Except when I applied to college as a high school senior, nobody has ever asked to see my high school diploma, let alone my “permanent record” or my transcripts. Given all the pressure and importance bestowed on attendance and good grades for 12 years of mandatory education, you’d think someone might have looked at least once.
Nope. You would be wrong.
Now that I think about it, I believe 99% of what I used in my life I learned by the 8th grade. What I leaned in high school was useful for college only.
By the 8th grade, I was a voracious reader, a decent writer, excellent with math including algebra 2 and had solid reasoning skills.
In high school I learned:
- BASIC programming (useless)
- Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus (only useful for college calculus)
- Biology I &II, Chemistry, Physics (took all of these in college, the high school prep was a waste of time).
- 4 years of English (I did read some books I’d never have read on my own so that broadened my cultural literacy and made me better at Trivial Pursuit. Otherwise it was a 4 year long repetition of nouns, verbs, adjectives and predicates).
- Gym class – Taught me absolutely nothing about health and fitness.
- Health Class – taught by the gym teacher – even worse than gym.
- Ceramics – this was a welcome break to the tedium of boring classes.
- Social Studies/ History – Absolutely useless. Learned nothing new about history until I was in college.
It got me thinking, why is a high school diploma so valuable?
For me, I don’t think it was. The socialization part of high school did help me learn how to be around a lot of people I did not like. I learned how to handle bullies, distractions, a$$holes (extending what I learned through the first 8 years of school).
I made some good friends. I learned how to give teachers exactly what they wanted in order to make good grades.
But I could have learned all of those social skills on the job.
As long as I was able to read, write, comprehending do basic math, personally I think I would have been better off in some kind of apprenticeship program vs. 4 years of high school.
Remarkably, in my professional life I had numerous employees and colleagues who had BS/BA degrees and Master’s degrees who could not do basic math, write a coherent paragraph or follow basic instructions.
So clearly, more years of formal education doesn’t always equate to more learning.
It’s an interesting conundrum and thought experiment. Since nobody asked me and I have no kids in school, my opinion on the matter of course means nothing.