I KNOW!! Automatic transmissions, escalators, the whole thing makes me sick...

Back when (1980s?)somebody published a book titled "The Dumbing Down of America" it seems to be working. Have you studied the history of mandatory public schooling? It all got started at the peak of the British Empire they needed "clerks"/bureaucrats who would mindlessly follow orders and do routine paperwork. Up until that time ever one was home schooled and could think that's why there was a vast amount of industrial innovation. After public schooling was forced on people the Empire began to decline. It's real simple programed robots or knee jerk emotional hysterics are real easy to control and exploit. Religions have demonstrated that fact for centuries parasitic political parties/rich people simple put it to use to maintain their grip on power.

I have not read this, nor have I studied this. Very interesting.

Thankfully I was able to go to a private school up till 8th grade. There I was highly encouraged and motivated to think and create. I attended public high school. It really destroyed me. It attempted to suck all independent thought and motivation from me. It was clear that order-following worker-drones were the desired product of that school system. It took me about 3 years after high school to get my wits back.

I too went through public schooling, although without the added benefit of a solid early foundation in individuality... This caused me to take a little longer to come back to myself after getting out, but I believe it has given me extra drive to succeed and show the world how it should be done!

I failed every single class in high school. I refused to do any homework at all, because when I got home from banging my head on my desk for 8 hours, I felt like it should be my time. I still graduated though.

When I was a kid I would watch the discovery channel obsessively. When final exam time came around I would take the class's textbook home for a week and study everything in passing. Then as long as I could score an 85 on the Regents test, the teachers would be forced to give me course credit. I always found the practice of paging through a textbook in order to find answers to homework assignments arbitrarily doled out by teachers to be daunting and monotonous.

I won't go into the social hierarchy that existed, but that's another ball of wax entirely. I don't know what could possibly fix the way things work... at this point the fail is so systemic that it seems pretty impossible to turn it around. Oh well! :D

Like Agent, I started school in a private school, then moved to public. I was a good student in private school, making good grades and generally being a nice, social kid. Then for 4th grade, we moved and I had to go to public. Public school was a disaster for me in the beginning, and my first year had the teacher calling home about every day about me being disruptive and not doing my work, et cetera.

Fast forward to High School when I was a bit more adjusted, but still not great. I never did homework, but I aced tests. I drove my teachers nuts with my slacker work ethic, but I was always nice to them - and it paid off. I got along better with the teachers than kids my age.

My senior year had me exploiting a school rule where we got into more trouble for being late than being absent. If I got to school late, I drove right back out of the parking lot, and usually ended up in Manhattan. This going out on my own, making my own field trips as it were, was some of the best education - at the best time of life to do it - I've ever gotten.

Driving lessons? How about learning to cope with New York cabbies. Geography? You learn it quickly when navigating to the city, around it, and back home again. History, sociology, math, all of these things follow naturally.

Thusly, I've always been a very strong proponent of being a self-educated person. It's called being autodidactic. An autodidact is dependent on no school, no one else for their... (show all)

education. Surely, this doesn't work for every single profession (med school would be a good idea for the aspiring doctor), but it really worked for me back then, and has ever since.