4 ms·

Good article. I agree with the points. After I dropped out of high school I ended up going to a well regarded west coast university. I was all set for it to be

by bugsy 16y ago

Good article. I agree with the points. After I dropped out of high school I ended up going to a well regarded west coast university. I was all set for it to be very challenging and some place where I would learn a lot but I was surprised to find the engineering classes were all things I already knew how to do. To challenge myself I shot for all A+s and considered each mere A to be a failure. I also started to, as a further challenge, not even attend some of the easiest classes and managed to get A+ in those as well. I used the extra time to get involved in student government. I found it interesting observing the politics and learning how much back scratching and insider deals infect even college student council politics. While in school, I joined a music group (unrelated to the school) and we did some touring during this time and earned money. One time we were even paid to play at my university. Touring in a music group is a great gig that I recommend. I met lots of famous and powerful people and made connections doing the music. Still in school, I got a job working for a defense contractor. I wrote software for secret military satellite based space weapons. This was interesting since I didn't have any sort of clearance or anything and I was making close to minimum wage. At one point I had to write a paper on my research for my boss. He published it and took my name off the paper. He also went to some conference to present it that I had wanted to go to but he said I wasn't needed. There were also false promises about getting a $1 an hour raise. I was pretty resentful of this and stopped working on this project. I do have a small list of things I learned in the program but they are somewhat trivial small things that I would have learned anyway. The interesting things had nothing to do with classes. I did make some friends of course but these "connections" have not really benefited me all that much, but I wasn't looking for that. It is strange that that is so often cited as a main reason to go into debt in order to attend university. Overall the main thing that happened is it delayed the starting of my first business by several years. This makes me wonder about the value of school over all. I dropped out of high school and then found even college was pretty much useless as well. Very different from the way it is presented as the solution to all of society's ills. Did I learn anything even in elementary school I have to wonder? Well, I knew how to read before I started kindergarten. My parents did not teach me. They tell me that I just started reading signs as we were driving along. Then I would read books. For a couple years in elementary I didn't even attend or study as we were doing some travel. When I returned to elementary school things seemed really slow and backwards. Before college, in primary school and high school I am not sure what I learned there either. Although I did have a psychology class in high school, and then a couple in college that were very interesting, so I learned some things there. But that was from reading the textbook and studies I'd look up on my own. Whenever I want to know something I track down the information and just learn it on my own. It seems to me that school is pointless. I guess it is for dumb people? Or maybe its purpose is to brainwash people into being consumers. Most of the founding fathers and enlightenment philosophe's were self taught. Some of the greatest minds in history are drop outs. I think school is a rip off, just considering the wasted time and not even money. It does not benefit the "student", it benefits the system. There is something to be said for a community of learners though. That is what a Start Up is. Others interested in the same niche thing you are come together, and you are now working together to make something new and figure out new things out every day. You depend on no one but yourselves. It is like a Salon of revolutionary France, only more practical. If I had it all to do over again and was able to do so, I would not attend school at all, not even elementary school. I would simply unschool myself. This way I would have more time to work on my projects and inventions that I started working on before I was a teen. It would have given me a tremendous head start. I did not know it at the time, but what I was doing then was useful, unique and valuable and I was doing it right. Of course others are telling you you are wasting your time and should be doing worksheets or reading some nonsensical textbook instead, but that is because they are ignorant. In addition to running my latest business, I read a lot. Now I am becoming educated. None of the history that was taught in school was accurate in the least. It was just propaganda to create patriots who will kill the "enemy" without question. The most ridiculous thing of all this is being forced to chant a pledge of allegiance to a flag, a piece of cloth. No allegiance to one's family or friends, the allegiance must be to a cloth. This ritual that lead each day is a symbol of the insanity of the whole system.

sciboy 16y ago
With your claimed grades and intellect you could obtain scholarships to almost anywhere of your choosing, fully paid fees + stipend, to work with the greatest minds in your field. Oxford, Cambridge... the world is your oyster. So it's a completely one-sided proposal; work with the best in your fields, and they will pay your way. How is this a bad deal, and why didn't you take it?
nostrademons 16y ago
I thought basically the same thing all through grade school and college, and for a couple years afterwards, right through doing my startup. And I still do - as far as you go. But I think you're missing something very important. School is not about learning facts. It really, really sucks at that - go grab a book or twelve out of your public library and devour them for that. And it's not even for learning skills - the best way to do that is to get a private tutor, mentor, or coach, and then practice your heart out. School is for learning culture. And culture, by definition, can neither be learned nor taught. It functions on a subconscious level, in terms of the little behaviors that people can never quite articulate but certainly notice. You have to be immersed in it to pick it up, and it takes a significant amount of time, and an open mind. It's an open question whether all school cultures are worth learning. For me, elementary school bus culture and middle school culture certainly were not, and probably set my development as a human being back by a decade. But the culture at my high school - a public charter school that was just starting up - was a good portion of the reason I decided to go into startups, and played a major role in me becoming the person I am today. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The culture at Amherst, my alma mater, taught me to look at everyone I meet as a peer and equal, no more and no less, and to feel that I have nothing to prove, whatever silly hierarchies people dream of. And the culture at Google, IMHO, is without equal in the software world. You pick up so many practices and ways of thinking simply by being there. So yeah, I think you are basically right. It's interesting that you pick out the pledge of allegiance as the most ridiculous thing in all of schooling. That's exactly what I mean by culture. And in this case, that particular ritual was designed to create a culture of subserviency, a form of indoctrination so that the masses of public schoolchildren would mindlessly support their power-elite overlords. It's bullshit, as you say. But by recognizing it as bullshit and then putting up with it long enough to "win", you open the door to many other communities which are far less fucked up than the public education system. Google is nothing like middle school, and it's only similarities to elementary school are the colorful beanbags, the ballpit, and the massive quantities of Lego. But it's much, much easier to get into Google if you did well at elementary and middle school.

by bugsy 16y ago

sciboy 16y ago

With your claimed grades and intellect you could obtain scholarships to almost anywhere of your choosing, fully paid fees + stipend, to work with the greatest minds in your field. Oxford, Cambridge... the world is your oyster. So it's a completely one-sided proposal; work with the best in your fields, and they will pay your way. How is this a bad deal, and why didn't you take it?

nostrademons 16y ago

I thought basically the same thing all through grade school and college, and for a couple years afterwards, right through doing my startup. And I still do - as far as you go. But I think you're missing something very important. School is not about learning facts. It really, really sucks at that - go grab a book or twelve out of your public library and devour them for that. And it's not even for learning skills - the best way to do that is to get a private tutor, mentor, or coach, and then practice your heart out. School is for learning culture. And culture, by definition, can neither be learned nor taught. It functions on a subconscious level, in terms of the little behaviors that people can never quite articulate but certainly notice. You have to be immersed in it to pick it up, and it takes a significant amount of time, and an open mind. It's an open question whether all school cultures are worth learning. For me, elementary school bus culture and middle school culture certainly were not, and probably set my development as a human being back by a decade. But the culture at my high school - a public charter school that was just starting up - was a good portion of the reason I decided to go into startups, and played a major role in me becoming the person I am today. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The culture at Amherst, my alma mater, taught me to look at everyone I meet as a peer and equal, no more and no less, and to feel that I have nothing to prove, whatever silly hierarchies people dream of. And the culture at Google, IMHO, is without equal in the software world. You pick up so many practices and ways of thinking simply by being there. So yeah, I think you are basically right. It's interesting that you pick out the pledge of allegiance as the most ridiculous thing in all of schooling. That's exactly what I mean by culture. And in this case, that particular ritual was designed to create a culture of subserviency, a form of indoctrination so that the masses of public schoolchildren would mindlessly support their power-elite overlords. It's bullshit, as you say. But by recognizing it as bullshit and then putting up with it long enough to "win", you open the door to many other communities which are far less fucked up than the public education system. Google is nothing like middle school, and it's only similarities to elementary school are the colorful beanbags, the ballpit, and the massive quantities of Lego. But it's much, much easier to get into Google if you did well at elementary and middle school.