The Hackers Manifesto

It's tough to keep yourself an idealist when your parents tell you it's not worth it to get in trouble for things - I suppose they might have had a point, especially since if they did I'd still be too stubborn to cave in to somebody that was wrong - and when you get scolded across the board for what you do. I spent 3 years mainly under the radar at the school, then in my senior year was threatened with suspension three times: once for making a rude gesture at a teacher who over-the-top ranted at me for not standing during the pledge of allegiance, once for telling the teacher in charge of the literary magazine that I was the editor of that the magazine was bad and that he was refusing to fix things, and the last time for posting on Facebook about my dislike of the yearbook magazine (on a private note, of course).

I left still trying to do the right thing, but the result is a profound dislike for that school, despite the excellent handful of teachers that actually shaped me as a person. That's really sad, when you think about it.

Anyway, the point is that unlike most systems - unlike, say, the world of entrepreneurdom, where all that matters is idea and execution and getting ahead - some systems are designed intentionally to cripple the people within it. The school system is the worst, because a, focusing on the best students would hurt most other students and that would be unfair in a manner of speaking, and b, it's much easier for the teachers when they can create a bland routine, force everybody into it, and have everybody come out unharmed if not much wiser. The teachers who didn't do that at my school were incredible, but there were always unspoken hints at how difficult the administration was making things.

I entered school wanting to be a teacher. I left it realizing that it simply wasn't worth the sheer cost fighting the system would be worth.