I Am Conscious and I Am Hurting

> “School is just like work,” they say.

>(...)

> No. If you don’t work, you lose your job, and you get no money. But you are never forced to work.

I think the guy who goes to work because otherwise we won't be able to pay his bills, his children's tuition, food, elderly parents rents, medicine etc. is much more "forced" to work than teenagers are forced to go to school.

Social and external obligations to actively participate in a 8 to 10 hour mental and physical activity that requires interaction to other people are much more severe than someone physically dragging you to a place where you can, pardon the simplification, sit down and space out whenever the subject has absolutely no interest to you and essentially "fail forward" until you get out on the other end.

I sympathize with the author and really don't envy them. But school is not supposed to be this victimizing, even at its worst - author might very seriously be just mentally unwell and requiring treatment. The worst case scenario would be for them to leave school and find out that they are just as 'unfit' for participating in most, if not all, of our world's systems.

Again - huge oversimplification but typically the only options are to at least somewhat adapt to them or to die alone in the wilderness.

The author is spot on.

School, as it exists, heavily rewards a certain type of learner. Intelligence is far less important than your ability to sit still, regurgitate answers, and conform. If you're smart, but can't learn in that environment, you are out of luck.

I struggled throughout my entire career as a student. Some classes were too easy, some not interesting. I was a voracious reader, and could teach myself almost any subject, but sitting still and listening to lectures is not my forte. Neither is grinding at homework.

I spent a lot of my life thinking I was broken, until I eventually found myself a job where ability to self teach was more important than ability to sit still and conform.

I really hope that Covid would push the school system to adapt and change, introducing forms of asynchronous learning that really work well for people like me, but to push to go back to in-class learning doesn't leave me to believe that that will happen.

I do think the author misses one point though. He's right that if you don't go to work, your boss doesn't come and get you and make you go. If I stop going to work, nobody is going to come get me. But unless you are already rich, you probably have to figure out some way to make money. You may end up having choice in what that looks like, or you may not. Believe me when I tell you that I've had bosses who were way more abusive than any of the teachers described in the article.

There is something to be said for just learning to deal with it, especially given that the author is only like 3 years away from anybody caring what he does anymore.

School sucks, but there’s not much better alternatives that are cost effective.

It’s cool that unschooling works for some. I, and many kids I knew, had a problem with motivation. If left to our own devices we would play Nintendo forever. School was horrible and probably 75% of it was pointless, but it at least got us out of the home, exposed us to ideas and taught us some basic pieces.

I think it would be better to have tutors teach. It would probably take an hour a day. My family couldn’t afford that and I can’t afford that now.

School is basically daycare, but there’s not really a better solution I’m aware of. For every one super smart 15 year old who would productively better themselves, there’s far more who would be worse off without daycare.

Also, having been a 15 year old wanting to understand the universe and discovering new things every day, I understand that most 15 year olds are now aware of their capabilities and limitations. So for all who think they are smart and mature, it’s rare that reality matches perception.

Dream big is really important and a good motivator, but that doesn’t mean that those dreams should all be fulfilled without protections. I’m trying to not sound paternal and protective as I don’t want to squelch ideas and dreams, but want to divert the frustration I felt of “why won’t they just listen to me and let me stay home and play Nintendo, they just don’t understand.”

“They” understand, but just don’t know a good course of action.

While I understand how horrible school is, you may be forced by law / your caretakers to attend. I went to a particularly hard high school and I hated how much time I was wasting learning to pass exams and forgetting their content right after.

My response to that was to start working as a software developer online, learning a trade and making money as a teenager. I highly recommend it. Despite working, I never managed to escape school as homeschooling wasn't an option and I ruined my sleep for years between school, homeworks and work. Still, that gave me a significant edge on the market and it was probably the smartest thing I did in my life.

When I was done with mandatory schooling I ended up pursuing a voluntary bachelor's degree (in Europe, random university, kind of free, total cost ~10k EUR, no debt) because I thought it could be useful one day. It never proved itself useful but I was also able to work a real job during it so I didn't waste much time. I attended only the lessons I considered interesting and valuable and attempted to pass exams as best as I could. Somehow it worked out.

If you can fight for a better life, do it. If you can't, don't ruin your life over it, use it as a challenge, as an opportunity to build an opinion of the world and find like minded people.

You may want to look into voluntarism as a political / social philosophy. Best of luck

This kind of hurt my brain to read. Fret not, your perspective will change over time, with your narrow world view being replaced as your experience adds up and as your hormones stabilize. First, you don’t have it half as bad as you think, and second, if you think it’s bad now just wait until 15 years from now lol. Things will will get much worse, your responsibilities will grow, but hopefully then you’ll all the tougher and wiser. My recommendation is that you take responsibility for yourself, do what needs to be done and stop your lamenting. It’s an unappealing and detrimental trait that you are hard-wiring into your brain from an early age and thinking like that will not benefit you in the long run. Giddy up.

An alternative to high school often available is community college. The teachers are better, the other students are there because they chose to be, and they treat you like an adult who could choose to leave. The material is faster, so you aren't wasting so much time.

My experience in school was similarly miserable, for similar reasons (though I don't think I had as much self-awareness about it; at the time I just thought that was how things were, that most people felt similarly)

The problem with the anti-school rhetoric ([cough] Peter Thiel) is that learning is still very important. And not just learning the skills you need to make money: even the people who drop out (or skip college) to start a successful company miss out on a huge amount of important, formative learning. We've got a growing number of powerful people who lack crucial life experience, which affects the decisions they make about what they do with that power. That's an issue.

The core problem is the way school currently works in our society; what I don't know is where to find the will and the funding to change it. The school system is already on life-support; it hobbles along with barely enough funding to continue the status quo. And the main things that need changing, IMO, are a) higher teacher-student ratios (so that the only way to manage the students isn't treating them like prisoners), and b) more multifaceted curriculums (that allow different students with different learning styles to learn in different ways). Those are expensive changes to make, no matter how you slice it.

Just spitballing here: maybe what we need is an increase in online courses/self-teaching materials for non-STEM subjects? Humanities, etc. Maybe book clubs or experts/mentors that you can ask questions of on a case-by-case basis instead of having them read off a whole lecture several times a week. Force-multipliers for teaching, enabling a person can get a real education, and not just technical skills, without the help of a failing institution?

I hated school from the first day of preschool all the way through to graduation from college. There was not a single day that I actually enjoyed being there in the nearly 2 decades of its presence in my life.

Jay, GingerJumble, I feel your pain. I cannot offer advice, other than to tell you there are those of us out here in the real world who endured anyway and succeeded despite hating it. School instilled in me a deep distrust of authority and institutions, but fortunately I had a few great, smart teachers. I liked Latin. The subject was fun, but the teacher was amazing. Same with 11th grade English. AP English was phenomenal, and introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges, among others. I skated by, doing the minimum necessary to graduate and get into a decent, but not top, college.

These things are all true in my experience: 1) Degrees are widely considered tantamount to intellect and accomplishment, and they are not. Sometimes otherwise cool and empathetic people are unable to distinguish between degrees and intellect, especially if they have lots of degrees. 2) Better schools are generally more endurable. Bad schools should be shut down, or at least, students such as yourself should be able to attend an alternative. Or better: one should be able to be awarded a degree purely by demonstrating competency via exam. 3) Success in school is not the only thing, but it does measure something important. If you decide to leave school (even just mentally check out), create and implement a detailed plan to demonstrate or create value for society. If you think you're miserable in a bad school now, wait until you drop out and must - oh - wipe asses or slaughter pigs for subsistence wages in order to live. Nothing wrong with those jobs, but you obviously have a creative, active mind, and those jobs will not enable you to exercise it.

One way to view a bad school or workplace (and many unpleasant things one goes through) is that it is a challenge one must overcome, much like monks or soldiers enduring extreme heat, cold, or hunger, or castaways trying to survive alone on a desert island, or astronauts in deep space. It is an exercise in learning how to overcome adverse circumstances and thrive in an unforgiving and often hostile environment.

I'm not sure why we decided education (or work) should be that way, but that's often the way it is.

I'm like 'yes, and?'. Me, I just dropped out. Before that, I perfected ways of sneaking away from classes and wandering the halls, like I was behind enemy lines and would be killed if I was spotted: dropping out was arguably more sensible than carrying on like that. Nobody knew about being autistic back then (I'm 53).

I spent some time homeless, lived on the edge of existence for a lot of years. These days they try to make somewhat more accommodations for people like me, but there's only so far that goes and I doubt you can count on it.

I ended up being the person I wanted to be. That's gotta count for something. You might have to be patient (with yourself AND with others: I don't see much of the latter in you). It took a hell of a long time and was a lot of work, which often didn't feel worth it.

The one thing I can feel very confident in saying is: it gets better. Some people molder away, forever wishing they were back in their glory days in school or whatever. You're not them (nor am I). I figure folks like us take forever to get stuff sorted out, and then after everything is awesome you die. Soooo… switch to the 'stuff sorted out' part as soon as possible, and once you're there, try not to forget you're there :)

Is this written by an AI?

I have a really hard time understanding the author.

Ah bless, I remember being 15.

The school system is an efficient capitalistic means of educating our youth at scale. The author doesn't offer a valid alternative to this means. What does he plan to do with his time outside of school? Take up a trade? Start independent study? In most cases, the path to a career will involve some form of classroom or boring on-the-job training.

We certainly, as public policy, can't allow all 15 year olds to just do whatever they want with no structure. Unless we want rampant alcoholism, crime, and teen pregnancy. Our current school system provides a social net for children in a society where most of them wouldn't have parents at home during the day to guide them.

The author also kind of channels my existential dread though it's worse in a way: every day I think "well I'll be a different person tomorrow so why should I do anything for that person?"

Then when I wake up the next day I am like "who messed up all of my stuff yesterday? Glad that wasn't me."

Students who hate high school are generally free to drop out at age 16. Pass the GED exam and then enroll in college and/or get a job.

Smart kid. Terrible attitude, they are correct they're stuck. But it's not that long and learning to get through this and make the most of it could be an amazing life lesson. I suspect being able to write like that at 15, means they'll be able to pick up the technical skills to do any vocation they choose. But they have some growing up to do to be able to handle real life.

As a person who was homeschooled much of my life , my background differs from the author of this article. I had only undergone public school from kindergarten to second grade and within that timespan had attend several different schools in two states: Georgia and Washington. Besides two years of education at a technical school and two quarters of college I had little in the way of a public education.

The author glorifies homeschooling in a way that I’ve seen again and again. Similar to the idiom “the grass is always greener on the other side” they neglect to realize that homeschooling has it’s own set of problems, of which I hope to explain, and overlook the downsides and trade offs that it comes with.

1. You do not have an infinite amount of time to learn and still face deadlines to turn in school work (yes, we do refer to it as “homework”).

2. Unless you start off as homeschooled, transitioning from public education to what is a primarily self based learning system has a steep learning curve.

3. In conjuncture with example two, the work books are usually outdated and behind public education standards. You are REQUIRED to take the same state testing, be it the GED or the highschools, at the end of every year. This makes it difficult to pass the test.

4. What you grow and “hone” to practice self learning does not translate well to the public. You may be able to do something extremely well but businesses and companies want you to follow their standards. You need to be able to work with others and adapt.

The transition to learning from home is showing to be tough on the mass majority of those who are unfamiliar with self learning. My first college quarter was entirely online and it felt almost like homeschooling. If you would not be able to succeed in this environment, you will not in homeschooling either.

I wish I could talk to the Author face to face and comfort them. I understand what it’s like to go between vastly different learning environments, the annoying teachers, the wish for everything to be less convoluted, and the inability to express myself or any personal freedoms I had at that age. However, as horrible as the public education system is, you can’t run away from it hoping to never experience anything like it again. I’m sorry. I really am.

As a side note, I imagine the narcissism the author displays for his peers “falling into line” will be one they change in the future. I’m speaking from personal experience.