"School is not a happy place"

To quote the great Dave Barry, "I am not making this up."

I heard a 14-year old kid from Texas say this on the radio herself. The context was a story on NPR about school shootings, and basically asking "why?" The girl said that basically unless you are among the top 10% "cool" people, school is not a happy place.

Well, yeah - duh! That was my experience. As an outsider that never could figure out how to be a part of the cool kids, school was not a very fun or happy place. Add on to the popular issue the fact that you have to go to a different class every 40 minutes or so, and have to do stupid homework that you don't care about, and have to get good grades so you can get into a good college and get a good job, and school is not a fun place. And it turns out I didn't even want their "good job".

Fun was skipping first period to just go get breakfast or do nothing. Fun was getting out at noon because you crafted your schedule so that you had no afternoon classes. Fun was hanging out in the graphics and photography area of the building, where everyone was just hanging out doing graphics and photography.

Not Fun was wondering why Justin and Matt were laughing, seemingly at you. Not Fun was having to read Shakespeare or Wuthering Heights (although I now might read Shakespeare) and take tests on it. Not Fun was carrying a ton of heavy books all the time.

Now I am not in the homeschool department to protect my kids from the possibility that they may not be popular in school. My wife was socially successful in school, and I'm pretty sure my kids already have the social savvy to be able to make it very well in large groups of people (e.g. at school). For me, it is more the forced learning angle that I am against, and the strict scheduling and intense pressure and testing (even though I was awesome at taking tests). These are all the things that make school an unhappy place.