

Consider dropping out of school. - aspirant
http://joshwhiton.com/?p=339

======
hugh3
_There’s a long and successful tradition of self-taught learners (Ben
Franklin, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, to name a few)._

Great. Now name me some successful _recent_ high-school dropouts.

 _School for me was a complete waste of time. There might have been some value
to witnessing the barbarity and brokenness of it all but a dozen hours, not a
dozen years, would have sufficed. It was a popularity contest that I failed
every day and it got in the way of studying more interesting things._

If there was really nothing in the curriculum for you to learn (was
mathematics really that easy for you?) maybe you should have focused on the
popularity-contest side of things, since developing social skills is hugely
useful for real life.

 _One of the girls is on the verge of being put on medication because she’s so
unhappy. The drugs will make her ok with her malnourished, growth-stunting,
environment. They’ll make her ok with jumping through inane hoop after hoop._

If you're being put on medication because you can't cope with high school,
it's not a problem with high school. It's a problem with you, or maybe a
problem with your doctor, but high school generally isn't that difficult an
environment. You show up every day, you hang out with your friends, you go to
classes, learn some stuff, you do some stupid crap that you're told to do, and
you figure out a way to avoid doing some other stupid crap that you're told to
do.

~~~
angelbob
I did all right. I'm a high school dropout with two bachelor's degrees from
Carnegie Mellon, a six-figure computer programming job and a similar disdain
for the public education system.

I won't say dropping out of high school was the best thing I've ever done, but
it saved me a year of boredom and staying would have done me no good. Dropping
out was a much better idea than staying in.

~~~
SkyMarshal
If I may ask, how did you get into CMU without a hs diploma?

~~~
angelbob
They have an early admissions program, with the unspoken assumption that
you'll use credits from CMU to get a high school diploma by some arrangement.
It turns out that they never say this is required, and you never actually have
to do it.

I couldn't graduate from my old high school in any case, even with the extra
CMU classes, because I lack a one-semester class in US Government.

I also had really good SAT scores.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Very cool of CMU, and gratz.

------
corruption
Someone I know was considering dropping out of university for the same reason.
Instead of agreeing with them (the papers they were taking were pretty easy),
I told them to seek interesting work within the department, and stop taking
easy papers.

Within a few weeks, he had a ton of extra work with a top researcher, and
ended up with coauthor status on a lot of papers. And this was an
undergraduate. All it took was him showing interest and offering time. He even
got paid.

As a lecturer, you are always looking out for students who show the slightest
interest, and will open many doors if the student is capable. And if someone
from highschool came and offered to help out, I'd certainly do my best to let
them!

~~~
16s
I used to optimize algorithms in the boring classes and write programs that
_I_ wanted to better understand. Or learn other languages when I was bored.
Dropping out because you are bored is a bad idea. I met other bored kids doing
the same thing, we all got together and wrote code and learned new things and
worked on other people's research that was interesting. Never thought about
quitting.

------
fizx
I was extremely bored in high school. What did I do? I negotiated agreements
with teachers to let me go to the library or gym instead of class, as long as
I still aced tests and didn't cause trouble. I took calculus my freshman year.
I substituted in a couple classes at a community college.

I was lucky to have parental support, and top-class school administration, but
working out this sort of arrangement seems less extreme and more practical
than dropping out.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Not all school districts will allow such arrangements. Unfortunately some
districts are hostile to anything that smells of treating students in an
unequal way.

But also, if you consider taking classes in test only form ok, why not simply
drop out and take the GED?

My hometown had a program where you could get a district diploma with a GED
and a few key credits (which you could take at community or state college
easily enough if you preferred).

~~~
fizx
> But also, if you consider taking classes in test only form ok, why not
> simply drop out and take the GED?

I enjoyed playing sports. I had really outstanding English, Civics, and
History teachers. I had a lot of (not always positive, but useful still)
social contact with my peers. High school is full of good things, just not all
the time. Take the good, find a way around the bad. I don't think I'd be a
better person today if I didn't experience high school.

------
terryjsmith
I am surprised by the negative response this is getting.

High school caters to a very broad audience with it's general curriculum and
IMO is one of the worst ways to teach kids. I can say without a doubt that I
find applications for about 15 - 20% of everything I learned in highschool
past grade 10 in my life, but I'd already been programming outside of school
since I was 12 or 13. Most things will simply not apply to most students, but
the system needs to cater to all of the possibilities. The only reason I
graduated high school was with the hope that university would allow me to
actually study things I was interested in, but that's simply not the case to
meet the degree requirements. In the end, I dropped out of university and got
a great paying job in a startup and have done a good deal of contracting work
as well; I don't feel my future career prospects are at all hampered by my
lack of education.

I agree that most high school students would not live their lives to their
fullest potential if they dropped out, but for those that will, this is
applicable. I am definitely an edge case, but I feel that is who he is address
here, and I wish someone would have told me to drop out of high school and get
an earlier start.

------
rmah
My God. Is this a joke? What kind of idiot tells kids to drop out of high
school? I have a hard enough time with people who recommend skipping or
dropping out of college -- but high school?!?!?

 _They told me how boring high-school was, how narrow-minded their families
were._

That sounds like what 2 out of 3 teens would say. How much more typical can
you get? Maybe these two teens are brilliant, I don't know. If so, they should
simply accelerate and go to college earlier. But, drop out? I'm simply stunned
that someone could seriously tell teens this.

~~~
David
Why?

For what reasons is finishing high school better than dropping out? Not that
they don't exist, but you've dismissed his argument without listing any.

~~~
kenjackson
The problem is that every person I know would say that high school is boring.
This is why most of the drug dealers I know dropped out of high school...
boring and can't make money sitting in class.

At the same time I found being able to read and knowing basic math useful, but
that's just me.

I don't necessarily have a problem dropping out of high school for good
reason. But the article didn't show these reasons. First he met these girls
one time for lunch? Unless he was really grilling them I'm not sure how smart
you can really tell someone is. As a professor I've met students that are
conversationally brilliant (witty, charming, etc...), and not surprisingly, it
resembled little how strong they seemed in the material.

I'd even consider home schooling first. Teenagers who simply drop out are a
lot more likely to get into destructive behavior. If they need challenge, I'm
sure there are plenty of people who can give them this challenge in a loosely-
structured manner.

~~~
Alex3917
"At the same time I found being able to read and knowing basic math useful,
but that's just me."

According to the National Center for Education Stastistics, only 4% of high
school graduates are able to read proficiently. (And by proficiently, they
mean having the minimum amount of skill necessary to 'compare viewpoints in
two editorials' or 'interpret a table about blood pressure, age, and physical
activity', i.e. an extremely low bar.)

<http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006470>

<http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF>

~~~
hugh3
According to me, that sounds like an incredibly dubious measure of "able to
read proficiently". If only 4% of students are passing that means something is
wrong with the test, because experience tells us that the majority of people
are quite capable of reading normal passages and understanding what they mean.

~~~
dget
What experience? I know quite a few people (not the HN crowd) who are
reasonably smart, but give them a newspaper editorial by itself and they'll be
lost. Not 96% of people I know, but a decent amount.

~~~
hugh3
Because they lack the ability to read, or because they lack background
knowledge on the subject of the editorial?

Take, for instance, today's editorial in the Telegraph (of Calcutta):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qrMr6hx...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qrMr6hxqGJ8J:www.telegraphindia.com/1070317/asp/opinion/story_7527382.asp+the+telegraph+editorial&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a)

I'm pretty lost trying to read that. If I didn't keep up with US politics I'd
be equally lost trying to read the New York Times.

------
tomlin
_For one, it’s clear that these two are autodidacts self-taught people who
easily learn what they need when they need it._

I can't speak for everyone, or even a specific _type_ of person, but for me
highschool was a huge distraction. I would learn more on my own, doing my own
research. I've always found that your interests for specific subjects develop
at different times for different people.

Our public education system (in Canada, at least) is among the best, but it
faces many challenges. One being funding. Funding effects how quickly
education is dispersed among students. The world isn't perfect, but we're
sending students out into jobs with archaic information from 5-10 year-old
textbooks.

If you have common sense about you, a Google search combined with thoughtful
fact validation rivals your public highschool's education platform. I know I'm
going to see some unhappy comments about that statement, again, my experience
only.

~~~
watty
High school didn't have to be a distraction. Did you take the most advanced
courses offered? Did you attempt to graduate early?

I don't remember what I actually learned in High school but it helped me get
into University and get a job. Google is great and looking up facts and even
teaching but you can't put "Advanced Google Searcher" on your resume. High
school and even University are both aids to transition to the real world and
are only what you make of them. You can be successful without any formal
education but the average person will be more successful sticking to school.

~~~
tomlin
_Google is great and looking up facts and even teaching but you can't put
"Advanced Google Searcher" on your resume._

 _You can be successful without any formal education but the average person
will be more successful sticking to school._

I totally agree.

I managed to get a lot of experience behind me before I officially started my
career. I know that a few parameters made the situation available to me.

But one can't help think that perhaps ability/passion > education. Especially
when the education isn't being utilized. So why are employers looking for
educated persons first? I think it shows commitment. Commitment, ability and
passion don't always run the same linage, though.

------
lkrubner
I believe this, too, was linked from Hacker News at some point recently:

<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>

John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

"The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain
of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal.
As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for
those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for
behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because
individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom.
Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of
class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private
moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out
of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water.
Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed
or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist
for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will
study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me).
This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do
the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of
enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we
have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my
work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make
decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and
survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will
of those who resist.

This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a
teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all,
that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the
meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy
depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids
weren’t trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could
hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial
entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people
remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and
prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own
meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law,
medicine, and engineering would go too — the clothing business as well —
unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each
year. We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are
told because they don’t know any other way. For God’s sake, let’s not rock
that boat!"

------
artichok3
Good advice. When I think back to my high school days what I remember most is
dread and discontent, despite the fact that I was well liked. The material was
boring and had only a tenuous connection to the "real world", where "real
world" means the application and practical learning of skills. I would have
been better off apprenticing, learning on my own or even being taught by
parents.

If anything has changed since my High School days it's that schools have
gotten worse. They're more authoritarian and paranoid (cameras and patrols
abound in the hallways), are even worse at teaching teenagers anything (look
at their abysmal performance. This is a well known problem), and want even
more money.

You can try blaming the kids for the problems like hugh3 does, but the fact of
the matter is that there are so many people doing poorly in and feeling poorly
about school that it can hardly be rationalized away as the individual's
fault. The problem is the system, i.e. the schools themselves.

------
lkrubner
Wasn't this linked recently from Hacker News? Seems relevant:

[http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/nurture-
shock/2009/11/05/why-t...](http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/nurture-
shock/2009/11/05/why-teenagers-are-growing-up-so-slowly-today.html)

"Allen has concluded that our urge to protect teenagers from real life –
because we don’t think they’re ready yet – has tragically backfired. By
insulating them from adult-like work, adult social relationships, and adult
consequences, we have only delayed their development. We have made it harder
for them to grow up. Maybe even made it impossible to grow up on time.
Basically, we long ago decided that teens ought to be in school, not in the
labor force. Education was their future. But the structure of schools is
endlessly repetitive. “From a Martian’s perspective, high schools look
virtually the same as sixth grade,” said Allen. “There’s no recognition, in
the structure of school, that these are very different people with different
capabilities.” Strapped to desks for 13+ years, school becomes both incredibly
montonous, artificial, and cookie-cutter. As Allen writes, “We place kids in
schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically
from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a
year or so of one another in age. We equip them with similar gadgets, expose
them to the same TV shows, lessons, and sports. We ask them all to take almost
the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to
one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can
meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they
have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality.”

------
jtbigwoo
It sounds like there are some serious psychological problems at work here.
From his description of his high school experience, it appears he was
suffering from fairly serious depression. At least one of these girls is
suffering from similar problems.

He appears to have grown out of his depression, though he's not clear on
exactly how he turned things around. It's possible that a change of scenery
would do the girls good, but we shouldn't assume that their psychological
issues are entirely the result of their environment. When someone is suffering
from depression, they are sick. If they move to some sort of alternate
schooling arrangement, it should be under the supervision of a trained
professional.

~~~
aspirant
"When someone is suffering from depression, they are sick."

That's what drug companies say. Another theory is that depression is a healthy
response to something in the outer or inner life that must change. So a bout
of depression, uncomfortable as it may be, can be integral to growth.

------
johnl87
Dropping out of school, esp. high school is a bad idea. First of all, no one
will take a high school aged kid seriously. Second of all it would seriously
hurt their chances of getting into college (regardless of what people say
about college, it's still useful for most people with a tech degree.) I mean,
sure you can backwards rationalize that once you drop out you will learn more,
but success in life isn't all about how much book knowledge one has. It also
has a lot (probably even more) to do with social skills which one can work on
while surrounded by classmates and teachers in high school.

------
dagw
How hard is it to change schools? Not all schools are equal, nor are all
teachers. Ask around and find out if there are better, perhaps private,
schools where you would fit in better. Ask yourself if you'd be willing to
move to go to better school. I realized that I wouldn't be happy at my default
high school, so instead of moaning about it or dropping out, I found a better
school and went there instead.

------
aspirant
_When I was a kid, I would just walk around reading books all the time. And I
was also the youngest kid in my grade, so I was quite small. I was kind of a
smart aleck. It was a recipe for disaster. I'd get called every name in the
book and beaten up. That was my schooling experience._

\- Elon Musk

------
lhorie
This seems like making lame excuses to me. If an american high school seems
too easy for you, there are far more interesting / challenging schools
elsewhere.

I hear nordic and asian countries have very strong education systems. Fwiw,
even my little high school had a neat robotics extra-curricular class w/ Lego
Mindstorms.

------
cellurl
tell the depressed girl to join a band.

------
wallflower
Unfortunately, a high school education and a college degree are some of the
hardest, set-in-stone hiring requirements for most white-collar jobs (with
some exceptions, of course).

Dropping out of high school voluntarily is a short-term rush with potential
long-term adverse side effects.

~~~
joshfinnie
I think if you have a college degree, most employeers I ran into don't care
for a high school education. One of the points in the article is that you can
still get into college without finishing high school.

~~~
hugh3
Can you get into _a_ college? Yes. Are you equally or more likely to get into
your particular college of choice? I'd want some damn good evidence of that
claim.

