t a half-bad human being, gave us the same lecture. Ditto for fourth grade, which was the absolute worst since we prepped for the damn thing for a month.

Fifth grade was even more painful, since our teacher treated us like toddlers and we took the test together, question for question. Sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, same shit, different year. All the way until the tenth grade, when we took the good old Ohio Graduation Test (OGT).

That, they started talking to us about starting in the ninth grade.

The only thing public schools give a damn about

It doesn’t matter if you’re from Ohio or another state, I’m sure you know exactly what I’ve been talking about: Standardized testing. The only thing public schools give a flying fuck about.

They don’t care about you, even if they pretend to. No, they only want numbers. And thankfully, as one of my friends once said, “That test was so easy it was funny.” So it’s not like they were asking for much.

I mean, unless you have brain damage, you’re passing those tests. Oh, wait, what’s that? There are some school districts out there who don’t have a single kid passing it? Thanks, Deskooled, for sharing that one with me regarding the state of Illinois.

Maybe it’s not brain damage after all? Maybe, if a kid fails these tests, it’s on the teachers. Because they don’t look after the student’s well-being. They see a number, and they need to do anything possible to hit that number.

If my six-year-old self said, “Hey, something’s wrong here,” then something’s messed up about the public school system. The red flags shouldn’t have come up that early, but they did. Crazy how nothing has changed in the past three decades, and it may’ve even gotten worse.

No state-standardized testing needed at Arcane

The Arcane Prophecy by TC MartiLuckily for the main character in my young adult fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy, Yote Diamondback isn’t subjected to state-standardized testing. Not at Arcane, which exists for one reason and one reason only: to give Elementals the best possible education.

See, Arcane unearths hidden potential public schools crush, trains students with an individualized approach, and hardly resembles traditional school at all.

Why is that? The 32 schools within Arcane Elemental Academy compete with one another. If one does a piss-poor job, they lose students and money. And if they lose enough students and money, guess what? They go out of business.

Arcane puts the public school system to shame

A high-quality education based on their students’ actual strengths, needs, and preferences wins out. Students attend the school they’re best suited for, and they end up loving their time at Arcane. Yote’s about to discover that, herself.

But before she arrives, Yote’s having a difficult time. She’s at constant odds with her sister, Jett Diamondback, who she always tries to keep up with. So, going to Arcane gives her the best chance to shine and to stop comparing herself to Jett.

Catch the first three chapters of Book I, The Arcane Prophecy, and watch Yote’s complicated relationship with Jett play out. If reading this made you want to burn every standardized test booklet ever printed, then you’re exactly the type of reader I built Arcane Elemental Academy for.

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