Snos - I think I know what you’re talking about there, but I’m not 100% sure..

Emily - I don’t think that there was anything necessarily wrong with my teachers; I think that calling parents about their kids wasn’t part of their way of thought, and this was just 10 years ago or so. Also, we had report cards and/or progress reports going home every three weeks, along with the occasional (and mostly optional) parent-teacher conference. I do agree though that kids do need to be taught responsibility, and the parents definitely need to be the catalyst for it.

Julie - You’re right that it’s not about intelligence - it’s about how well you learn the material that is presented to you. It also, I would suspect, has to do with how the curriculum is presented. Just as an example from college, the physics courses I took were taught by a Chinese immigrant who had a very thick accent and was very difficult to understand; most of the TAs also had thick accents, so that made the material difficult to understand and the book really didn’t help matters either, if I remember correctly. And, no, I definitely have not given up on learning; thank you for the kind words .

Failing school isn’t (a) your failure from the sounds of this story and (b) is not related to intelligence.

My older exbrother is IQ level genius off the charts and yet he quit school and lived in a garage off the radar for a while.

Either end of the spectrum—and I’m sure you are on the smart end there—is hard for this culture because we work to the middle.

I’m not saying I don’t understand how you feel; I do, totally.

But seriously? In most cases, and yours is part of this, I think the failure was the shcools and the teachers and the adults around you.

Anyway clearly you didn’t give oup on learnign or education. I’ve read your blog.

Kids need adults to help them learn responsibility. Your teachers failed you, not the other way around.