5 ms·

There’s a long and successful tradition of self-taught learners (Ben Franklin, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, to name a few). Great. Now name me some successful re

by hugh3 16y ago

There’s a long and successful tradition of self-taught learners (Ben Franklin, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, to name a few). Great. Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts. School for me was a complete waste of time. There might have been some value to witnessing the barbarity and brokenness of it all but a dozen hours, not a dozen years, would have sufficed. It was a popularity contest that I failed every day and it got in the way of studying more interesting things. If there was really nothing in the curriculum for you to learn (was mathematics really that easy for you?) maybe you should have focused on the popularity-contest side of things, since developing social skills is hugely useful for real life. One of the girls is on the verge of being put on medication because she’s so unhappy. The drugs will make her ok with her malnourished, growth-stunting, environment. They’ll make her ok with jumping through inane hoop after hoop. If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school, it's not a problem with high school. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but high school generally isn't that difficult an environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to classes, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do.

kingkilr 16y ago
> Great. Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts. I suppose I'll throw my hat into the ring. Dropped out during my sophomore year (with bad grades to boot). Now I'm going to a good college, I have a good job, and I have some hobbies I love that I'm pretty good at. That said I wouldn't recommend dropping out to most people, it's way to easy to just drop out "because I want to play video games" or because "school is boring", you need to want to drop out because "school isn't intellectually challenging and I have things I want to push myself in".
- kenjackson 16y ago
  First, congrats. But I think he meant household name successful. :-)
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    What?!?! You've never heard of kingkilr?
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Touche!
  - chc 16y ago
    Unless we take as given that the purpose of life is to become a household name, I don't see why that's a useful thing to measure. Jeff Bezos is not a household name, but I don't many people would turn down a career like his.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jerf 16y ago
Your argument really only makes sense if you start from the presumption that the only acceptable answer is to finish school. Otherwise it is little more than proof-by-assertion. Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. The only way for school to win out here is if you define it as the only possible winner from the get-go, to insist that the only acceptable goal is one that can be met only by this particular combination of compulsion and resources. If you have to defend schooling without this "home field advantage", you will at the very least have to work a lot harder at it than a few quick paragraphs fired away for the purpose of tickling the school memetic program in the minds of the readers. Why not at the very least switch to home schooling for the last couple of years and slam the pedal to the metal instead of being forced into idle? College is a fine place to learn even those precious-but-unquantifiable "social skills". I'd even argue a better place, learning your social skills in the grotesquely artificial environment of a high school is of dubious value anyhow. (College is artificial too, but less so.) And honestly, falling back to the refuge of the "social skills" argument makes me very suspicious anyhow. I had the same basic experience in high school as the original poster, I even thought perhaps I was weak in the social skills, but guess what? Yes, indeed, the fault did lie with my environment and I was just fine on the social front. School just wasn't the right place to find that out.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is. You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse. The idea that you should drop out of high school appeals to three particular ways in which teenagers are dumb: 1. Short-term thinking (sticking something out for another year seems like an eternity) 2. The conviction that "I am special" (even if you are, you're less special than you think), and 3. The conviction that "if I'm not good at something it must be beneath me" I don't think they need any more encouragement.
Alex3917 16y ago
"Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts." http://lmgtfy.com/?q=successful+high+school+dropouts http://lmgtfy.com/?q=successful+high+school+dropouts Of people whose writing gets posted to this site on a regular basis, Philip Greenspun comes to mind.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts. Wrong question, I think. The correct question is "name some unsuccessful people who did not finish high school who might have been more successful if they had". These people are not so easy to name-drop. Not because they don't exist -- there are certainly hundreds of thousands of such people for every famous name like Mark Twain or Ben Franklin. It's because of sampling bias. If you drop out and don't become Mark Twain, nobody's going to write your biography. Indeed, you will find that a lot of people will stigmatize you.
eru 16y ago
> If there was really nothing in the curriculum for you to learn (was mathematics really that easy for you?) [...] Mathematics in school is easy and boring. (Mathematics at university is a different kind of animal, and it's only connection to mathematics in school is the name.)
angelbob 16y ago
I did all right. I'm a high school dropout with two bachelor's degrees from Carnegie Mellon, a six-figure computer programming job and a similar disdain for the public education system. I won't say dropping out of high school was the best thing I've ever done, but it saved me a year of boredom and staying would have done me no good. Dropping out was a much better idea than staying in.
- Qz 16y ago
  I dropped out, and then dropped back in... also at CMU, but no six figure salary (yet).
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  If I may ask, how did you get into CMU without a hs diploma?
  - angelbob 16y ago
    They have an early admissions program, with the unspoken assumption that you'll use credits from CMU to get a high school diploma by some arrangement. It turns out that they never say this is required, and you never actually have to do it. I couldn't graduate from my old high school in any case, even with the extra CMU classes, because I lack a one-semester class in US Government. I also had really good SAT scores.
    - SkyMarshal 16y ago
      Very cool of CMU, and gratz.
zargon 16y ago
I can do that too: If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with your job, it's not a problem with your job. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but your job generally isn't that difficult an environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to meetings, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do. If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with prison, it's not a problem with prison. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but prison generally isn't that difficult an environment. You wake up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to community service, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do. Or maybe I should consider whether their job environment really is toxic? Maybe prison really is nasty? I don't know if I shoot the messenger.
tomlin 16y ago
Not 100% on this source's references, but it seems as though there are many people that have dropped out of high-school and managed to be successful. http://www.school-survival.net/successful_dropouts.php http://www.school-survival.net/successful_dropouts.php These are all popular examples only, so it doesn't match well for an overall statistic.
jasonwatkinspdx 16y ago
"If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school, it's not a problem with high school. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but high school generally isn't that difficult an environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to classes, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do." While I believe that may have been your experience it clearly is not universal. Concluding that anyone who needs something different from you is mentally ill or is receiving bad psychological advice is contemptible.
lkrubner 16y ago
Whoa. You write: "If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school, it's not a problem with high school." How do you justify that statement? If someone has a problem with their high school, then they have a problem with their high school. I would like to see the burden of justification put on the schools. They have the advantage of representing the status quo, but I would like to see them justify themselves without invoking that advantage. All things in this world are better when they can be justified from first principles, rather than from the dead weight of established practice.

by hugh3 16y ago

kingkilr 16y ago

> Great. Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts. I suppose I'll throw my hat into the ring. Dropped out during my sophomore year (with bad grades to boot). Now I'm going to a good college, I have a good job, and I have some hobbies I love that I'm pretty good at. That said I wouldn't recommend dropping out to most people, it's way to easy to just drop out "because I want to play video games" or because "school is boring", you need to want to drop out because "school isn't intellectually challenging and I have things I want to push myself in".

kenjackson 16y ago
First, congrats. But I think he meant household name successful. :-)
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  What?!?! You've never heard of kingkilr?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Touche!
- chc 16y ago
  Unless we take as given that the purpose of life is to become a household name, I don't see why that's a useful thing to measure. Jeff Bezos is not a household name, but I don't many people would turn down a career like his.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jerf 16y ago

Your argument really only makes sense if you start from the presumption that the only acceptable answer is to finish school. Otherwise it is little more than proof-by-assertion. Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. The only way for school to win out here is if you define it as the only possible winner from the get-go, to insist that the only acceptable goal is one that can be met only by this particular combination of compulsion and resources. If you have to defend schooling without this "home field advantage", you will at the very least have to work a lot harder at it than a few quick paragraphs fired away for the purpose of tickling the school memetic program in the minds of the readers. Why not at the very least switch to home schooling for the last couple of years and slam the pedal to the metal instead of being forced into idle? College is a fine place to learn even those precious-but-unquantifiable "social skills". I'd even argue a better place, learning your social skills in the grotesquely artificial environment of a high school is of dubious value anyhow. (College is artificial too, but less so.) And honestly, falling back to the refuge of the "social skills" argument makes me very suspicious anyhow. I had the same basic experience in high school as the original poster, I even thought perhaps I was weak in the social skills, but guess what? Yes, indeed, the fault did lie with my environment and I was just fine on the social front. School just wasn't the right place to find that out.

hugh3 16y ago
Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is. You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse. The idea that you should drop out of high school appeals to three particular ways in which teenagers are dumb: 1. Short-term thinking (sticking something out for another year seems like an eternity) 2. The conviction that "I am special" (even if you are, you're less special than you think), and 3. The conviction that "if I'm not good at something it must be beneath me" I don't think they need any more encouragement.

Alex3917 16y ago

"Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts." http://lmgtfy.com/?q=successful+high+school+dropouts http://lmgtfy.com/?q=successful+high+school+dropouts Of people whose writing gets posted to this site on a regular basis, Philip Greenspun comes to mind.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

Now name me some successful recent high-school dropouts. Wrong question, I think. The correct question is "name some unsuccessful people who did not finish high school who might have been more successful if they had". These people are not so easy to name-drop. Not because they don't exist -- there are certainly hundreds of thousands of such people for every famous name like Mark Twain or Ben Franklin. It's because of sampling bias. If you drop out and don't become Mark Twain, nobody's going to write your biography. Indeed, you will find that a lot of people will stigmatize you.

eru 16y ago

> If there was really nothing in the curriculum for you to learn (was mathematics really that easy for you?) [...] Mathematics in school is easy and boring. (Mathematics at university is a different kind of animal, and it's only connection to mathematics in school is the name.)

angelbob 16y ago

I did all right. I'm a high school dropout with two bachelor's degrees from Carnegie Mellon, a six-figure computer programming job and a similar disdain for the public education system. I won't say dropping out of high school was the best thing I've ever done, but it saved me a year of boredom and staying would have done me no good. Dropping out was a much better idea than staying in.

Qz 16y ago
I dropped out, and then dropped back in... also at CMU, but no six figure salary (yet).
SkyMarshal 16y ago
If I may ask, how did you get into CMU without a hs diploma?
- angelbob 16y ago
  They have an early admissions program, with the unspoken assumption that you'll use credits from CMU to get a high school diploma by some arrangement. It turns out that they never say this is required, and you never actually have to do it. I couldn't graduate from my old high school in any case, even with the extra CMU classes, because I lack a one-semester class in US Government. I also had really good SAT scores.
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    Very cool of CMU, and gratz.

zargon 16y ago

I can do that too: If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with your job, it's not a problem with your job. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but your job generally isn't that difficult an environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to meetings, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do. If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with prison, it's not a problem with prison. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but prison generally isn't that difficult an environment. You wake up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to community service, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do. Or maybe I should consider whether their job environment really is toxic? Maybe prison really is nasty? I don't know if I shoot the messenger.

tomlin 16y ago

Not 100% on this source's references, but it seems as though there are many people that have dropped out of high-school and managed to be successful. http://www.school-survival.net/successful_dropouts.php http://www.school-survival.net/successful_dropouts.php These are all popular examples only, so it doesn't match well for an overall statistic.

jasonwatkinspdx 16y ago

"If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school, it's not a problem with high school. It's a problem with you, or maybe a problem with your doctor, but high school generally isn't that difficult an environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to classes, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to do." While I believe that may have been your experience it clearly is not universal. Concluding that anyone who needs something different from you is mentally ill or is receiving bad psychological advice is contemptible.

lkrubner 16y ago

Whoa. You write: "If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school, it's not a problem with high school." How do you justify that statement? If someone has a problem with their high school, then they have a problem with their high school. I would like to see the burden of justification put on the schools. They have the advantage of representing the status quo, but I would like to see them justify themselves without invoking that advantage. All things in this world are better when they can be justified from first principles, rather than from the dead weight of established practice.