I grew up in a small town, and after school many days I'd go read books at an alternative bookstore. I was able to give myself an autodidactic education in everything from feminism to anarchism to labour politics and more.<p>One day I decided to sample from the "education" section, an area which I'd been avoiding. As fate would have it, I started with The Teenage Liberation Handbook.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-Education/dp/0962959170/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-Educat...</a><p>It was written by a disgruntled former English teacher and explained that the education system robbed children of their creativity to turn out a constant stream of factory workers that wouldn't talk or waste time. School was to keep kids out of gangs.<p>What really got me, however, was the idea that 75% of what we were doing was in fact "make work". We were in a glorified day care. The only reason they cared about truancy was because the school gets paid based on the number of classes we attend.<p>I was furious; basically I became a walking Rage Against The Machine song for about two years.<p>There are pictures.<p>I'm 35 now, and my only regret about dropping out of high school is that I didn't do it 2 years earlier. All of the people who told me that I was throwing my life away now come to me for life advice. I have started several companies and to date have never woken up in a ditch. I am not plagued with a sense of wonder about what I could have accomplished had I just written those last few exams.<p>I told my principle and the other students that I did not want the school to take credit for my future success. I was a bit of a shit, sure. But I wasn't entirely wrong, either.<p>These days, seeing kids like this gives me hope for the future:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY</a>