I'm a highschool dropout (edit: due to autism, depression, undiagnosed add). Haven't finished any education. I have failed at basically everything that has to do with independance, even though they had high hopes for me because I was rather intelligent as a kid. I feel bad about it because of all the bad consequences it has given me for living on my own. I hate having to rely on other people nowadays and not being able to relate to anyone. I hate it for what it represents too, I couldn't even do some pretty simple shit and I still can't. Also while others were successful in other areas of life like socializing or relationships, I just sucked at everything.
The thing is the education system is broken, classist, abelist and only works for people who can or can afford to conform. Studying is something you can do without it. I know, because before PSSD I taught myself how to read Japanese using online resources. The education system isn't built on trying to let people learn, learn how to learn, figure out what they're interested in, and develop critical thinking skills. It's about conformity, what some old white dudes think is important, turning us into workers within a classist system, money, credentials, passing tests, statistics, memorizing things, repeating what they want you to repeat, etc.
I learned that in high school when a geography teacher asked us what we were interested in and he was like "Okay well, let's learn about space and the stars, that's interesting right?". We nodded, and we'd watch documentaries and he was planning to take us out with a telescope and stuff buut oops he ran out of time we had to cram for the exams again because he was doing this off the actual schedule of the school purely because he wanted to. The teacher clearly had a passion for knowledge and learning and clearly wanted to pass that onto us, but the system wouldn't allow it. That system that turns something as beautiful as learning into a chore that's a means to an end, a piece of paper.
Or how about the fact that the Japanese I learned online for free takes AGES in school curriculums. It's a joke. You don't need the education system the moment they stop hogging their resources or making them inaccesible.
I used to also hate on myself for it as to my contribution to soceity but that's all propaganda. You aren't obliged to give the world anything as long as you aren't directly hurting it. Luckily all my parents care about is me being able to take care of myself and live happily ever after.
This value we attribute to "contributing to soceity" is bullshit because we were obliged into it. It's part of this whole thing where we judge people for social status and how they look to others, not actually how much they matter or how good they actually are. And we judge based on so many useless parameters, where there's a world where Kim Kardashian is more socially successful than a fucking doctor, and school systems fail many genuinely smart people. Where a woman's worth was based on whether she births and raises more children who can be good little workers for the upper class once more, while downplaying anything else they've ahieved.
It's an incredibly shallow and discriminatory way of measuring value in a world in which you didn't even consent to being born within it. Why aren't we more concerned with people who are good for each other? People with actual critical thinking skills?
You're told that if you aren't obedient and contribute to whatever your parents or the arbitrary state you were born into want you to do like a good little slave you're the problem. If you suffer from some kind of class poverty, disability, mental illness or discrimination, you're the problem dragging everyone else down. To them you deserve it. To them some are just lesser, or worse, some choose to be lesser, because as long as you "work hard" you'll get there, even though it's just a carrot on a stick lottery and everytime you succeed you throw someone else under the bus.
They'll come up with some just world fallacy or victim blaming as to why it's your choice and you're just lazy (even though they put you here for selfish reasons anyway).
Fuck soceity. I don't owe it shit. If I do something good for soceity, then it's out of empathy for fellow struggling human beings, or because I simply did something I want to do/feel like should exist. Not their arbitrary standards. You can contribute in other ways than getting a piece of paper at school.
