College?

Over the years many people have asked why I didn't attend college. To put it simply I didn't believe I belonged there. I probably would have done well academically but socially I didn't think it was a good idea. Also, I planned to get married and stay home to raise my children. What was college going to teach me that I couldn't teach myself?

The other day I recieved my homeschool newspaper "The Link" in the mail. I came across this interesting article by John Taylor Gatto " The Richest Man in the World Has Some Advice for Us about College . . . (P.S. He didn’t take it himself). Here is an excerpt from the article:

On February 28 of this year, Bill Gates of Microsoft, told a gathering of the 50 American state governors that the United States has reached a competitive crisis which we were losing. This could best be combated by making college prep the sole function of secondary schooling, college prep for everyone, and college, too. Those who couldn’t afford it should be subsidized by the states. In Erving Goffman’s chilling locution, college was to become a “Total Institution,” controlling all work in the economy.
If Gates’ proposal was such a great idea, then how was it that Gates, like Faulkner, dropped out of college his freshman year? And why didn’t he ever go back? And how was it that from among millions of college-trained techies, Gates decided to hook up with another dropout, Paul Allen, to found Microsoft? That could have been a million-to-one coincidence, of course, except for the fact that Steve Jobs, the brains behind Apple, dropped out of Reed College after one semester. And never went back to college, not for a single day! Was it only an accident that Jobs chose to partner with another dropout, Steve Wozniak, in the founding of Apple?Michael Dell of Dell Computer didn’t bother with college either. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, said he didn’t have the time to waste on college. Is the penny beginning to drop? These multi-billionaires, who’ve changed the face of the global society in technology, were all dropouts. What do you make of that?

If you think this is an interesting article so far then read the full article at: http://www.homeschoolnewslink.com/v8i3_gatto_college.html

I am stunned by the amount of people I know that went through college, obtained degrees and then had to work as waiters to pay the bills. People now believe that without college you will go nowhere. I believe with college you have a long expensive road ahead. People are putting off life while they are young to run up huge education loans and then spend the rest of their lives hoping the college education they receive will allow them pay off those huge loans.

Life is short and I prefer to live and learn through life rather than sitting in a desk in a room waiting for someone to tell me what I need to know.