or talking, quietly, with one of my friends, one of the cleverer or funnier people in class. at one point i was drawing up, kind of, machine geometries for imagined fusion reactors. there was a spelling test and they were like “spelling test” and i said “can’t you see i’m busy”
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they let me get away with it. and the class kept going in jr high, it was not good. the social scene blew up / collapsed as people moved away and new schools merged, and i had a punitive teacher who really hated being corrected or asked questions. she kept giving me detention…
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actually it wasn’t just me. she had tenure, and she was infamous. she would give so much detention that the detention population would exceed her home room population. she would give detention to people in the hallway walking to class.
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anyway, after the nth time this happened, i was like, this is bullshit, i’m locked in here, but i wonder if the doors are actually physically unlocked. so i waited till she was distracted and then slipped out, and checked the doors. they were unlocked! i bolted, hid behind a tree
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and then walked home. my parents, ex world traveling hippies, did not send me back. they decided i didn’t have to, i was ahead a year anyway, and that i was just going to school for recess (for friends, essentially), anyway, a function it no longer provided
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at some point we found out that the tests they had been hiding from a couple weeks before i quit said i was in the 99.97th percentile as scored for uni entrants, or whatever, so we were like, huh, maybe i should just go to university i was too young for the GED, but not the SAT!
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before that, school was books, essays, horseback riding, 3d modeling and programming class at the community college. and lots of videogames; even making some with map editors and engines, little things
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i can’t imagine the level of checked out i would be if i had to suffer through 7-12 at the traditional pace. it is almost unimaginable. like a prison type experience, maybe. this is literally the time you have maximum neurons and are pruning them, and synapses. use it or lose it
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the brain damage inflicted on young people who are forced to waste their talents on doing the exact same thing as their age peers at the same rate is unimaginable. it is maybe the costliest thing that we do to human capital. and the fact is everyone has talents & interests
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Replying to @DanielleFong
I think it might be more damaging to look at kids and think “human capital”
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noted, a worthy edit when twitter allows it
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