Impossible to quantify, but interesting to contemplate.

High School Diploma

The high school degree

The best example of the value of school.

Imagine this. Your child has just navigated their way through school. You order the cap and gown. You attend the ceremony and pride fully watch your child receive their well deserved diploma. You listen to the commencement speech. You invite friends and family to a celebratory dinner acknowledging this great achievement.

At the end of the day, you feel like it's been a great day for the family and go to bed feeling like something of value has been achieved.

The next day, still on a high, your child reiterates that he is overjoyed with the amount of knowledge he received in school. He feels very confident that it will serve him well as he enters the next stage of his life.

He is so confident he professes that he is going to go out in the world with only a high school degree. He states unequivocally that he has no plans to pursue any further forms of school because he feels the knowledge he has already is more than enough.

You are mortified.

You suddenly realize the true value of a high school degree with no further school. You ask yourself how your child could be in school for 13 years and 11,000 hours and not have one tangible skill that would allow him to forego college.

You, now, fear for his future.

You suddenly realize, very clearly, school is mostly about setting your child up financially.

You wonder why he couldn't have been taught one, or several, of the many white and blue collar jobs that require so little education but pay very well.

But, you keep these thoughts to yourself as you scramble to convince him to give college a shot. You valiantly talk him out of the McDonald's circuit citing an unhappy future.

Surprisingly, he agrees.

He goes off to college and does very well. In fact, he is a 4.0 student.

One day he is sitting on the couch as you get home from work.

He says that he is done with college even though he is only three credits short from graduating. His explanation is that it is an art history class and his major is biology so it is not needed.

You realize, once again, that school is primarily about money because his argument makes perfect sense, but reality is that college coursework without a degree is essentially worthless.

You surmise that a high school degree and many years of college without a degree have very little value because the stark reality is that it is all about money. You can spend thousands of hours in school, but without a college degree what you have learned has relatively little value because it has a low chance of leading to a great career.

You realize that everyone that talks about how great an educational experience college is would never leave themselves short of the degree because money is the real reason they are there.

-READ 6 COMMANDMENTS OF A BETTER SCHOOL HERE-

Short, 30 second reads, to help explain school

Why Teachers Can't be Ultimately Successful with the Current School Curriculum

The after school activity model is the perfect example of how school should be optional

The true value of a High School degree

Is drudgery necessary

Our feelings about home schooling are paradoxical

Is school a sacred institution or a resource

We are imposing unnecessary drudgery on ourselves

Our best society in our most independent society

The relevance of subjects we've studied for years

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