It’s my fault

This post was adapted from something that I had previously written.

It’s no secret that I hated my years in school. I entered with a strong desire to learn. While I tried to maintain hope that schooling would eventually turn out to be educational, I eventually suffered a sever case of burn out. I couldn’t handle the mind-numbing prison. My grades dropped drastically, and there were questions about whether or not I was going to graduate on time.

After a brief stint in the Running Start program, I realized that schooling would never meet my educational needs. I had to evaluate the pros and cons of graduating versus dropping out. I had one year left and didn’t want to spend my entire life facing the discrimination that comes with the status of a high school dropout. I ended up in a monitored home schooling program where my educational rights were partially restored.

I hate social events, but I was talked into attending my graduation. The primary argument was that I might regret not attending when I grew up. It turned out that the event wasn’t something that I enjoyed and was a complete waste of my time. I wish I hadn’t gone. Not only that, but I have now started resenting my high school diploma. Attending my graduation was like celebrating a dark day in my past.

I have pretended to be a bad person in an attempt to keep people from thinking that I’m a bad person. I have been told that who I really am is unacceptable. When it comes to employment, I have been known to cave to the pressure and sacrifice myself. Upset with myself, I felt obligated to add an entry to my list of defining beliefs. Who I am is more important than what I am.

To this date, I have been too cowardly to stand up for myself. I have been a doormat living as a horrible excuse for a human being. This is my fault. I hate who I pretend to be, but I haven’t been able to force myself to go against the wishes of the supermajority. I haven’t been willing to accept the highly negative consequences of being one of the rare good guys in this world.

After establishing that being a good person should be a higher priority than having a good job, I started to look back at my school years. Was it right for me to stick with a process that was clearly causing me harm? Was it a good idea to stick around to receive an overrated piece of paper? These are some of the easiest questions that I have ever answered. I was clearly wrong.

I reevaluated my decision to finish off my diploma requirements. The only pros involved getting a job and avoiding undeserved discrimination. In other words, there was nothing about that final year that helped me become a better person or improve my ability to make meaningful contributions to society. By comparison, the cons involved sacrificing my abilities and potential.

It wasn’t just my final year that is bothering me. I knew that schooling was anti-educational while I was in middle school. I willingly allowed myself to be subjected to an environment that I knew was unhealthy for me. The reason is that we are conditioned to believe that our careers define who we are. I didn’t want to spend my life homeless, so I refused to stand up for fundamental human rights.

Let me repeat the defining belief that I brought up earlier. Who I am is more important than what I am. If I sacrificed myself to the schools in hopes of getting a better job, I clearly acted against this belief. Who I became was irrelevant because I was too concerned with what I would become.

I can’t blame the schools for the most selfish decision that I have ever made. It’s not their fault that I didn’t fully acknowledge their harmful characteristics earlier. It’s not their fault that I was starting to give up on myself. It’s not their fault that I was too scared to speak up for myself. It’s not their fault that I wanted to learn. It’s not their fault that I have always wanted to become a good person. It’s not their fault that I didn’t conform to their strict standards. It’s not their fault that I didn’t drop out when I should have. It’s not their fault that I valued a stupid piece of paper more than human decency. It’s not their fault that I accepted my diploma. It’s not their fault that my diploma does not represent who I really am. It’s not their fault I am still too much of a chicken to stop hiding myself behind a piece of paper.

The schools tried to blame me for the problems that I had to deal with. They criticized me for not being enough like everybody else. After years of evaluating and reevaluating my school years, I do feel like I was wrong. I do deserve a significant portion of the blame. Even so, I don’t want to be held responsible for everything that they do wrong.

It’s not my fault that the schools have declared war against education. It’s not my fault that my teachers wouldn’t get out of my way whenever I tried to learn. It’s not my fault that individuality is considered unacceptable. It’s not my fault that innocent children are pressured by the insistence that people are defined by their careers. It’s not my fault that the schools encourage children to embrace greed and corruption. It’s not my fault that teachers refuse to acknowledge human rights.

Nobody’s perfect. I can admit that I’m not. It can be difficult at times, but sometimes we have to come clean about our mistakes. I feel like I have done just that. Now, the schools need to do the same.