X-post in Good Reads and Education?

I had a good experience.

But college was better. I really "found" myself during college.

I did not click on the link since I always have issues when I click on Huff Post. It freezes a lot when I visit there. So, not sure why HS made us a better person. I just wanted to share my experiences.

It didn't make me a worse person.

I was glad to get out. I know it was important, academically speaking it had very enriching moments, but socially I couldn't wait to get out. My life really took off and I felt so much better about myself after leaving and "joining the world", so to speak.

That fantasy scenario would have been nice, but that's wasn't my experience. In fact, it was pretty much the opposite. I'm sure that's the experience of lots of other people, too.

The only thing in high school that I learned about "character" was that too many kids came from homes where the value systems were seriously flawed, and school was merely a place where their flawed values could be put into action. And regarding 'respect for others', "people who are surrounded by highly educated people...are more trusting and tolerant in general than those who are surrounded by less educated people." Well, that assumes that high school is populated exclusively by young people who want to be educated, and who are eager to learn. The eternally financially-struggling public high school certainly has several of those types of students, but plenty of others for whom high school is a kind of day care center for juveniles.

Learned everything I learned in grade school. And my parents even sent me to a private high school. I got out, went to a public school, and said forget it.

I've never been that busy or active since. It was really a lot of fun despite the teen angst.

I don't remember anything especially character-building about it. I was just glad to get away.

As soon as I got in, I was counting down the minutes 'til I would get out.

Public high school certainly offered me a lot more than I took from it, that's certain.

I did like this bit of Jeffersonian policy laid out in the article...
"Jefferson defined six fundamental goals of a basic public education:

• "To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
• To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;
• To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
• To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
• To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;
• And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.”

Contracts. Morals. Duties. Rights. Order. Justice. Faithfulness. Diligence. The education Jefferson wanted the American system to dispense was, among other things, a moral education."

They were over doing it on the attempts to "build character". It can quickly become an Eric Cartman "respect mah authoritah" situation.

It cemented the "I gotta get out of this parochial backwater full of racist morons and find something REAL" concept.

Now middle school I could do without.