stream-of-thought #2: The Teenage Liberation Handbook

Hello, all.

It appears I have reach new heights of stereotypical boheme. I am seriously considering leaving school.

I stumbled upon The Teenage Liberation Handbook several years ago but was not smart enough to procure a copy of it. Although I certainly had some good experiences in school the past few years, I believe now that I can take control of my own education.

Let me talk about the book--it begins with a sort of parable or fable about a girl being force-fed fruit. It's a little strange, sure, but it gets the point across in an emotional and powerful way--that school really extinguishes anyone's natural desire to learn. While I agree with her point, school does have some benefits, and I do wish she had not started off by emotionally manipulating the reader into agreeing with her.

That said, the rest of her book has some slightly less reactionary and more rational arguments. The thesis is this: "unschooling" is better for your mind, body, and soul than school is, and also gives you just as good a shot at getting into college. You have a right to learn what you want, when you want; you have a right to explore the worlds external and internal. You have a right to be free. Etc.

You can read the book yourself, if you're so inclined--there may or may not be several free PDFs still lying around (EDIT: there's a free and legal (but kind of hard to read) copy on archive.org)--so I won't enumerate most of her arguments here. Instead I'd like to reflect on how they affected me.

Initially, I became determined and excited to leave school. It was just the solution to all of the problems I was looking for. I am intellectually inclined enough that I would do a lot of learning on my own. I would take creative writing classes and drawing classes and music lessons, and also an online math class and an online chemistry or physics class. I'd read lots of books. I would go for bike rides when the whether was nice. When could I ever hope to have freedom like that? The rest of my life I'll have to work to put food on the table.

And there lies my greatest fear: that in being liberated, so to speak, I will lose an important innocence; and once the liberation has left me I will look back on it in painful nostalgia. Looking back on my life in middle school, which was much freer than my current life in high school, it seems obvious that this will occur to at least some degree. I do not want to pine away for the past until I retire.

But if I could cultivate the right sort of mindset, wouldn't I be able to use these two years fully to gain just the sort of knowledge I'd need to lose some of my perennial neuroticism? And then wouldn't I be happier, less nostalgic and less greedy? I don't know. It's hard to predict the future.

My other two major concerns are college and music. Although I'm sure I could get into a decent state college on my SAT scores, I'd much rather go to a smaller liberal arts school, a nice one with a good music department, and I don't know if any of those will accept me. Many schools I'm interested have statements that say they have accepted homeschoolers in the past, but can I live up to their standards? Do I need to compose three symphonies, win a national baking competition and raise $10,000 for starving children in Somalia? Because if I do, I'm not so confident I'll be able to get in.

And music: I really like being involved in music ensembles, but I worry that I won't have access to this outside of school. I do plan on running a boomwhacker ensemble out of my house, and there appear to be some music schools that have ensembles for private lesson students in my area, but it still makes me nervous, somehow.

So will I be in school, this time next year? I have no idea. Maybe. My mom still doesn't want to let me out so I guess it's pretty likely. In that case, my contingency plan is to just take a bunch of chill electives senior year so I can relax and enjoy the world.