Kevin Simler

this is me too. i more or less really enjoyed myself! but i don’t think it’s a healthy system for most people. and i wonder about the ways it might have stunted me

My experiences differed *so much* by which school I think of.

Lower-middle class suburban public school (Grades 1-8): a near-complete waste of time. 20%-50% of the time learning, the rest waiting for peers to catch up. Probably a net good that they finally taught me to remember to bring my homework.

This is basically the downside scenario for school, I guess - that it is pointless structure without much learning

Catholic boys high school (Grades 9-12): academics up a level, and they made it easier for me to take advanced classes, but still not stretching my capabilities very much beyond ‘can you cover the boring classroom material faster’

Boarding school (postgrad year): describes briefly herehttps://twitter.com/dmcdougall/status/1124817465362534400?s=21 …

This was life changing and very challenging in all the best ways. To see the difference between what I had been trained to do and the level at which my peers were performing was revealing.

I think the key difference was that my prep school treated us like adults, in the sense that we could achieve things and participate in adult ways in the real world as well as the intellectual one.