> What do you do for a living? I'm a software developer, I have been working from home since the pandemic started and that's probably what led me to my initial

> What do you do for a living? I'm a software developer, I have been working from home since the pandemic started and that's probably what led me to my initial opinion - I had almost no drop in productivity and I (wrongly) assumed school wasn't kinda sorta like my job. > I also found school to be a huge waste of time but I was a very high IQ kid. I was top ~1% as well. I agree K-12 is inherently useless for the top few percent, but I still think "normal" school is massively wasteful, even when you only take into account the middle 90%. Most of it just felt fake if I'm being honest: dumbed down versions of reality fed by teachers to students with the mutual understandment that it's all bullshit, so that eventually there's going to be a garbage test where the teacher knows the grades in advance. I'm Italian though, not American, so YMMV. > average income family may not have a private room for the kid to study, may have abusive situations at home, etc. Yes, completely agree. I thought they'd be second-order effects but they weren't. My parents were working class but I don't recall money ever being a pressing issue, we were "poor" but not "really poor", so that might have skewed my perspective as well.