You are the kind of person for which school, especially schools like the one you attended, *least* fails. But that kind of person is one which least *needs* school. I’m confident you could have had much of the same experience doing anything with a group of similarly intelligent people.
I’ll grant that it’s possible and likely that you in fact did enjoy it.
You wrote (down-thread):
The claim is that the system is just terrible, for basically everyone, and that it would be best to just burn it down wholesale.
And that’s silly.
I think the claim *still* stands. You’re an outlier. You’re not a member of the set “basically everyone” and therefore hurting you or people like you to “just burn it down wholesale” is probably *still* warranted. Or are you claiming that your enjoyment of school, or anyone else’s, is sufficient to justify school in *exactly* the form it takes now (and at the same cost)?
You are the kind of person for which school, especially schools like the one you attended, least fails. But that kind of person is one which least needs school. I’m confident you could have had much of the same experience doing anything with a group of similarly intelligent people.
In my experience, this is diametrically false. The idea that any intelligent person is able to thrive academically, and make progress in the acquisition of academic knowledge, etc., in the absence of the sort of structure that school imposes, couldn’t be more wrong.
You’re not a member of the set “basically everyone”
Are the other three thousand people I went to school with also not a member of the set “basically everyone”? What about all the people who just didn’t make the cutoff for the entrance exam, or who could’ve made it in, but declined to apply or to accept, for other reasons[1], though they would’ve done as well as I did—are they also not members of the set “basically everyone”? Are you going to claim that most of them were more like Zvi than like me? But I’ve spoken with enough of my former classmates to make that claim unbelievable. Or do you simply exclude everyone above, say, +1.5 SD of intelligence, from “basically everyone”?
If your claim is “everyone with your aptitudes and mindset is irrelevant; we will happily harm you and your kind to benefit the rest”, well, I suppose that’s honest, in its own way. It also makes you my enemy, of course. Was it your intention to proclaim exactly this?
[1] Such as the long commute via public transport—not at all a trivial concern for the parents of a 12-year-old in New York City (especially a girl).
You are the kind of person for which school, especially schools like the one you attended, *least* fails. But that kind of person is one which least *needs* school. I’m confident you could have had much of the same experience doing anything with a group of similarly intelligent people.
I’ll grant that it’s possible and likely that you in fact did enjoy it.
You wrote (down-thread):
I think the claim *still* stands. You’re an outlier. You’re not a member of the set “basically everyone” and therefore hurting you or people like you to “just burn it down wholesale” is probably *still* warranted. Or are you claiming that your enjoyment of school, or anyone else’s, is sufficient to justify school in *exactly* the form it takes now (and at the same cost)?
In my experience, this is diametrically false. The idea that any intelligent person is able to thrive academically, and make progress in the acquisition of academic knowledge, etc., in the absence of the sort of structure that school imposes, couldn’t be more wrong.
Are the other three thousand people I went to school with also not a member of the set “basically everyone”? What about all the people who just didn’t make the cutoff for the entrance exam, or who could’ve made it in, but declined to apply or to accept, for other reasons[1], though they would’ve done as well as I did—are they also not members of the set “basically everyone”? Are you going to claim that most of them were more like Zvi than like me? But I’ve spoken with enough of my former classmates to make that claim unbelievable. Or do you simply exclude everyone above, say, +1.5 SD of intelligence, from “basically everyone”?
If your claim is “everyone with your aptitudes and mindset is irrelevant; we will happily harm you and your kind to benefit the rest”, well, I suppose that’s honest, in its own way. It also makes you my enemy, of course. Was it your intention to proclaim exactly this?
[1] Such as the long commute via public transport—not at all a trivial concern for the parents of a 12-year-old in New York City (especially a girl).