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Daring to Drop Out
Undoubtedly, they had a point. I had been cramming and stressing
for a long time. To just leave my senior year seemed to be
throwing all that hard work away. I had near perfect grades and
an above 4.0 grade point average. I was the online editor for
the school newspaper, goalie for the varsity field hockey team,
actively involved with several community service clubs and
singing onstage in the spring musicals. Both of my college
counselors were satisfied when they saw my potential college
resume.
But I wasn’t. In fact, I wasn’t even convinced I should pursue my
education after high school. Every day, I received college
brochures highlighting incredible travel abroad opportunities
and numerous potential majors, but nothing sparked my interest.
Nothing sounded even remotely appealing.
Somehow, my regular regimen of grade grubbing with teachers,
memorizing facts, and struggling to ace tests had festered a
loathing for most subjects. I wrote off the entire field of
chemistry after a year of chemistry honors. I despised the
prospect of learning any foreign language because Spanish class
had not been my forte.
In truth, however, my “disastrous” B represented the one time I’d
had a competent Spanish teacher who mandated mastery of our
conversational skills. It represented the one class where I had
worked harder and learned more than ever.
If I’m honest with myself, all those As my counselors and peers
respected me for do not mean much. They do not imply that I ever
retained any course material 40 minutes post-exam. They don’t
show any initiative on my part to create a project or pursue a
subject with greater intensity. They don’t even mean that I
enjoyed learning. Many times, I just got good grades because . .
.
To read the rest of this article, please
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to Life Learning Magazine (and get access to our back issue
archive as well.)
Monica Chen has experienced life as a student of
public, Waldorf, Montessori, Challenger and single-sex education
schools. This year, she has been unschooling as a twelfth
grader, and now loves learning again!
The term life learning refers to a form of homeschooling that trusts children and avoids the trappings of school. It is sometimes called unschooling, radical unschooling, or natural learning. Life learning children live and learn naturally, with the support of their families, based on their own interests and their own timetables, and without curriculum, tests, or grades. Go here, here and here for a more comprehensive explanation.
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“Sorry but that doesn’t make any sense,” responded my high school
friend when I shared with her my intention to homeschool my
senior year. It was a response I heard over and over again as I
talked to my guidance counselors, teachers and fellow students.
“You’ve been in this system for 11 years!” they exclaimed. “Just
jump through this last hoop!”
