"In the fourth grade, I was told under no uncertain terms that Pluto was a planet. There were nine of them: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto. If you missed one of them on the exam, you'd be knocked down 11.1 repeating points. You could not get an A on this exam, if you did not know that Pluto was a planet. I was told that Christopher Columbus sailed on three ships to prove that the world was round. Under no uncertain terms were these stone cold facts.
In 2005, scientists decided that Pluto was not a planet. Over the past fifteen years I've heard six different stories about Christopher Columbus in my course of education, and I've gotten another one from the Discovery Channel, and yet another one from the internet that beckons the question of why we learned about Christopher Columbus at all. Or, if we must, why didn't we learn about the diseases that he managed to spread among the Native American people. These uncertain facts were under no certain terms: lies.
And I'm not talking about the fact that every part of science is only the best we know now. I'm talking about the pretension that what we know now is the absolute truth. And I might not know if schools still teach kids that Pluto is a planet, but it's easy to believe when they still use globes that contain the USSR and text books from 1984.
To this day, all of my knowledge of Pluto is irrelevant, and I've never cared about Christopher Columbus. While they told me it was important, they never told me why, as if it was implicitly implied or some kind of in-joke that I wasn't allowed to get. The word curriculum comes from the Latin word, "curriculum" which means race track. This etymology is strange, but it makes a lot of sense.
Every other year in an American school I learned the American revolution. As a young child it got watered down to the point where I didn't care, and every time I got to that point in the race track I had already seen the scenery so I didn't care. The knee-jerk defense: do you want to tell developing little kids about all of the casualties? And to that I say, if time is so limited where we need to cut down art and gym to prep for standardized tests, why are we wasting time with the same repetition? Why are we complaining about kids getting hooked on drugs while doping them up with Ritalin?
I didn't learn much in school. I knew how to read before I attended kindergarten. While attending kindergarten I learned that I got to go to the play area when I was finished with my work. I learned to cheat at the race, cutting corners hoping that I wouldn't be seen. I learned mathematics on my own because I had teachers that couldn't convey basic math to a slightly disabled child. In second grade, I learned to talk to myself because no one else was willing to. In third grade I learned to dodge spit balls and always check my back for kick me signs.
I repeated the third grade to get away from the bullies that had plagued me from the start after an incident where my bully decided to pepper spray me in the face. My eyes were watering and I told the teacher watching the schoolyard, and I was ignored. And I saw how the world worked. My parents constantly told me to "ignore it" when I talked about my bullies or my siblings or any other percieved injustice. I didn't directly tell my parents about this incident, because the best way to solve your problems under no uncertain terms was to ignore your problems.
In fourth grade, I learned that Pluto was under no uncertain terms, a planet. I grew a distate for grades. Despite not being able to see mine until the fifth because children are not to be trusted about things that they are not allowed too understand, I constantly found myself fighting back against them, or ignoring them. I found myself nicking time like an abused child nicking food from the kitchen, savoring the moment and tolerated the regret that came later. The regret was branded into me with a leather belt, and to this day I feel uncomfortable when I see one of them in the room.
The regret was pierced into my soul and my psyche one hapless day. I remember a lot about it, and I don't remember much at all. I remember it started at five in the evening with dinner. I was asked why my grades were terrible. I was asked again and again, and no answer would suffice. My step-father, a well-built man with an intimidating stature. He slammed on the table until this boy was lost in buckets of tears. This boy who was so socially insecure he couldn't tell his family that the house was on fire. This boy who was recently bullied by children and still bullied by adults. They took the food and drink sooner or later, and the boy gave many answers—from "I don't understand the material" (which was an unsatisfactory answer) to "I don't care." The only satisfactory answer was "because I'm lazy." That answer came about at 8 PM and the food was returned, cold and salvaged by flies.
On that day, I learned that college was the course set out for me. I was a kid who didn't know what outfit I'd wear that weekend and the seemed that my life until I was 60 or 70 or 80 was essentially planned out. And it was a route I was expected to walk on my own. Birthday money and award money or any other piece of luck that happened to come my way was saved in my "college fund." That college fund never existed. I grew problems with money. Money that I worked for in a paper route was stolen from me, up to 200 dollars at a time. I spent the money before it could be stolen, habits that still exist in me to this day.
In fifth grade I learned that school was hypocritical. Beyond my grades, making friends was the biggest concern from my educational system. It was normal, and normal was good. The second I had my friends, school did everything in its power to keep us apart. Friends that I did not want to come over to my home for fear that my parents would snap or try to make me feel like an idiot in order to motivate me for something I was not mentally prepared to do.
My step father's favorite tactic to make me feel like an idiot was to set me a task that I had never done before with no instruction, and then berate me when I managed to screw it up.
In sixth grade, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Like every preteen-young adolescent boy answers, I wanted to be a game designer. As I played Spyro the Dragon the thousandth time, I was coming up with stories to string each level together. I played Age of Empires II with strategies that conquered all I faced. I played Baldur's Gate and Silent Hill and learned how to structure a narrative. This wasn't realistic.
You see, all of my life the people who "had plans for me" were leading me away from things. Never towards something. Nothing that cultivated my interests. They just wanted to go to college and after that, screw you. By the time my interests finally were of consideration, my only interest was to avoid going to college. At points I'd specifically check out jobs that didn't require degrees. People kept saying that education was the key to the lock of the best jobs out there and I ended up seeing it as the lock itself.
In the entirety of seventh grade, I learned literally nothing. My seventh grade math class "taught" us about rounding—the same thing my second grade little sister was learning. My seventh grade English class was teaching us what a noun was. The parent-teacher meeting at the end of report card season that year finally had a definitive answer. Why wasn't I doing anything in class? Because I didn't fucking care. Instead I was cultivating my interest in writing. At the time I was coming up with nothing more than rip-offs of the Hobbit, or Silent Hill, or whatever I was in to, but it grew like a weed much to the gardener's chagrin.
In eighth grade, I learned about standardized tests, specifically the MCAS. It was the judge that determined the winners and the losers of the race track. This was the only time that school confused me. Throughout my education, I knew the answers: they were all in the text book. Later on in life, I realized that you cannot learn something new if you do not become confused. Confusing gets you to seek answers that can't be found in a text book.
For the 10th grade MCAS, if you did not pass, you would not graduate from High School. You could take it many times, but you could not graduate. I've seen promising teens and kids give up because they were piss poor test takers. They might have been scientists or philosophers or politicians leading us on to world peace if they didn't lock up under test anxiety made a million times worse (roughly estimated and accurately rounded) with the prospect of their future hanging in the balance.
Never once in my life have I studied for a test. It was always a waste of time, and as the years went by, I was able to retain information the first time that I heard it. If school was doing its job properly, then this is a method that they'd encourage. The way a test works is that you do not take in the information that's told to you because you're passively writing notes. You do that instead of processing it. Then you cram the night before the test, and the next day after the test (or sometimes, five minutes before the test) you forget everything you've learned. If kids and teens actually retained the information in tests that they've learned, no one would ever have to study for a final exam.
The MCAS was a tool to see if children were learning properly. That was the idea. Instead of the bow and the arrow, it became the target and everyone missed their marks, learning rote. Even if it could be retained, it was never given any context because that was never on the exam. Because students didn't take this seriously, the consequence of not passing High School was added.
This standardized test was to make sure that everyone was on the same level. I passed it my first time without studying. Meanwhile kids ten times smarter than I, ten times wiser, could not pass the test despite studying for weeks and taking the test upwards of ten, maybe twenty times. That's when the confusion came in. How could something made for everyone be so incredibly unfair? Strange how the No Child Left Behind Act was doing nothing other, in my perspective, then preventing well-deserving students from graduating because they had trouble taking a test that they'd never need to do in the real world. In most cases, these students could make up testwork through homework or other less stressful methods of education, but working harder doing all of the extra credit because of something you cannot control is apparently grounds for failure.
I was far from the model student. I wasn't a delinquent, but the only time I ever got detention was because I didn't turn in my homework. After a gave up on this educational bullshit, my parents were still just as harsh at me. When your parents keep demanding you to move further and that further is constantly out of reach, you realize that you'll never reach their standard and soon you'll stop trying. I got the exact same response. It just took less effort, and to this day I no longer speak to either of them.
In ninth grade I wanted to kill myself. Every friend I had made was taken from me by this system that demanded I had. The only thing I distinctly remember learning about was algebra, something that's only seen real-world practicality twice in my entire life. One was helping my younger siblings with their algebra homework, and two was one of the worst tabletop RPG's of all time: FATAL. And one of the many criticisms lobbied at the game was that the algebra was too complex for a mainstream audience. And the mainstream we're talking about here is a tabletop role-playing game audience. These people are constantly doing math, adding up the roll of a d20 to their dexterity modifier and rolling two d8s, but because they missed the roll, they need to divide that score by two. And they get to do this once per turn.
During this time, my psyche almost collapsed in itself. I don't know if it was stress or hormones or some combination of both. Due to my Asperger's Syndrome, no one ever noticed how sad I was. I couldn't make my expression sad and when I tried people thought I was tired. I was tired. I was tired of life. Simple berating run around your head and make you think that your parents don't love you anymore, not helping was the fact that this fact was almost always up for debate.
By this time, my parents had given up on my grades and were constantly on my sister about it. They had people diagnose her from everything to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia when she started acting out. When she finally got away from people drowning her to do better in school she started making honor roll, doing extra-curriculars and is now in college working to be a pharmacist, while working a counter job at a pharmacy.
There was only one creature that I felt loved me at this time, and that was my dog. This is the same Patrick, who died a couple of years back. And under no uncertain terms do I consider this a fact: that dog saved my life. It wasn't that he loved me. It was that I was able to love him back. The only thing keeping me from pulling the final string was the worry of what these terrible people who do to him once I was gone. To my step-father at least, he was a waste of space. Strange how he accidently sat on this waste of space for half of a 90 minute movie without noticing what he was doing.
In tenth grade, I learned how to deal with people. I followed my interest of being a game designer to a games' club. My mother literally laughed. Not only did it become my solace from the world, it gave me a sense of comradery that the educational system stole from me. I learned to play Chrononauts, Settlers of Catan, Dungeons and Dragons, Risk and several of its spin-offs, but the main draw was Dungeons and Dragons. It was fourth edition. I decided to play a bard, and in that edition, they are considered "leaders." Even when I wasn't playing a bard though, people looked to me for the strategies I had developed playing games like Age of Empires II. I essentially learned to be a leader. Technically I learned it in school, since that's where the club took place, but it was outside of education.
And slowly I grew more reasons for living. I did this on my own, and I'm very lucky that I was hit with the events and opportunities that let me do so. People have given up on life, become shut-ins, or even committed suicide because of educational demands without educational guidance. You can always rely on your parents to give you the destination, but never the car when it comes to education. You may be fortunate enough to pay for you to go to education, but they'll never help you get good grades; just berate you when you don't.
Possibly due to the stolen money or the jading, I've come up with a strange morality. If a parent wants to go to college but isn't willing to pay for what THEY want, there's something immoral going on. Maybe they'll hit karma when they co-sign for a student loan, and there perfect little kid goes to get the perfect degree whose field has entirely dried up, and the student finds themselves unable to even get a job at McDonalds because they're now overqualified and the manager there fears that she'll run off the second something worth paying off that crushing debt comes up. When the shit hits the fan, their umbrella of a child won't protect them completely when the loan starts eating at their social security and retirement. One thing I always wanted to be able to say, is that my parents or even my grandparents told me never to buy something you weren't sure if you could pay for. One thing I want to do is become successful unrelated to college, attend a university and get a degree, crumple it up and throw it in my mother's face. She's the one who wanted it, she can keep it. But for now, it's just a fantasy.
In the tenth grade, I discovered the internet and the scary prospects of college. The scenario I presented to you is as hypothetical as me getting a job that I'd enjoy and make me over a million dollars. I can't hold onto one-hundred dollars for long. With a million, provided I wouldn't always be working and never getting time to enjoy it, I'd be seeing the world, fat as fuck, and dead broke as I am now. I don't measure my success in money, most likely because my step-father always measured his success in money. And nothing about that man was successful. Literally pregnancy-trapped into a marriage with three kids he had no qualms with saying that he did not want in a house owned by his wife's parents.
These facts confused me, and so I began to learn. I dove into my own history and put this story together many times, but I wasn't concerned with the past. I was concerned with the future. High school is a roller coaster ride, and looking into the future I saw the point where everything ran off the rails into the abyss. Graduation was two years away, or I could sell my values and my soul to extend the track for four more years before it lead to the same result. If I didn't figure out what I wanted to spend the next forty years doing, I'd be absolutely screwed.
Throughout 11th and 12th grade, I learned many things. I took out many different extra-circulars, even ones that remotely interested me. I learned to cook, learned about psychology and sociology, video editing (yes I actually took a class, two actually, on video editing), web design, networking and PC repair. Some of the stuff stuck, and some of it I don't remember. I was finally able to learn on my own, and I finally got skills that I use in my every day life.
I heard so many things about college. Guidance counselors told me that it was good for meeting people, even though I barely socialized at all. If I went to college I would have met maybe ten cool people who I would have forgotten afterwards. Because I didn't go to college, I speak to literally 100,000 people on a near-weekly basis and meet new people all the time. I talk to people who helped pull me further out of my depression as I discovered YouTube shortly before my 16th birthday, and I've actually been able to make true, true friends.
If I went to college straight out of high school, I would have become an English teacher. A year later, a Psychology. A year later, Game Design. And now, animation. Money always comes back into play. Most people don't want to become businessmen and women figuring out how to water down the works of artists or screw over consumers, lawyers shouting at people back and forth in a courtroom while being a target for every hack comedian on SNL, or a doctor dealing with the thought of maybe being able to save that patient you lost the last night and worrying how predisposed your son or daughter is to leukemia. However, being an English Teacher or a Psychologist becomes a paradox: why would you pay for something that does not give you a return on your investment. No one becomes an English Teacher to turn a profit, but you need to attend an expensive college if you want to actually get a job doing it. And that's for people who have the interest stick. The wise parent will tell you to focus on the education of your business or law degree because a passion project very rarely needs a degree. It just needs passion and talent, and meeting the right person and not pissing them off. My favorite person in the world, Weird Al, is the world's greatest parody artist. He has a degree in architecture.
Because of my Asperger's Syndrome, every couple of years or months or weeks I find a new thing that I want to do with the rest of my life, and this was always the case. Even if that was the case, I can't understand how neurotypical people are willing to do the exact same thing that's not their core passion for 40 years of their life, and paying for the privilege to do so for at least a quarter of that. But maybe I'm just thinking too far into the future; the thing that school and society has begged me to do since I was ten-years-old.
The world is changing every day, but I've never learned about anything past World War II in any history class. And despite 9/11 now being in the text books, kids will never reach that or anything else that has shaped the world they directly live in now, thus making the connection and learning why they're learning history, because they're too busy learning the Great Depression for the third or fourth time. My high school's curriculum literally demanded us get only a single semester of world history, but two full years of American history. I understand the patriotism, but any patriotism shown by that decision shoots itself in the foot by making the implicit claim that more has happened in the past two-hundred years in one country than the rest of the world in at least 4,000.
A school that's designed to prepare for the future constantly focuses on the past while sidestepping the finer details that take more thought and prove that no real conflict is as one-sided as the books they forced us to read while never focusing on the future. The internet is as significant an invention as the printing press, and concepts like net neutrality, concepts that allow it to exist, must be explained by internet comedians.
They expected me to figure out what to do with life, while shielding me from 99.9% of it. Everything of value, I've learned on my own design, outside of the school curriculum. Except for Pluto. I learned that Pluto is the 9th planet from the sun."
