RE: Drop Out of High School to Succeed in Life, Part 1
I think we could solve a lot of the problems we see in higher education if people could get a refund for their degrees. Then they would only teach useful shit. Brick and mortar high schools will be gone in one or two more generations, they are too expensive and inefficient and dangerous, completely outmoded industrial age anachronisms. On the other hand I read a lot of books and learned a lot of useful things in high school that I otherwise would not have.
You are further grouped into "cliques" based on interests (in the best case scenario) or personality attributes (in the worst). Jocks, nerds, theater kids, cheerleaders, misfits. You will be categorized by the second month of freshman year, and then good luck trying to align with a new clique. High schools are full of shallow, average people. And for the large part, it's school that made them that way in the first place.
What's sad is that because of the internet and social media kids make their identities in high schoolor younger and then those follow them instead of being able to shed them when they finish high school, as evidenced by the large community of adult Juggalos.
Agreed, college tuitions should be refundable.
How do you know you wouldn't have, though? If your whole life was built around exploration and self-directed learning, it's likely you still would have stumbled upon the same books and different opportunities to learn the same useful things. Or other ones that made just as much of an impression on you. And you could have done it without the four years of bullshit.
Where do they come from? Is ICP even still a thing???
I doubt I would have stumbled across free access to fully outfitted darkrooms and excellent free wood and metal shops and materials or a lot of the lessons from history and law and psychology I was introduced to. I may never have actually built a pickle lamp or tesla coil or wind tunnel or air cannon. I would never have gotten to meet a lot of the friends I met in high school. Adolescence is a tumultuous time no matter what you do, I hated school but I wouldn't be being honest if I said I didn't learn anything or experience anything there that I would not have otherwise.
My point exactly, ICP should have ceased to be a thing a long time ago and yet it persists because people are locked into their personas from high school by social media. Instead we have this: