12th
Here’s an excellent write up by Newt Gingrich on the “experiment” of adolescence. I’ve been advocating this for years. As a bright kid, I was bored to death by school, and saw the futile nature of the “learn by rote” education system we have in place from a very early age. I decided to drop out, take some college courses, and start working instead of going along with the the system. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I never viewed this as one of them.
The fact that you come out of 18 years of schooling with no vocational preperation, no real readiness to enter the world, is a tragedy. We treat children as children far too long, and as a result we artificially restrain their development. Boredom is deadly to an intelligent teenager, and even those put on an enhanced track usually just end up with more busy work. The critical thinking and troubleshooting skills that make a person truly invaluable to organization’s later in life are abandoned in place of a system that does nothing but enforce rote memorization.
Dropout rates are at an all time high. We don’t need to throw more money at the education system (That’s been proven to be ineffective). We need complete reform and a reduction in the scope of the public education system to have any chance of regaining our status as an educated nation (While avoiding high suicide rates seen in Japan from enforcing even more significant busy work)
