

Let's Abolish High School - absconditus
http://www.youthrights.net/index.php?title=Let%27s_Abolish_High_School_%28article%29

======
markbao
> Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults

I'm currently a teenager. This is mostly false.

\--

On a serious note, interesting idea. It won't happen, since the US education
system (and the public sector in general) is not open to, well, any kind of
change.

But as the founder of 9 startups, high school wasn't a huge help for me in any
ways other than somewhere to socialize. _However,_ this is the _special case_.
High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.

Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with
acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)

~~~
antonovka
_I'm currently a teenager. This is mostly false._

I was a teenager -- I dropped out of school, moved out of my parents home, and
took a full time technology job at 16, and began working my way up. This meant
that by the time my peers graduated from college, I had 6 years of experience
under my belt.

I wasn't _special_ , I was simply _motivated_. If my home and school life had
been satisfactory, I probably would have been content to sit out my future
high school and college years with very little responsibility, and I imagine
this is the situation that most teenagers find themselves in.

 _High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%._

95% of teenagers don't accept real responsibility and behave like capable
adults because there is no external motivation or encouragement to do so.

Is this beneficial to their well-being?

 _Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with
acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)_

That depends on what you would like to do with your life. Returning to college
later in life is surprisingly easy.

~~~
Retric
If you did something that 99.9999% of the population did not do then you are
special by definition.

Teenager's have significantly different levels of cognitive ability compared
to adults. There is a reason most people look back on their teenage years and
say "why was I so stupid" and honestly it's because your brain was less
developed on a biological level.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=2xpvp4ie_8MC&dq=hippoca...](http://books.google.com/books?id=2xpvp4ie_8MC&dq=hippocampus+development+teenagers&source=gbs_navlinks_s)

~~~
wheels
_> most people look back on their teenage years and say "why was I so stupid"_

As far as I can tell, that pattern holds for at least another decade.

~~~
antonovka
Which is why I tend to believe it has quite a bit more to do with socially
encouraged irresponsibility than teenage brain development.

~~~
caffeine
This discussion highlights why these questions are so difficult and
frightening: ethics _prevents_ good science.

Randomly sample a bunch of kids, hook them all up to monitoring devices, put
them in different schools and societies that involve transitions into
adulthood at different rates and onsets, set up a control group (Lord of the
Flies setup), do the longitudinal study, and write it up. An associate
professor and his 5 grad students would get a bunch of solid papers out of it.
Theorists would have fun defining "optimality" in this context (to be fair,
the philosophers have been gnawing at it for a while..)

This is unethical .. right? Then, you have to ask yourself: wouldn't it be
_more_ ethical to do the study, figure out how best to raise kids, and let
_all_ human young for posterity (or at least 'til the results are invalidated)
benefit from the wisdom?

Hmm.. :)

~~~
Xichekolas
It would only be more ethical if your ethical system was based on a
utilitarian viewpoint.

In contrast, most capitalist democracies (all that I can think of anyway) are
centered on individualism... the only ethically allowable sacrifice is the
voluntary sacrifice... and children (anyone under 18) are not considered
sentient enough to make decisions about their own lives and futures.

~~~
loup-vaillant
You prove him right: by _assuming_ underage people aren't sentient enough,
ethics prevent us to check. Not necessarily bad, but definitely restrictive,
and not good science™.

------
scott_s
_The assertion that teenagers have an 'immature' brain that necessarily causes
turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research
from around the world._

That children and teens have an immature brain is supported by biological
research:

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1899715>

<http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/09/the-teen-brain.html>

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/15/health/2008091...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/15/health/20080915-brain-
development.html)

I was not happy in high school (only ten years ago), so I think efforts to
improve that period of people's lives are well spent. But I can't support
something that starts from what I consider a faulty premise, which is the
assumption that children and teens are miniature adults.

~~~
hackinthebochs
What does 'mature' even mean in this context? Don't mistake "not finished
growing/changing" with lacking the ability to make mature, thoughtful
decisions if given the opportunity/responsibility.

One of the reasons teenagers act so irresponsibly is because they've grown up
with the idea that teenagers are inherently irresponsible and therefore aren't
completely accountable for their actions. It becomes self-fulfilling.

~~~
scott_s
Full maturation of the brain - and I do think that indicates being able to
_reliably_ make "mature, thoughtful" decisions. I don't think you should
deprive teenagers the opportunity to do so in the correct environment, but
that's different from assuming they have the same mental faculties as adults.

Personally, I don't feel like I was a mature adult until about 22, and I was
never considered an especially immature teen or young adult. I'm 28 now.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>I don't feel like I was a mature adult until about 22

Was that about the time you left college? I think a lot of feeling "mature" is
actually having responsibility for yourself. If teenagers had responsibility
for themselves, and didn't have the artificial environment of high school to
pressure them in the wrong direction, I believe nearly all of them could be
fully functioning adults.

I don't think mature brain connections correlates with mature decision making.
People become adults when they're finally faced with adult decisions and have
to deal with the consequences.

All one needs to make mature decisions is a sense of the consequences of
actions and an ability to delay gratification to reach later goals. Both of
which is fully within the grasp of teenagers, if they're taught properly
growing up.

------
leecho0
>John Taylor Gatto has long warned about the dangers of artificially extending
childhood, and has blamed our schools for damaging families and stifling
creativity and a love of learning.

I think it's ridiculous that it is now normal (or actually preferable) now to
be in school until you are done with 1/4 to 1/3 of your life without seeing
what "the real world" was like. This means the average person won't be able to
do anything significant until they have already wasted their best years in
school and low level positions.

I can get decent grades pretty easily (much like many people here) and so
slacking off and procrastination was just a smart way of using my time. Now
that I think I'm of the age where I can make something of myself, I need to
unlearn a lot of the bad habits learned in school in order to get things done.
Many smart, ambitious people I know do not try to start independant projects
because they are still "just students," but then go on to do amazing things
after graduating and finding their purpose in life. Much of this can be
prevented with an early firsthand exposure to a life outside of the artificial
punishment and reward system of school.

Chances are, even after reform people will probably still go on the same path
-- highschool, college, graduate school, but they will have a much better
reason to do well, since it will be what they chose to do.

------
robryan
I think if a 15 year old was put into the position of having to make adult
decisions and behave like an adult they would be perfectly capable.

It's just that they either don't have the chance or given the option, prefer
to cruse through and muck around for as long as possible before being force to
get serious.

~~~
evgen
The objective reality of the sort of decisions made by fifteen year-oldsters
on a routine basis show this to be demonstably false.

~~~
absconditus
The point that many of us are attempting to make is that this is so because of
how we currently treat teenagers. When you treat someone like a child they
tend to act like a child.

~~~
stavrianos
I've known a couple of people who grew up too fast, and that can be kind of
ugly sometimes. I'm all in favor of the emancipation of children and the
abolishment of school, but atta same time, there's gotta be some kinda line.

------
sgoraya
Whatever happened to the idea of an 'apprenticeship'? Not all teenagers want
to pursue 'traditional' studies and would be much better off learning a
specific trade or craft that they are interested in.

------
makmanalp
I like the ;?> on the top left. The title is a little misleading, the article
is actually much more rational than the title sounds.

 _I’m a father of four children, and about 10 years ago I noticed—I couldn’t
help but notice—that my 15-year-old son was remarkably mature. He balanced
work and play far better than I did, and he seemed quite ready to live on his
own._

For parents that help educate their children, stimulate their interest and set
an example this might be so, but for others, school might be a better
alternative.

~~~
ErrantX
Agreed. I know if I, for example, had been let loose on the world at 15 things
would have turned out BAD.

~~~
jerf
Did you go to normal school?

A lot of people in this discussion are trying to use the product of the
putatively broken system (themselves or others they know) to prove that the
putatively broken system must be left in place. This is simply begging the
question (in the original sense), not an argument.

Edit: Fine, I'll spell it out. You can't counter an argument that says we have
a system that is generating excessively dysfunctional 15-year-olds by pointing
out that the 15-year olds generated by the system are excessively
dysfunctional, and then follow it up with the conclusion that therefore we
need the current system. That doesn't disprove the point, because the point in
the first place is that the system is broken. You can cite millions of
examples of actions taken by publicly-schooled 15-year-olds that were stupid,
but none of them actually provide any useful information about the argument.

My post here isn't an argument either way about the issue; it's just _simple
logic_. Arguing that of course 15-year olds are stupid and need to be in
school is begging the question, or circular logic, and an invalid argument. It
doesn't prove anything either way, it's not even evidence either way. Modding
it down doesn't change that.

This isn't all spelled out in the exact post I'm replying to, but this bad
logic is shot through this entire comment thread.

~~~
ErrantX
> Arguing that of course 15-year olds are stupid and need to be in school is
> begging the question

Where did I argue that! Your putting words in my mouth. All I am saying is
that, speaking from where I am now, at 15 I wasnt equipped to face the world.
School was a good place for me.

This stuff _has sod all to do with the schools_ ; it's simple logic about
maturity. Have you bothered to read the studies posted elsewhere about brain
development??

The education system is broken: but that doesnt means it's a _bad_ idea. If we
dont impart our knowledge then you end up with a problem. It could, ofc, be
taught better than it is now.

~~~
jerf
You said that when you were 15, school was a good place for you. But you are
talking about your 15-year-old self who had just spent 10-ish years in school;
at this point I'm assuming that if that weren't entirely true you would have
said. Since the discussion is about the hypothesis that school is an
infantalizing place to be, saying that when you were 15 school was the right
place to be is begging the question. If you had been in a hypothetical better
environment, your 15-year-old self might have been much more capable of
dealing with real challenges.

You don't "say" it. The idea that school is the only way a childhood can be is
so deeply ingrained in your argument you can't even _perceive_ it. It's such a
given that you consider it a logical axiom, and you end up arguing circularly
without even realizing it, you and about half the other posters in this
discussion.

Your last sentence would seem to me to reinforce the point. Maybe school can
be "improved", but the idea that it is potentially fundamentally flawed
doesn't seem to be thinkable. Mind you, I'm not saying that you (and others)
think the idea, then reject it (which if done properly would be perfectly
valid); people don't seem to be even capable of _thinking_ the idea.

Your picture of maturity is shaped by the system under question.

Again, I'm not actually attacking or defending the schools here. It's the
logic I'm talking about. You can't justify the current system by using the
current system; it's circular.

------
mannicken
Limited to yard work/baby sitting/uninteresting jobs? Where exactly?

After I turned 16 I enrolled in a community college, fully paid by high
school, using a local dual enrollment program. When I was 15 I started working
as a C++ developer, which was quite fun.

Yes, I was a freak and still am a completely asocial misanthrope. But no one
is limited -- it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown) that
children stay in high school.

~~~
TallGuyShort
>> it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown)

Or because of the social benefits. You state that you consider your former
self a freak, and consider your current self a completely asocial misanthrope.
I was following a very similar path to you, but realized that I was on my way
to being a social outcast. To me, being a C++ programmer was not my purpose in
life (although it was a very interesting field I ended up making my career). A
great deal of what I see as the "purpose of life" consists of those social
relationships. If I didn't have those, C++ wouldn't make me happy, so what
would be the point of it all?

I don't mean to sound argumentative - I'm just pointing out that although I
was capable of doing more, I chose to stay close to my own age group because
of a legitimate quality-of-life benefit. You did state that it's by choice,
but I think that's an aspect a lot of people don't consider, especially the
author in question.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
It is only because high school is the default that those who choose other
options feel isolated. Those >25 usually find friends without resorting to
spending most of their day in the same overcrowded fishbowl. If 16 year-olds
were spread out across various activities, they would make the effort to find
each other, but it's easy to exclude those few kids who aren't seen at their
lockers everyday when school is the norm.

------
hackinthebochs
I believe this is true. Children are adults-in-training and need to be treated
as such. Yet we create these unnatural environments and wonder why teenagers
act so irresponsibly. And when they finally do become "adults", they can't
function as adults.

I believe the majority of teenagers will rise to the responsibility given to
them, if it is genuine. You can't expect them to act responsibly on one hand
but then subtly treat them as nothing more than overgrown children.

------
TravisLS
There was a post on HN some time back from former house speaker Newt Gingrich,
who is a fairly outspoken advocate on this issue:

[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b41070852...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm)

------
sridharvembu
I came to the same conclusion (based on my own experience in teenage, and
observations later) that there is a lot of talent waiting to be tapped in
teenage years, and treating teenagers respectfully as young adults and giving
them responsibility is good for them and good for society.

That is one of the reasons we like to hire 17 year olds in Zoho and combine
education with work. Labor laws won't let us hire any sooner, but if it were
my own family members, I would hire them sooner.

~~~
3pt14159
That is amazing. I work for the competition (FreshBooks) but I would have
relished working right out of high school in a high tech position.

Good on ya.

------
tokenadult
There is a lot that independent learning by teenagers can do to help them grow
faster and more happily. My son likes Project Euler

<http://projecteuler.net/>

as a framework for practicing computer programming related to pure
mathematics, and runs his own literary discussion website both to learn about
online community administration (including coding site features) and about
creative writing. The most annoying aspects of his teen years, for him and for
me, have been his closest approaches to "high school" experiences. Senior year
of high school for him should be mostly dual enrollment at our friendly state
university and a distance learning course in advanced microeconomics.

~~~
scott_s
Is he not allowed to do that? I grew up in Virginia, and two of my friends
chose to spend their senior years of high school by taking classes at a local
university or the local community college.

(They were, in fact, brother and sister and had spent six years in Denmark as
the children of foreign service officers. They did not take well to American
high school.)

~~~
tokenadult
_Is he not allowed to do that?_

The dual enrollment is allowed here (one must apply to the college that offers
the dual enrollment classes). This choice is not used by as many students as
could benefit from it. Many seek the "socialization" of high school. Yeesh.

------
lionhearted
It's not a terribly good use of time for people who actually like to learn. I
dropped out of two high schools, including a gifted and talented program - who
the hell knows how I got into that one, but I dropped it as well. It really
seemed like obedience school to me - capricious, arbitrary, with a focus on
discipline and not on learning. A number of times, I would fail a class where
I was in the top five most talented people in it. I didn't see much point in
doing what they prescribed - I'd rather go explore the world or play around on
a computer or read books or go make some money.

I left home at 16, and eventually wound up graduating high school by going
into an adult learning center at age 17 or so. I said, "I am fully
emancipated, and living as an adult. I would like to complete the adult
program." After some talking with a very nice fellow and being politely
evasive, he agreed. I took a series of competency exams, completed the
silliest multiple choice packet of American history I've ever seen, and I was
awarded a diploma. I went and took the standardized tests and got into
university. They were kind enough to loan or grant me almost my full tuition,
though I dropped out of university once as well. Same reasons.

Anywho, with a quick perusal of history, it's pretty obvious that maturity
does not come from age, it comes from having unique experiences and learning
from them. If you see someone who is forced to become "head of household" at a
young age due to parents illness and cares for his/her siblings, they are very
mature and adultlike even in their mid-teens. Likewise, people dragged into a
war move differently, with less naivete - characteristics you'd usually see in
someone in their 40's. There's kids in their mid-20's with that look.

At least, that's the hypothesis I made: Unique experiences and learning from
them = maturity. So I set out to have a lot of unique experiences, and I think
I did rather a good job. I've had an interesting, enjoyable life. The only
part I regret is wasting my age 13/14/15/16 years in middle school and high
school. I had some fun with extracurricular activities and friends, but I
could have done something so much more interesting during the actual
classtime. Yuck.

One in particular that made me wake up when I read it was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He
was third of Japan's great unifiers. In the 1600's, he founded the Tokugawa
Shogunate - his family ruined in almost complete peace for 250 years after one
of the most lawless and brutal times in Japanese history. Ieyasu married for
the first time at age 13 or 14, and was Captain of a small division of troops
around the 14/15 years. He did a pretty admirable job of it, grew up fast, and
the rest is history.

But I think the flipside is true, too - if you don't let someone have
responsibility, if you treat them like a child, they'll stay childlike and
immature. Being an American who has traveled, I see people who are age 26-28
who are barely capable of functioning in the world, and I sometimes see people
age 14-18 doing amazing things. This could be the norm, if we wanted it to.

I had a 17 year old fellow apply to work for me - he was half-generation
American, if I've got the terminology right - he immigrated here with his
parents around age 10 or so. I didn't wind up hiring him, but I became a
mentor to him. We'd go get tea or coffee every couple weeks and I'd give him
some generally no-BS advise. A very good guy, he's done some really impressive
things in a short period of time - all he had to do was shake off the reigns
and shackles, but that is harder than it sounds to do. At least in the average
American school, they punish you swiftly, thoroughly, and publicly if you try
to abstain or dare to question them. There's the occasional good teacher - I
had maybe a dozen excellent professional teachers in my life, which I count
myself quite lucky to have had. But the rest? Well, I guess we shouldn't be
too hard on them. They're just doing what they were taught, too.

------
teeja
If you get a crappy education in HS, despite your abilities, you're far behind
your peers who got a very good one. Whether you then apply yourself in
college, you remain behind those people because they keep on keepin on.

That's not so true today as it once was for kids who have access to the
internet. If you've got a hunger to learn, there's plenty of fodder. My life
would have been quite different if I'd had the net to learn from.

As to whether it's _necessary_ depends on what you feel life is all about,
and/or what real talents (not addressed by mainstream ed) you have. Highly
self-motivated people (or who fortune smiles on) can usualy live without HS.
Most of the rest of us need it to cope in an ever-more-complex world.

------
bufordtwain
"and he had no choice but to attend high school for several more years"

This is a very common misconception. It's quite possible and legal in many
(most?) US states to remove a child from school and keep them home to let them
learn at their own pace.

~~~
absconditus
<http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp>

~~~
absconditus
NY for instance seems rather restrictive:

<http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/New_York.pdf>

------
fburnaby
Maybe it isn't all about your profession. Maybe you should try to know some of
the basics taught in high school in order to be a good citizen. Not to say
that the high school I went to wasn't a waste of time, but that doesn't mean
high school _has_ to be a waste of time.

People are good at being smug, and thinking they know everything. The best way
to realize that there's actually some depth to a topic is to study it a bit.
Since (from reading other comments here) none of us would have wanted to learn
some of these topics, maybe we'd all still think that those _other_ topics are
all a stupid waste of time, and people who do them are also useless.

------
PostOnce
High schools are so unreliable here that we need an AA degree to compensate
for it.

------
mattmaroon
I largely agree with his conclusion, but don't like it when people point out
history to support it. Sure kids didn't have to go to school in 1850, but
black people and women couldn't vote, most people didn't have indoor plumbing
(let alone electricity), slavery was still legal.

The fact that kids didn't have to go to school back then is not at all an
argument in support of them not doing so now and should be left out of a
serious essay in favor of that position.

------
b-man
In case anyone is curious, there are proposals for systems that respect the
individual, are libertarian and are passive in the sense that the individual
is the active part, choosing when, how, and what he will learn.

Take a look at this article of mine for instance [http://cnxs.com.br/posts/an-
emergent-participatory-design-fr...](http://cnxs.com.br/posts/an-emergent-
participatory-design-framework-for-higher-education) .

------
steveplace
Without yet reading the actual post, let me put my thoughts in there.

After the age of 16, make school non-compulsory. At the end of the 10th grade
year, have everyone take the GED/ACT/SAT and if they get a threshold level,
congrats, you can now move on.

So when kids start misbehaving, you don't have to keep them there.

------
xexers
I completely agree with this point and I wish he went into more detail about
it:

"Finally, a wealth of data shows that when young people are given meaningful
responsibility and meaningful contact with adults, they quickly rise to the
challenge, and their inner adult emerges."

------
ColemanF
Eliminating high school would cut the amount of taxes needed for public
schooling, and would instead increase tax revenue by putting more people in
the workforce. Not to mention that a more experienced (real-world experience)
workforce might be more productive.

------
arundelo
See also Grace Llewellyn's Teenage Liberation Handbook:

[http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-School-
Edu...](http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-School-
Education/dp/0962959170/)

------
sound2man
Basically what they are proposing is the system of education currently in use
in Germany. Once you hit high school you have the choice of preparing for a
white or blue collar job. Blue collar jobs gets you out of school and into an
apprenticeship at 15 or 16, white collar gets you into high school, or further
education at least.

Seems to work quite well.

