Man, I hope this idea catches on. I really do. That high-school-as-prison analogy is disturbingly apt. Gives me the willies to remember it.

If I ever end up with kids, I doubt I’ll make them go to high school. It was almost a complete waste of time. I was ready to leave home for college at sixteen, and could have taken college courses at home before that. And I love the apprentice idea for kids with talents and abilities that aren’t academic ones.

Actually, I’d like to just get rid of the entire “teen” concept — which, IIRC, didn’t even exist before WWII — and start turning young people into responsible adults a hell of a lot sooner. I can’t help thinking that a lot of the problems we have with teenagers would disappear if we stopped treating them like they were still babies.