High School, College, And Real Knowledge

During my first and last internship,
a brainless CEO walked up to me and asked.

Who do you want to be?
what do you want to do.

While I still had difficulty speaking,
I could have answered.

But instead,
I mumbled something about cutting paper.

The woman in control of the internship programme,
suspected that I knew perfect English.

And me not communicating back with the CEO,
was all the evidence she needed.

Half way through High School,
a strange award ceremony appeared.

Kid sitting next to me laughed that he got an award,
it was nice, but dishonest.

Yup, as you can guess,
I was one of the few people that did not get an award.

Sometime before the ceremony I brainlessly read some Shakespeare,
which I later dismissed, as it was not a good way to learn English.

And I am with Mr. Vonnegut on the quality of Shakespeare's stories,
I think he was capable of more.

Even before that, I was asked to give my opinion on new teacher hires,
I used the residual dictionary from the ongoing conversations in the room.

Even I noticed how well I worded myself,
but in her eyes this did me no favors.

I was right about the new teacher not being a good fit,
but deep down I wished her all the luck.

So the teacher wasn't aware of residual dictionaries,
and relative ease communicating within a preset context.

I was going to be taught a lesson by not receiving,
a fake award for fake progress.

My scrambled reply to the CEO was rooted in the way he treated me,
the truth was he didn't deserve a response.

I was already familiar with DOS, GEOS, Mac OS, Windows 3, and maybe Win95,
and could program a couple of flavors of BASIC.

I was told not to enter the software library room,
and my knowledge of commuters was ignored.

I could have learned HyperCard and HyperTalk in a week flat,
I could have learned image editing, very quickly too.

Instead my computers skills were used to copy a phone book,
from paper to a Mac OS, it was awful, and it was boring.

And I felt forced to remain silent,
as I could have gotten kicked off the internship.

Students were forced,
to participate in for a grade.

Then I got to clean the printers,
and clean dust off of shelves.

The CEO approached me,
as I was cutting paper to size.

The question of "What do you want to do (in life)?",
seemed genuine.

But during an unpaid internship,
the first thing that a CEO has to do is pay the interns, at least minimum wage.

And minimum wage would not impress me,
I'd see it as a formality.

He had several free workers,
and acted like he was doing us a favor.

We were forced to be there to get a passing grade,
and he was getting free labor.

And those who kissed his ass were promised a job,
though the company did not have any paid High School kids as employees.

That promise might have been tied to graduating High School,
this was not an new company, and companies like that last ten years on average.

There was an enormous gap between what a High School student knew about computers,
and what was needed, to be useful at an advertising agency.

I remember trying to explain to one of the smartest and classiest students,
that she needs to close the shape she drew on the screen before she tried to use the fill tool.

This is the only time that a person looked at me with disgust,
and she also convinced her friend to look at me with disgust too.

And I myself remember being surprised that the bucket always filled my screen,
this was some years back on a Commodore 64, and I quickly figured it out.

I told the internship programme manager,
that I am cleaning office, and I need to transfer out of the internship.

I ended up tidying things up in the High School office,
but there was nothing meaningful to learn there.

Even if there was a HyperCard and modern Graphic Design class without pre-requisite,
all that would represent in the High School context is a threat to my GPA.

The message is simple, no graduation no job,
and any advanced classes pose a threat to graduation especially for someone who is still learning English.

The safe route is to learn at home eliminating all the risks,
and then take the class.

For a small number of subjects this is reasonable,
but in my context the price of the Apple Computer, and the necessary software was out of this world.

I later had a Pentium 90, with a $360, 1GB hard drive,
but I needed and Apple, two commuters, and that was not possible.

A lot of good ideas only turn out to be just 10% or less of the whole,
the teachers were 10%, the award ceremonies were 10%, the internship was 10%.

And everyone involved gets away with it,
they get away with not doing 90% of their job.

They only do enough to look like they are working,
the award ceremonies and graduations are basically fake.

Then, my GPA didn't even matter, as I dropped out of High School,
as when the teacher says that "Weed In An Herb", you get up and leave.

That kind of thing is only the tip of the iceberg,
and I was right.

Later I got scooped up to get my diploma from Adult Ed,
graduating six months early with extra credits.

But at this point, I felt that the Principals knew,
that failing to get a diploma from their dog and pony shows, actually ruins lives.

And it actually felt like it was less pretending and more learning,
but one would expect that from Adult Ed.

This is not how schools are meant to work,
in fact they appear to be interfering with real education.

Because you can't learn for real, in your own way, in your own sequence, at your own pace,
you have to do cookie cutter text book stuff, which is just one of a dozen if not a hundred ways of learning.

And the truth comes out when it comes to programming languages,
as real results are required.

When learning math on paper,
it is all abstract, and any Joe Slick can just preted to teach it by following a lecture program.

So, I needed to be learning HyperCard in a class that does not threaten my diploma,
and later free classes where I could learn more about programming.

The local College was charging $500 dollars,
for a basic VisualBasic 6 class where I already figure everything out on my own.

I remember teacher looking at me to see if some of the things he said were correct,
he learned from a book, he might not have been writing any programs at all.

I also learned Java before taking Java,
which took 20 some hours coming from ActionScript.

And I got a 99 on the final, because the test was actively trying to trick students,
being focused on a perfect score I messed up one mangled obscure question.

We have no choice but to learn on our own,
the schools are not quite interested in actually teaching us.

The GPA must never get in the way of real education,
and that can only mean self education.

The schools work in such a way that it is better to learn first,
and then take the classes for a diploma.

And by learning, I don't mean reviewing the text books that the Java class uses for example,
I mean mastering the programming language on your own.

Writing some programs, publishing couple of Android Apps to really soak up the language,
and then taking the class, and using real knowledge to overpower the nonsense of the class, text book and the test.

In many situation that means asking if Organized Education is worth the trouble and the debt,
if the alternative of becoming an Entrepreneur and continuing to self educate with multiple little side projects and start-ups in not the wiser choice.

Real education is absolutely the most important thing in the world,
without it we will be making decisions based on wrong information.

I think the urgency of coherent powerful self education,
is such that the question of organized education is more about entertainment; isn't that what a Dog And Pony show is?