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Man the memes write themselves these days
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Unpopular Opinion
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Huked on fonix, werked fer me!
Thanks to hook on fonik, I do not no longer know how to not read.
TEEHEE
Grind culture should start at birth! If you can't get yourself into a mortgage by 16, are you even trying to succeed in life!? /s
You found the right place to post, I'll give you that.
You've made some assumptions:
like nothing worthwhile is learned by anyone in the latter grades, or rather anything you need to know is finished by 10th.
that schools aren't already rushing through things as it is so if two grades are removed something more will be cut out to make up for lost time.
all kids have a household that is open to that arraignment - and before you say it's the law, I don't know if that's true, if it's everywhere, and if it matters if the law isn't enforced. Some kids will get kicked out, threatened for money, all sorts of less ideal situations.
there's room in the market for more minimum wage people. you're now flooding the low wage market with lots of kids, which is already a problem with ones who are just part time or casual labor.
having a kid stop education and then jump back in a few years later can be a setback to their motivation or vision of their future. I'm actually a fan of figuring out if a high school graduate might do better working a bit and maturing if they don't have ideas, but others thrown into retail or warehouse or office might get the idea that maybe this is good enough and why go back to school.
those total wages are funny. Are you assuming a 40 hour week for a 16 year old? Do you know how businesses actually plan out their labor? With so many kids competing, if they all manage to get a job they'll each have 5-10 hours a week. Maybe.
The only thing that I can agree with you in principle is that not every kid should go straight into higher learning, but that takes some evaluation to figure out the best path for each one. And I guess in some aspect I can agree that not as much is learned in school (not necessarily just high school) that could be, but cutting some grades is the totally wrong way to fix that. Even back when schools were better, so many kids went from high school right into college taking remedial courses so they would be at the right level of education. Less grades isn't going to fix that at all.
you can apply to any job that doesn’t require a college degree with just a GED including Government Jobs.
Just because you can apply doesn't mean you'll actually get a half-decent job, especially if you need to stay local to take advantage of your parents' free room and board.
They can’t charge you rent, can’t force you to buy your own food, they legally can not punish you financially in any way so find a job save up every penny in an interest earning checking account.
Are you saying that a 16yo will be able to defend their legal rights against their parents? They might do it voluntarily if they agree with your view and are nice ("they are nice" might be the more important part here), but if they don't, you either have to go along with them or you'll significantly damage your relationship with your parents, which is kind of a bad idea even just from an economic perspective.
Just because you can apply doesn't mean you'll actually get a half-decent job, especially if you need to stay local to take advantage of your parents' free room and board.
If you can show that you took a deliberate action to get your GED because you felt that 2 years of work experience, getting yourself a financial safety net and understood that they are the same, you prove to be more valuable than the person who decided to stay in school has little to no work experience and is worse off.
Companies like candidates who show they're smart, also if it became the norm then no problem either way.
Are you saying that a 16yo will be able to defend their legal rights against their parents? They might do it voluntarily if they agree with your view and are nice ("they are nice" might be the more important part here), but if they don't, you either have to go along with them or you'll significantly damage your relationship with your parents, which is kind of a bad idea even just from an economic perspective.
I get that the parents can make it hard and it can strain the relationship but any good parent would support the move.
Don't know where you think parents can't kick kids out. Happens all the time for multiple reasons.
If you can show that you took a deliberate action to get your GED because you felt that 2 years of work experience, getting yourself a financial safety net and understood that they are the same, you prove to be more valuable than the person who decided to stay in school has little to no work experience and is worse off.
Doesn't help if there aren't enough jobs available for everyone, which will be especially problematic if every 16yo is doing it. Does the market really demand that much untrained labor?
I get that the parents can make it hard and it can strain the relationship but any good parent would support the move.
Lots of kids don't have good parents, but you're claiming that it works for everyone. And frankly, making their kid finish highschool the normal way is not something that I'd revoke someone's "good parent" card over.
I mean, it worked for me. Making a decent 6 figure income, supporting a family of four. Never did get a college degree, it only cost me one job. The recruiter told me to get any degree, basket weaving, they didn't care, it was just a requirement.
Over all a college degree hasn't made anyone I've ever worked with a more productive employee. Though often they were more arrogant.
I'd say the biggest challenge would be anyone aiming for an Ivy league, mainly because acceptance would be more difficult. That kind of education is really only good for connections though. The education isn't really any different.
I dropped out of school at 9 years old, skipped taking my GED all together, entered college at 16 on a full ride, graduated magna cum laude from a fairly prestigious university with a BS in computer science (and two minors), and never had any student debt, all before I turned 21. True story.
Definitely not saying my story is anywhere near typical. And I imagine were I born a decade or two later (I'm barely under 40 now), my story would probably have turned out much differently. But I do think there's merit to the idea of "hacking" your own education.
How'd you get I to a fairly prestigious school with no education. I find that hard to believe as the competition would be great and someone with a below grade six education seems far fetched.
Homeschooling. And I got a high score (apparently a 28 is "high") on my ACT. (The ACT is a test colleges give to assess how "admissible" you are in the U.S. Not sure how different other countries are.) In my state, a high enough ACT score gets you out of highschool the same way a GED does. And a lot of student financial aid is based on ACT score. (Oh, another footnote. My "full ride" didn't cover room and board. Just books and tuition. But I commuted to college all four years, I also got a separate grant from the National Science Foundation, and I qualified for a Pell Grant. So yeah. Had no trouble paying for college in my case.)
I didn't say I didn't get any education after 3rd grade or so. I said I "dropped out of school." Admittedly a bit misleading wording. The way I put it made it sound as if I quit school without the support of my parents and didn't pursue any further education. But I also wanted to make the point that leaving school (the way the OP talks about) definitely doesn't necessarily mean quitting studies.
But yeah. When I said "true story", I meant it. Never was really traditionally "enrolled" in a full coursework of traditional schooling after my 10th birthday until entering college. There was a weekly "homeschool co-op" that I went to for a few years that was kinda school-like. And I did take a couple of like one-day-a-week classes at a private school at one point. I do remember taking part in a summer educational thing that took place in a public school building in my area. Oh, and I forgot that I took a couple of college courses dual-enrolled before I entered college full time. But still, the vast majority of my studies were self study. Taught myself highschool calculus and chemistry and such. My grandmother had to force the issue a bit with history and spelling. But it all seems to have worked.
I guess maybe to finish the story, after college, I started a tech startup with another guy. It crashed and burned within 5 years, but taught me so much that college didn't. (I hate coming off like the self-help crypto-investor startup bro, but I suppose you could call it "failing forward." Not that I planned it that way ahead of time or anything.) And now I'm making a comfortable income overseeing a team of developers (not in a managerial sense, but as a "tech lead", which suits me just fine) at a big-ish (brick-and-morter-and-e-)retailer. I'm quite happy with all the above, of course. As I said, I don't think my experience is typical at all. I've lived a very charmed and lucky life in a lot of ways. But also, My story shows that the traditional educational path of "stay in school kids" isn't the only way, and may not always be the best way to traditional "success" in academics. I've also had coworkers doing software engineering with no college education.
Only people who hate the schools are the ones who were bad students.