Your message is very well worded. As a college professor now, I was one of those who, like you, hated school but stuck with it because I desperately wanted to pull myself out of the poverty into which I was born. It worked, largely because of a positive attitude and motivation. However, I would not want to relive my high school years over again.The problem was not my classes or teachers; they were great. My point of contention was the other students who tended to be very clique-ish and who basically made me a loner for five years running. College was another matter. I found it refreshing, made friends with people who treated me with respect, and studied mostly subjects which I really cared about. It changed my life and later opened doors to me for jobs, which, at the time, I didn't realize were opened only because I had the qualifications.
My real reason for writing this note to you is that I am wondering if you know of any person(s) who did drop out of high school but who later, in some way, completed either high school or the GED and went on to excel tremendously in his or her profession. So far, I have a Pulitzer Prize winner (whom I interviewed on this topic last week), a school principal, and a seminary president. I need more, younger and middle aged persons now.
Since you are so well spoken, I assume you have an intelligence which could complete not only high school, but at least college, but that you are bored and disgusted with school. Could you strain your memory to think of any persons who fit my category? I am eager to conduct a number of interviews to find the "common ground" for those who dropped out, and also the "common ground" for those who went back and exceled.
Thanks!
Jeanne Jacoby Smith
: I believe that not only is compulsory education wrong on the basis that jailing a person for refusing to "invest" in his OWN life is an outrageous act of aggression, but that it is also counterproductive.
: Suppose you have a class of 20 students that want to be there, and ten more who wish they were anywhere else and violently hate school. Those ten school haters will do their level best to disrupt the class and shut it down for everyone else-and they will not learn the material anyway. In AmeriKKKa we have a saying-"you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."
: If a student cannot drop out peacefully all he needs to do is act up until he is expelled, and refuse to do the work. When I was 14, my parents threatened to send me to summer school if they were not satisfied with my grades-so I threatened to flunk everything on purpose if they dared to do so. This led to an immediate dropping of the summer school idea.
: Today, in Maryland there has been a bombing and bomb threat campaign against the public schools by students who hate school-and much speculation about the involvement of the youth militia movement in the campaign.
: It began with a live bomb at Bowie High school that made headline news. Soon all of the schools were inundated with bomb threats-one of them for two weeks in a row-so when they DIDN'T get one it made the news. In addition there were about a dozen live bombe-one of which went of at it's intended time(weekend night) at the office.
: All this happens because teenagers-who are ADULTS by virtue of having passed puberty-are being treated like children.
: Compulsory education was passed in the 1800's at the requests of factory owners who observed that adult workers were quitting in droves-like McDonalds workers do today-but children quickly became conditioned to it and stayed. As they could not make child labor compulsory they demanded schools modeled on the factories(hence the schoolbell) that could be compulsory. At the time this applied only to elementary school and thus to children.
: During the Great Depression, some union leaders hatched the idea that compulsory high school could be used to eliminate competition from teenagers who demanded less pay because they did not have families to support-and to hell with their rights. Ever since, the hiogh schools have been filled with school haters.
: Keep in mind, in the U.S., most children and teens HATE school and 95% of people over 18 HATE their jobs. This suggests that massive exploitation is the purpose of this whole exercise. Since Americans today have become hard to dicipline and expensive, these corporate bosses are simply shifting operations to third world countries that have not evolved as far down this road.
None.
