Your argument really only makes sense if you start from the presumption that the only acceptable answer is to finish school. Otherwise it is little more than proof-by-assertion.
Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. The only way for school to win out here is if you define it as the only possible winner from the get-go, to insist that the only acceptable goal is one that can be met only by this particular combination of compulsion and resources.
If you have to defend schooling without this "home field advantage", you will at the very least have to work a lot harder at it than a few quick paragraphs fired away for the purpose of tickling the school memetic program in the minds of the readers. Why not at the very least switch to home schooling for the last couple of years and slam the pedal to the metal instead of being forced into idle? College is a fine place to learn even those precious-but-unquantifiable "social skills". I'd even argue a better place, learning your social skills in the grotesquely artificial environment of a high school is of dubious value anyhow. (College is artificial too, but less so.)
And honestly, falling back to the refuge of the "social skills" argument makes me very suspicious anyhow. I had the same basic experience in high school as the original poster, I even thought perhaps I was weak in the social skills, but guess what? Yes, indeed, the fault did lie with my environment and I was just fine on the social front. School just wasn't the right place to find that out.
Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better.
Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is.
You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse.
The idea that you should drop out of high school appeals to three particular ways in which teenagers are dumb:
1. Short-term thinking (sticking something out for another year seems like an eternity)
2. The conviction that "I am special" (even if you are, you're less special than you think), and
3. The conviction that "if I'm not good at something it must be beneath me"
"Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is."
No I don't. Your schooled teenager has almost zero input into their curriculum. It is a false dichotomy that the only alternative is to entirely put it in their hands.
"You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse."
I dispute that very strongly. I look at the schools-that-are, not the schools-that-ideally-exist. Part of the school memetic program is that they are already almost as wonderful as can be but it doesn't take very much examination of that idea to knock it down. We graduate an awful lot of illiterates, and if that's too extreme for you, the vast bulk of our college freshman require remedial math instruction. I have seen this remedial math instruction. It is very remedial. And very necessary.
I would also claim that the reason that teenagers think those three things is schooling. Of course they have short-term thinking. They've been carefully sealed away from all external reality. Their only future is next week's test, after which they can safely forget everything again. School creates that short-term mentality. I shouldn't even have to defend the claim that school breeds the idea that every student is really sooper special since that has been a core part of the curriculum for the past 30 years. And schools are wonderful at completely negating the value of effort by their ever-increasing focus on the lower end at the sacrifice of anybody who isn't on the lower end.
School created those faults in the first place. You want them cured, get them out of that environment.
> No I don't. Your schooled teenager has almost zero input into their curriculum. It is a false dichotomy that the only alternative is to entirely put it in their hands.
Where would you classify magnet programs? Mine let me max out on Advanced Placement classes (around 7 over 2 years, I think) and introduced me to FIRST Robotics, which led to a programming job while I was still in high school. (It was not the greatest or the highest-paying, and my output was probably what one might expect from the situation, but having it at all was great.) The effect was to get me into college with 44 credits under my belt, which is equivalent to over a year's worth of classes. I then ignored the freshman advisors' advice to take it easy the first semester in order to "adjust" so that I could follow through and actually graduate in 3 years. Obviously, my experience was not typical, but atypical students are the subject under discussion.
"The conviction that 'I am special' (even if you are, you're less special than you think)"
This applies to you as well, doesn't it? But then, the reasoning leads to infinite regression - you are not special, your advice is not special, no one's advice is special, therefore everyone can be ignored. In short, this bit of reasoning does not move the conversation forward.
If the phrase "You are not special" is suppose to imply "You not valuable" or "Your ideas are not valuable" then the same can be applied to everyone who posts here, in which case we must conclude that the conversation is trivial. That's fine, as far as it goes, but it is a fairly pointless road to travel. If no one here is special, then why do any of us bother to read Hacker News?
We could instead go the other direction - we could admit that the conversations on Hacker News are interesting precisely because the people who tend to show up here are interesting. Hacker News is a good place for the intellectually curious, and those who are thoughtful and who enjoy playing with new ideas. But then, to really engage the site, one would have to admit that some of the people on the site are really special, that, in fact, what makes Hacker News great is that it draws in so many people who are special.
Suggesting that the people here are not special leads to immediate irony.
Comments
Your argument really only makes sense if you start from the presumption that the only acceptable answer is to finish school. Otherwise it is little more than proof-by-assertion.
Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better. The only way for school to win out here is if you define it as the only possible winner from the get-go, to insist that the only acceptable goal is one that can be met only by this particular combination of compulsion and resources.
If you have to defend schooling without this "home field advantage", you will at the very least have to work a lot harder at it than a few quick paragraphs fired away for the purpose of tickling the school memetic program in the minds of the readers. Why not at the very least switch to home schooling for the last couple of years and slam the pedal to the metal instead of being forced into idle? College is a fine place to learn even those precious-but-unquantifiable "social skills". I'd even argue a better place, learning your social skills in the grotesquely artificial environment of a high school is of dubious value anyhow. (College is artificial too, but less so.)
And honestly, falling back to the refuge of the "social skills" argument makes me very suspicious anyhow. I had the same basic experience in high school as the original poster, I even thought perhaps I was weak in the social skills, but guess what? Yes, indeed, the fault did lie with my environment and I was just fine on the social front. School just wasn't the right place to find that out.
Start instead with an open slate, and for any given "advantage" schooling may have, there's a set of alternatives that can do it better. For any given whole package, there's a strung-together set of those alternatives that can do it better.
Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is.
You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse.
The idea that you should drop out of high school appeals to three particular ways in which teenagers are dumb:
1. Short-term thinking (sticking something out for another year seems like an eternity)
2. The conviction that "I am special" (even if you are, you're less special than you think), and
3. The conviction that "if I'm not good at something it must be beneath me"
I don't think they need any more encouragement.
"Even if that's so, you have to consider the probability that your typical, dumb and arrogant (or even your atypical, slightly-less-dumb and even more arrogant) high schooler is going to figure out what that set of alternatives is."
No I don't. Your schooled teenager has almost zero input into their curriculum. It is a false dichotomy that the only alternative is to entirely put it in their hands.
"You also have to consider the cost of failure. The best-case scenario if you teach yourself isn't much better than high school, while the worst-case scenario is much worse."
I dispute that very strongly. I look at the schools-that-are, not the schools-that-ideally-exist. Part of the school memetic program is that they are already almost as wonderful as can be but it doesn't take very much examination of that idea to knock it down. We graduate an awful lot of illiterates, and if that's too extreme for you, the vast bulk of our college freshman require remedial math instruction. I have seen this remedial math instruction. It is very remedial. And very necessary.
I would also claim that the reason that teenagers think those three things is schooling. Of course they have short-term thinking. They've been carefully sealed away from all external reality. Their only future is next week's test, after which they can safely forget everything again. School creates that short-term mentality. I shouldn't even have to defend the claim that school breeds the idea that every student is really sooper special since that has been a core part of the curriculum for the past 30 years. And schools are wonderful at completely negating the value of effort by their ever-increasing focus on the lower end at the sacrifice of anybody who isn't on the lower end.
School created those faults in the first place. You want them cured, get them out of that environment.
> No I don't. Your schooled teenager has almost zero input into their curriculum. It is a false dichotomy that the only alternative is to entirely put it in their hands.
Where would you classify magnet programs? Mine let me max out on Advanced Placement classes (around 7 over 2 years, I think) and introduced me to FIRST Robotics, which led to a programming job while I was still in high school. (It was not the greatest or the highest-paying, and my output was probably what one might expect from the situation, but having it at all was great.) The effect was to get me into college with 44 credits under my belt, which is equivalent to over a year's worth of classes. I then ignored the freshman advisors' advice to take it easy the first semester in order to "adjust" so that I could follow through and actually graduate in 3 years. Obviously, my experience was not typical, but atypical students are the subject under discussion.
You write:
"The conviction that 'I am special' (even if you are, you're less special than you think)"
This applies to you as well, doesn't it? But then, the reasoning leads to infinite regression - you are not special, your advice is not special, no one's advice is special, therefore everyone can be ignored. In short, this bit of reasoning does not move the conversation forward.
If the phrase "You are not special" is suppose to imply "You not valuable" or "Your ideas are not valuable" then the same can be applied to everyone who posts here, in which case we must conclude that the conversation is trivial. That's fine, as far as it goes, but it is a fairly pointless road to travel. If no one here is special, then why do any of us bother to read Hacker News?
We could instead go the other direction - we could admit that the conversations on Hacker News are interesting precisely because the people who tend to show up here are interesting. Hacker News is a good place for the intellectually curious, and those who are thoughtful and who enjoy playing with new ideas. But then, to really engage the site, one would have to admit that some of the people on the site are really special, that, in fact, what makes Hacker News great is that it draws in so many people who are special.
Suggesting that the people here are not special leads to immediate irony.