... empire and oligarchy.
As a former science teacher I'm appalled that adolescents are chained to their seats by threats of punishment and failure as they are force-fed "facts" so they can pass bubble tests. The artists, authors, musicians, mathematicians and scientists who continue on to college and success seem to do so in spite of this rote training as adolescents, not because of it.
Self-discipline is obviously a required skill in any sort of education, but highly energetic adolescents really ought to be doing most of their geology and biology out in the field, their math and physics in robust well-equipped laboratories, and their art in messy well supplied studios.
Every field of human endeavor requires math, reading, and writing skills. Learning these skills ought to be encouraged by the natural curiosity of a child in whatever field of arts and sciences they are drawn to.
Actual physical accomplishment -- making things -- is an important part of the process. Building robots, painting pictures, writing and performing music, restoring wetlands, cooking, gardening... most anything.
I was a lucky kid. My parents are both artists who had day jobs that adequately supported their family. Our household was a very rich environment full of books and magazines, and plenty of interesting, unprogrammed things to do. I got decent grades in middle and high school, but I hated it so much I quit high school.
Curiously, of all my siblings, it's my sister and I, the two who quit high school, who went on to graduate from top-tier universities. Our other siblings went into business. Yes, they've made more money than us, but there were times they were extremely miserable too.
One of my siblings quit a high paying corporate executive position because the corporation was flying him all over North America but not leaving him any spare time to explore. They probably knew he'd be resigning when he started answering phone calls at two in the morning with, "Is anybody going to die? No? Call me in the morning." Sad to say, he probably got that from me and my wife. We both had jobs at the time where people could potentially die if we didn't leap right up out of bed. My wife still has a job like that. Our dogs freak out when she's on-call and her pager goes off. They can smell the stress.
My wife and I provided a rich environment for our own kids (minus most of the religious insanity I suffered as a kid) and they were straight-A students throughout high school, and accepted to excellent colleges. Our youngest will be graduating this year. But overall, I don't think their K-12 school education was optimal. But we did shield them from the worst of it, and thank goodness, schoolyard bullying is not tolerated the way it was when I was in school. No teacher or administrator ever told my kids to "man up," fight back, or that they were somehow attracting harassment and physical assaults. That happened to me almost every time I complained about bullying. All I really learned from it was not to complain and be invisible as I could. These "life-skills" were never beneficial to me, but possibly useful to a handful of soul-sucking and abusive employers I've suffered.
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