Dear School - We're Breaking Up!

It’s over. I can’t tolerate your lies any more!

You promised to prepare us for adulthood, but you really just prepared us for MORE SCHOOL. The Real World doesn’t operate the way the school system does. So, in fact, I was totally UNPREPARED for adulthood.

And for those little pieces that I did ok with after I left school? 

I found those out on my own. After school. On weekends.

Where was the information about personal finances or how to handle money? Credit cards, loans, interest rates, and insurance? How hard would it have been to give more real life examples of how to manage all this?

What about healthy relationships, learning about boundaries or even gas-lighting?
Where was the real life information about nutrition or fast food issues, self-defense or time management?
Why couldn’t we have spent more time learning how to analyze data so we could determine was was truth and what was not? Maybe we could have spent a little more time understanding how statistics can be used to manipulate people and identifying who pays for “a study” is a critical piece of information to know.

Never once have I used the quadratic equation and I wouldn’t have any idea when to use those formulas you made me memorize for all those years in high school - unless someone walked up to me with a worksheet and said,

"Solve this.”

But guess what?

NO ONE DOES THAT in the real world!

But you spent year after year on this. WHY???

I could have been focusing on so many other REAL topics that might have helped me as I moved into adulthood.

You’re so stuck in the past with your factory model approach to learning - have you noticed that the world isn’t like that anymore? Even if we did go get a factory job, we wouldn’t have needed 12 years of what you offered to prepare us to run the assembly line. If that was in the cards for our future, we could have had YEARS of pursuing our interests before that started.
Or we could have been learning about how to communicate with bosses and employees or how to handle staffing or taxes?

Weren’t you promising to offer us more than that though?

We weren’t able to have thoughtful deep discussions because we were so busy preparing for the tests each year.
So I learned “test-taking skills” instead of useful information - why did you do that?

That was for YOU not for me!

Apprenticeships, art programs, opportunities that could have helped us see what we liked and what we didn’t - you cut those! We needed more time for those tests you're in love with!

We were allowed to leave the building for one field trip per YEAR - Two if we were lucky!
How was that supposed to show us anything about the community we live in or all the opportunities that were out there waiting for us?

You limited our time on the internet and even shamed us for wanting to use it!

Yet that is where OUR future lies.

You wanted us to come back only to you for information, but it’s right there at our fingertips on our phones!

If only you would have let us use them!

We could have worked TOGETHER with this technology but you were too paranoid to ever allow that.

I guess you were afraid of being replaced.

I’m going to need to know how to find a good therapist after 12 years with you!

I’m scared to death to make a mistake, I can’t problem solve because I’m afraid I might be humiliated if I’m wrong.

I can’t search for help to collaborate, because you convinced me that was cheating.

My People Pleasing skills are off the charts in the most unhealthy way.

I’m constantly determining my worth by how I measure up next to someone else. 

I can’t believe I wasted so much time with you. Time I COULD have been exploring and discovering aspects of the world - and even aspects of myself! But by the time we were finished, I had to get a job and my childhood was gone.

I know you’re off to do this to someone else, just another cog in the wheel. I am so glad to be rid of you.

~Young Adults Everywhere