Thank you. I read Benedikt‘s article earlier this evening, and it infuriated me on a very primal level. Not because I‘m a parent yet, but because I had my run

Thank you. I read Benedikt‘s article earlier this evening, and it infuriated me on a very primal level. Not because I‘m a parent yet, but because I had my run ins with public education. Especially him saying that ‚gifted‘ children will be just fine. Let me tell you a personal story. I was diagnosed as gifted in second grade by a local school psychologists. My teachers recommendation was to send me to a school expressively tailored to gifted children, which my parents at that point could not do, which is why I stayed in the public school system. As I went through the rest of primary school, I started to mark myself out as a troublemaker, and I was bullied, both things my school didn‘t have sufficient resources to care for. By the time I hit middle school, I was thoroughly disillusioned towards the prospect of school, and my meager grades went from acceptable (B+ level) to hopeless (D level). By 8th grade, going from one debacle to another, I fell into serious depression. Since my future seemed so bleak, I was considering suicide or getting back at everyone with a school shooting. To my defense, I was 13, isolated and depressive, not just crazy. Since then, I‘ve recovered. After grade 8th, I was offered by my family to leave for a private international school out of the country, and offer which I gladly took. Since I suddenly had a new slate to work from, things didn‘t seem quite as bleak, and I‘ve become more resilient due to the stark contrast between these two poles. But when I read an article like Benedikt‘s, it brings me back to sitting in my room with the blinds partially down, dreading going back to school the next morning, contemplating whether I should fill my bag with fertilizer instead of schoolbooks. And that article tells me „you should have stayed, for the good of many“, should have perished for people that give half a damn about you if you don‘t blow up, and if you do, they blame it on the games you play, or on the specific school you went to, or on you being psychologically broken, or any number of factors. It‘s never on the system, it‘s the people who are broken.