This Thing Called High School
Two weeks ago, I wrote my final board exam—woohoo, I’m done with high school. And I realized I’ve ranted to so many people about how flawed the education system is, but have never really sat down and analyzed it on paper.
I meant to publish this post last weekend, but I was tying up loose threads of a year-long pursuit. Enjoyable stuff. Also, I’ve finally exited whatever phase the past few months were, and now seem to be in a "growth phase” again after years. Yay! Point is, I now like writing again—so you can expect some consistency in posts here.
Note: more ramble-y than usual. Tread with care.
Let’s start with what is broadly agreed upon: the education system truly sucks. Everyone knows that something is wrong. Politicians blame it on the teachers (“higher standards!”), teachers blame it on the government (“we’re so underpaid”); the rest of the adults all gang together and blame it on social media, children, teachers, and about a dozen other things.
But all of them agree that something has gone horribly wrong.
The most unpopular group in any school are the nerds. Teachers are uniformly hated. Think about how unnatural this is—the most ostracized class in the place for learning are the people who like learning. There is something horribly wrong with that.
For the masses in India, the dream of education is a long-promised wand of salvation—and now that education is (relatively) prevalent, they’re dismayed to find out that it very often does not work. Lakhs of money and a third of life put into something and the fresh graduate hangs around miserably in his parents’ home—there is something horribly wrong with that.
Teaching is often promoted as a noble job—and it is. But this whitewashing cannot distract us from the fact that teachers are very often the failures of the very system they’re upholding.
This is not always true, of course—I’ve been taught by amazing teachers who genuinely love what they do and wanted to always teach. But generally speaking, teachers aren’t teachers because of a childhood dream.
In India, BSc degrees are (generally) taken by people who don’t perform very well in the 12th standard—a first “failure”. After that, the best of the BSc graduates go to work for companies, or study abroad. It is the people who “fail” yet again who compromise for teaching. The people you’re entrusting your children’s future with are the very people you—and they—are telling your children not to be. There is something horribly wrong with that.
To quote from a great essay: ironically,
The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right.
The (Seemingly) Good Parts
Rant, rant. But if a system has existed for hundreds of years it must have something that’s working. Why is education popularly seen as a good thing?
Historically, education was seen as a thing of the elite—and the masses tend to thirst what the elites have, while grossly overestimating their actual utility (expensive cars, owning a home, and foreign vacations are examples that come to mine). And education is strongly correlated with wealth and “rising in life”—things everyone wants.
But these are means to another end. What the masses want from the education system is undisputed—money, food on the table. But what should it be? What is the education system actually for? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Ironically, most educators I’ve talked with seem to agree that the primary function of the education system is not education (at least as defined conventionally). It’s not about learning facts or gaining knowledge. It’s about the other skills that come in the pursuit of knowledge.
Some are obvious. The skill to learn quickly, to work hard, to achieve goals and the ability to “progress” through life like you progress through school. Other ones may be more subtle: the education system acts as a social conditioner; imbibing not just the values and beliefs of the local population but how to behave. How to stay out of trouble, how to deal with those above and below you in political hierarchies. How to get attuned to life. When to ask questions, and when not to.
One interesting thing is that the skills being taught aren’t necessarily moral. Students aren’t gaining the philosophically correct ideas (it doesn’t matter what you think they are). They’re gaining the ideas that work. This is a bit disturbing, as embedding ethics into children is seemingly a top adult priority—but it’s also quite smart. The world isn’t moral, and winning (again, define it how you like) often requires not principled, but practical, ideas. Evolution, the basis for most working human systems, doesn’t care about democracy or human rights. It just wants you to keep your nose out of danger.
The modern education system accomplishes this quite well, and without the (admittedly ridiculous) setup of school, I think young adults would find it significantly harder to navigate the convoluted schemes of humanity.
What’s more, schools provides convention; a defined path to travel by. While it is a modern cliche to attack conformity, it is often ignored that anti-conformity is a lonely and enormously harsh road to travel in. And we certainly shouldn’t be forcing people onto it if they don’t want it.
All of this section could be summarized with students are taught to shut up and obey. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. It sounds horrible to me, but perhaps I’m missing something.
To me, the most useful part of the education system is this: it instills hard work and the pursuit of mastery. The destination itself might be pointless, but the pursuit—more precisely, the skill of pursuing difficult things—are what matter.
Many rejectors of the modern education system attack it for encouraging “mugging up” over “natural aptitude”. While I agree with the criticism of thoughtless memorization, natural aptitude is hand wave-y and quite irrelevant in the real world. Nobody cares how talented you are if you can’t utilize that talent well. So it’s about working hard—and the education system measures that rather well.
So when people criticize companies for not rejecting the IIT + Harvard trope, what they’re ignoring is that it isn’t about the brand—it’s about what students had to do to attain the brand. It isn’t about IIT (I myself am no fan, did not write the JEE)—it’s about the the idea that excellence is a general skill, and IITians are very good at excellence. People who excel in one field are more likely than the “average person” to excel in another—completely unrelated—field. And academia gives you a structured way to measure excellence.
Not only is it structured, I think it’s relatively meritocratic. Yes, well-performing students tend to be “naturally" better—but as they go on to higher levels of education, they aren’t scoring well because of natural aptitude—they aren’t scoring well because of the hours of consistent effort put into it. I genuinely think if people truly want to excel in academia, it’s not that difficult.
I’m part of the nerd gang, always have been—so this may well be a privileged opinion of a person who got very lucky with his genetics and parents. But what is undeniable is that compared to other forms of measured excellence, the education system is an excellently fair tool. Think of most real world measures of success—they involve a tremendous amount of luck. Businesses rise and fall with luck, fame shimmers and fades with luck, the reason the adult world is so scary to me is the sheer amount of randomness involved everywhere.
Compared to the real world, the education system is very controlled system: your output is very strongly proportional to your input. And for potential employers, it is your input that matters. IIT grads aren’t glorified because they can solve physics equations quickly, but because they’re (generally) extremely good at working hard, working efficiently, weathering roadblocks, and getting to the top. And that is what employers—and everyone else—wants.
What I Want
Well, so that’s a lot of things that are good about the system. But the point of this article is that I’m not happy, at all.
I spent six weeks last year in IISc, as part of this math camp called PROMYS. It was the best six weeks in my high school career.
Everyday we’d get a problem set with around a dozen questions on advanced math. No textbooks, no internet—we just had to solve as many as we wanted.
PROMYS is how I think high school should be. Completely exploration based. Freedom to choose tangents, the time to work, the way of working. An insanely talented and motivated peer group. Professors who pushed us in the right direction, not force-feeding facts. Exams—but no marks, just to discover gaps in your learning.
For a long time, my sole criticism of the education system that it doesn’t prepare people for real-world jobs. And that’s a valid (and important) point. But today I have a different opinion. This is such an ugly way to look at learning.
So, for example, take math. Math is a form of art. It’s exploration. Science, too, for all its utility—is about exploration, about thinking, about pattern-finding, critical thinking. These aren’t just “21st century skills”—these are the skills that make us human. You can’t force these skills, and no popular modern system of education inculcates these. Reducing learning—an inherently qualitative process—to a quantitative report card makes it horribly repulsive and inaccessible to most humans.
People (including my past self) see the education system purely as a means to money. And I feel uncomfortable criticizing that, as it reeks of privilege—but I truly do wish education wasn’t seen just as a means to another end. Knowledge is beautiful, and is worth it in itself. That’s what a good childhood should include! Tons of curiosity based learning without having to think about how it relates to money later on (marks/grades, keep in mind, are largely a stand-in for future money potential).
I don’t know what to change. I haven’t read or experienced enough to propose a comprehensive new system (though I certainly hope that I will in the future, and dozens of people smarter than me already have good proposals).
I do know that it isn’t about changing test format, or reducing memorization. Or adding more PE periods, or making learning “more hands-on”.
No—the fundamental premise of the modern education system the widespread enforcement of a very specific type (academic) of intelligence. And it’s a baseless premise.
We have a weird hierarchy of subjects—with medicine and engineering at the top, humanities near the bottom, and the athletic ones lunatics doomed to hell. Art, sports, and almost anything apart from academia is either dismissed or condemned. People look at me with a mixture of judgment and shock when I tell them I’ll be pursuing politics, and not engineering. My friends—happy, hopeful, people—had their interests—in music, in cricket, in math research—crushed.
There is no reason why the system can’t serve these people too. Sports can measure excellence just as well as academia can’t; it can imbibe everything the current system does (including, haha, the ability to game your way through life).
This premise isn’t just baseless—it’s evil. These are human beings, crushed into a mold they do not fit, trying but failing, their self-esteem slowly draining. It’s sickening. And it’s saddening that more people are not speaking about it.
I don’t know what exactly to change, but here are some ideas.
I wish the education system was more expansive. Math and science aren’t the only thing that matter. Even if explained in an interesting way, even if , sometimes people just don’t like it. And that’s okay! Children almost always like something a lot (not adults—they’ve often forgotten)—and a systematic way of encouraging that is better for them and, by extension, better for the human race.
I wish academia was optional (it legally is, but if you want to be hired, you basically need a college degree). You likely will dismiss this as a the rambling of an extremist freedom-preacher, but think a bit: academia is not the best way to prepare people for careers. If someone wants to pursue careers, let them get real world experience—not spend eight hours cooped up. If someone (like me) wants to spend hours poring over books, then let them. If they want to start a business, let them.
The common argument against this is that children will “waste their time” if given freedom. But how is the current system better? How is enforced memorization of facts any better for careers, for lives, for society than video games?
(By the way, I don’t think the “waste time” argument is valid—children are naturally given to production, not consumption, and if systematically encouraged, they will go further down that path. Of course, if schools force-feed them dreary and tell them that they’re dumb and won’t make it anywhere in life, then I’m not very surprised they find IG reels more enjoyable)
Let us assume that it is valid. That still doesn’t justify the fact that children who are pursuing difficult and time-consuming things cannot do so easily in the current system. And that should somehow change.
Perhaps we could expose younger children to a variety of different things—entrepreneurship, software engineering, music. Let them explore, play, have fun. They’ll likely take up one of thse to pursue ahead. And when they do, we could support whatever that is. Have the learning system—just don’t enforce one type and way of learning.
I want this for my classmates. But I also want this for myself—so that high school could have been a group of genuinely passionate nerds and I hanging out and learning cool stuff. There are few things more soul-crushing than trying to learn sitting next to dozens of blank children who hate what they’re doing, trying their best to be distracted by smth more amusing, and plotting how they can cheat on the upcoming exams.
Another material change could be more tying-in to the real world.
Companies should consider giving more real world experience to younger people. Take software development. Imagine we could get interested 12 year olds to the level of coding (not CS) knowledge that the standard CS college graduate has, and hire them. The 12 year olds have smth crucially important that the 22 year olds have mostly lost, that 17 year old me is fast losing—an ability to believe in the craziest things, to question the obvious, to take insane risks (and often fail). They’re excited, they’re stupid (a compliment), and they aren’t yet bogged down by life.
The children benefit tremendously—they’re pursuing what they truly like, and gaining employable skills early on in life. And if done on a larger scale, I think it will likely be a huge gain for companies too (apart from the economic savings). Yes, there will probably be more mistakes, more annoyances, and all of that—but every now and then a moonshot will work out.
And even if they’re vastly inequipped for it, it almost always takes the young to shoot for the moon.
What Can You Do?
I’m not entirely sure I have something valuable to say here. This was meant to be a collection of thoughts on high school, both in general and in particular my experience.
Homeschooling is a functional option, but far from a silver bullet. I’ve realized that social induction is critically important. If you can do it at scale (A couple parents starting a teaching collective of sorts together), I’d recommend it—but otherwise no, unless you have a really good reason (something else you’re doing full time that you cannot do with regular school).
It doesn’t have to be anything radical like that, though. It’s just about the courage to do something different, even slightly different. Whether you’re a teacher, student, or a parent—it’s experiment, play around. If you’re an educator, try to improve things slowly. Gather research. At some point, petition lawmakers? We as a country seem to have lost hope—in everything, not just education. We are so obsessed with the quantity of years we’re going to live that we’re ready to sacrifice living life itself in the process; for god’s sake, wake up, take risks, and get hurt.
Do something. Don’t spend time developing elaborate plans, waiting for perfection before you can start. Hit the floor. Fall down. Get up again. It’s okay.
I don’t know if l/we will end up “fixing” the education system. But I do know I want to spend my life building spaces where curiosity is honored, where failure is alright, and where no one is told that they’re too stupid for their passion.
My Four Years
My high school experience was quite fun, if slightly nerve-wracking.
I started ninth grade by homeschooling—we'd decided that online schooling didn't really help, and my dad and I wanted to spend more time in programming.
I remember telling my uncle confidently, I'm a solitary kinda character, I don't need friends. Well, it turns out I was wrong. The biggest flaw with homeschooling is that I quickly became very lonely. Even today, I’m always amazed by how acutely crippling loneliness is.
Apart from the emotional angle, it turns out having lots of time and no structure is actually less productive than it sounds. You whittle your time away and do approximately nothing. So in just under six months, at December, I begged my parents to rejoin school.
Still, that half year played an important role in life. I put my foundations in programming, and did the internship that lead to my current job. I learned Arabic. I explored religion in more detail. In the regular academic world, I was a success - but in this unfamiliar world, I realized many flaws in the way I work and act. Four years later I'm yet to completely correct most of them, but knowing of your flaws is in itself a privilege, a big deal. Most people can’t/don't know.
I enrolled in a Cambridge school, months away from my board exams. Most of syllabi were completed. The principal told me to join in the next grade, telling me that it would be too difficult to self-study the syllabi and pass boards. I refused. He smirked. I ended up topping the batch. It was hilarious. It was also quite hard.
I started eleventh grade hopeful, determined to completely do far better than I did in my maimed 10th grade. Familial circumstances lead to us shifting cities and into a CBSE school. I thought I was (academically) done for. I wasn’t, but changing schools and boards was, again, extremely difficult.
Interesting side point: the CBSE and Cambridge school barely had any difference. Cambridge is known for being a superior board of sorts, inculcating “true learning”. I personally don't see it. They test roughly the same things, in the same way. It’s true that there is more memorization and less focus on conceptual understanding in CBSE, but it’s nothing momentous. And students are the same everywhere—friendly, fun, and completely uninterested in learning.
So 11th grade, too, was maimed. I started 12th with high hopes. That didn’t go amazingly either. In November, I shifted to homeschooling again, moved to Mumbai, and joined Frappe.
The past six months I've been trying to balance academics and work and figuring out what the hell I'm doing with my life. In all honesty, none of them are going as well as I'd like. But yet again, I’m in an entirely new world; yet again, I'm learning of important gaps in myself, and continuing to improve (or so I tell myself) at a dissatisfying pace. And yet again, when I'm not freaking out, I am having an enormous amount of fun.
This might come across as negative. I hope it doesn’t. I write with fondness. I wouldn’t exchange these four years for the world. I'm extremely grateful for my experiences, more so than I can ever express. I didn’t plan for any of this, but I doubt I could have gotten a more educational high school experience if I’d designed it.
I'm much, much, better at doing difficult things. I've befriended and have conversations with incredibly compelling people from across the country. I'm doing exciting work in programming, and studying academia on my own. I interact with adults who aren’t souldead; ambitious, crazy, people who care about the things I care about. I've explored a vast variety of things in this world of ours.
Academia, romance, work, and in so many other spheres—maimed or not, I’ve had an unusual and very interesting time. And what doesn’t kill you makes your life a bit more fulfilling.
After many months, I finally have the time and strength to think thinks. And I often return to these three:
- Compared to most people my age, I'm far better prepared for the insanity that is life. And that is the point of these years, I guess?
- I'm the author of the book of my life. I might not write with particular excellence, and perhaps this book will have a terrible ending. But I am writing my own book, not living out a cookie cutter,
AI generatedsociatally defined, slop. This is what I wanted, and while it is indeed lonely and difficult and scary, this is what is good. Originality is inherently worthy of respect. - please, please, please—a normal four years in college.