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I just finished reading this inspiring piece. If I weren’t sitting at work on my lunch break, I’d feel the freedom to shed many tears. My son is almost three, which means in fewer than two years we will have to make a painful decision: put him in a government-run compulsory education prison school, or put him in a non-government institution that has passed the government’s compulsory requirements for being open for business. I suppose we could home-school him, and maybe we will. But I don’t really want to make this decision.
Erica Goldson graduated as valedictorian at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010, and delivered the speech at her graduation ceremony. Her principal and superintendents must have been wetting their pants.
Here’s a taste:
I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contend that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.
