Home schooled girl graduates at 16
from college.
The trick is to have a parent that actually loves you enough to prevent you from being brainwashed for 13 years in front of a bunch of boring, brain dead government paid baby sitters in the public schools.
I agree with you and in retrospect I realize I failed as a parent in that regard. My only explanation is that at the time I just didn't understand.
ReplyDeleteOne of the worst jobs I ever had started off as a dream job for a recent STEM grad: Working off a bloated grant, with unlimited unskilled free labor (worth exactly what I paid). I had a geeky homeschooled kid help me one day a week as part of his biology and physics curriculum. Kid was supershy, smart and just oozed discomfort for the first months. He ended up being awesome as my helper, but I lost touch with him after I quit to go catch fish for a living. He called last year. He's a submariner in the navy. A nuclear engineer.
ReplyDeleteThat homeschool stuff is the way to go.
I was in private school all the way up until 8th grade. Then I had to move and go to a public school.
ReplyDeleteI was incredibly bored the first year and I felt the corruption sink in the next year. With schools going towards standardized test mode to have stats that look good on paper, it just cripples us later on down the road when we really need to have good critical thinking skills.
Good for her.
ReplyDeleteShe wants to go to law school though. Google "law school scam" to see why that's not a very good decision these days.
Schools are such an inefficient waste of time. If you've ever listened to John Taylor Gatto, he tells a story from his early days as a substitute teacher. He was substituting for a Spanish teacher. He covered the entire lesson plan in a few minutes, so he figured he'd teach the children to tell time or something.
ReplyDeleteWhen the teacher came back, he got called into the Principal's office and chewed out. Turns out, in 45 minutes, he blew the teacher's entire lesson plan for the rest of the school year in a very simple lesson. They blacklisted him from that school.
I think back to my days in public skool, and remember a lot of wasted time that could have been better spent doing other things. I had a small handful of teachers (over 12 years) that "inspired me", the rest were a waste of my time and life.
If 10 year olds could take the GED test and "test out" of the next 8 years of school, they would. That's why you aren't allowed to take the GED until you are 18. For the public school system (and their private school analogs) it is only important that you complete the program in the 12 years allotted to you, not that you learn anything.
ReplyDeleteThat IS how it should be done. I have bad memories of being in gifted classes and regular classes at the same time. During the hours I was in gifted classes, I was literally doing college level work even though I was in 3rd grade. It was freaking awesome. We were allowed to learn as much as we wanted, as quickly as we wanted. We even got to do cool shit like go on field trips with PhDs from the Smithsonian to help out with paleontology digs and what not.
ReplyDeleteIt sucked to have to leave that and then go back to a regular classroom full of idiot students and teachers with little self control or discipline. I'd literally get screamed at by teachers and principals because I'd read entire textbooks in a few days while still finding the time to complete days or weeks worth of assignments ahead of time. The gifted classes got me into the mode of learning for the sake of learning and completing work because it is awesome. I was fucking despised and hated for that. I was flatout told I was evil and wrong because I was smarter than the other students and teachers and it was wrong to learn faster than other people.
Eventually I got slapped down so much for kicking ass or being superior in some way (I've always said that desire and effort are more important than raw talent. If you want to learn, you can do it and kick ass... most people don't want to learn jack shit or grow intellectually though) that I just stopped giving a shit about things like "competition" or grades because the schools and universities will try to fuck you up for kicking ass.
And for that matter, College is the same. Ever wonder why it takes exactly the same number of courses and years of instruction to get a Bachelor's degree in English as it does in Physics? In Mechanical engineering as in social work? In political science, Journalism, and communications as chemistry? Hint: it's not about what you learn. It's about transferring your wealth to the school over a set amount of time.
ReplyDelete