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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Why I Quit School by william "upski" wimsatt More Upski If you missed it, be sure to read Upski's introduction to the unschooling movement. We Don't Need No Education? Talk about your own school daze and the issues raised by Upski in the Politics Survey Also from Upski: Interview: We ask Upski about his book "Bomb the Suburbs." In Defense of Wiggers: You know, wiggers. White kids scorned by their peers for listening to rap.

My best friend Toast wrote this rap before he dropped out of high school sophomore year: The curriculum is doin' nothin' for me I'm called a bad student 'cause that ABC shit bores me so I cut classes with my library card I read Ralph Ellison in the schoolyard. Comprehending in the ending I'll be back here to say I stole my education and I gave myself an A. Toast is doing fine now. Maybe if he'd read The Teenage Liberation Handbook by Grace Llewellyn back then he could've skipped those five years of drinking and feeling like a failure. When I finally read Llewellyn's book, I was angry that it had not been published earlier. It was too late for me to quit high school, but not college. Sure, everyone knows high school is a waste of time, but college is considered a great privilege. I loved college. I felt at home there. I had free food, my own room, and no responsibilities. Even my tuition was free, because my dad is a professor. I was intellectually stimulated. I was in love, and I was a junior. It would be stupid to quit now. I had been going to school for 17 years when I came across Llewellyn's book. I thought of myself as an exception, someone who loved to learn in spite of school. Talk about extracurriculars-- I had taken three years off school, worked odd jobs, done internships, started a small business, won research grants, done grassroots organizing, edited a newspaper and a book, published another book, organized a youth center, made friends in almost every neighborhood in Chicago and hitchhiked around the US to every major city except Dallas. In my spare time, I inhaled magazines and periodicals and talked to strangers. I fancied myself broadly educated. Llewellyn's book made me realize that my expectations--of myself and of school-- were unnecessarily low. Great and terrible things would happen in my lifetime. Maybe there would be a nuclear war, certainly there would be ecological and social disaster; maybe it wouldn't be as bad if certain people fought for certain things at certain times. Was I prepared to do my part? I didn't want to write any more papers proving I could read two books and compare them. I wanted to make giant charts to compare everything that mattered. I didn't want to memorize a bunch of facts and forget them. I wanted to know facts I could use and organize them like an almanac in a format I could use and remember. I didn't want to speed through assigned texts. I wanted to read some carefully, others not at all. I didn't want to rush my diary. I wanted to write down everything important and organize it like a bible for instant consultation. I didn't want to hear about amazing people. I wanted to meet them, apprentice with them, help them. I didn't want to sit in classrooms. I wanted to see the world. I look at my friends who graduated college. Most of them are paying off debts, riding the conveyor belt into graduate school, and selecting their mates from unnecessarily narrow pools. They are mid-life crises waiting to happen. Or maybe they won't even have mid-life crises. Maybe they'll just get stuck. Geniuses at following directions, they have little direction of their own. They're good at fitting into structures but they have little idea how to change one. They may be brilliant in their narrow fields, but they're kind of dim about the big picture. Some of them think their narrow field is the big picture. They have no idea whether they'd be happier doing something else. They're afraid to find out and the older they get, the more they have to fear. The later in life you get your realizations, the harder they are to do anything about. I prefer to have my mid-life crises early and often. I quit college in the middle of the semester and failed all my classes. It has been almost a year now. I wish I could say I've already accomplished great things, look how worthless college is, you should quit too. But most of what I've done so far is personal stuff that only matters to me. A lot of the time I felt like I wasn't accomplishing anything. My time was unstructured. I moved back into my parent's house, where I slept until noon and daydreamed. I had trouble explaining myself to people. Freedom is an acquired taste. Human beings can only stomach so much of it. Even when we complain about school or work, we are also grateful for the certainty of having something to do, something to complain about. I needed to make up a system that was every bit as structured as college or work, but whose substance I could agree with. So I became a University President. I am also the Dean of Academic Affairs, Head of Maintenance, Chairman of the Board, and the only student. My university is called The University of Planet Earth. UPE (or pee-U if you say it backwards) is the world's oldest and largest university. We have billions of professors, tens of millions of books, and unlimited course offerings. Tuition is free, there are no degrees and no one ever graduates. Students pose their own questions and design their own curriculum. Here is my question: How can I commit the most good and the least evil in my lifetime? Here is my curriculum: Live in a different place every year: D.C., Oakland, New York, the wilderness, and probably New Orleans. Every Sunday attend a different place of worship. Every day get to know someone new (volunteer, attend lectures, talk to strangers on the street). Seek out professors and mentors. The rest of the time, go to the library, read whatever I want. Compile my own personal bible, almanac, and address book. For discipline, live in high-crime neighborhoods. That ought to keep a gun to my head. Save up enough to travel to a different continent each year. Otherwise work as little as possible. Do that for five years. That will be my freshman survey course. Then I'll have a better idea of what to do as a sophomore. Where am I supposed to get the money to do all this? Simple. All the money I won't have to spend on college (room, board, books, travel, and time wasted, over and above tuition). Eventually, I'm going to make a living as a consultant. You're going to be able to come to me for advice in 20 years. If you want to turn your nose up at me because I don't have a college degree, fine, your loss. I'm going to know everything. Maybe someday I'll regret quitting school. Maybe I started too late. Maybe I won't be a good enough consultant and maybe my plans won't really work. But I have to try. As Grace Llewellyn writes: "The only alternative to making mistakes is for someone else to make all your decisions for you, in which case you will make their mistakes instead of your own." William "Upski" Wimsatt is the author of "Bomb the Suburbs," a collection of essays about America's unfounded fears of the inner city. To order a copy, send seven dollars to The Subway and Elevated Press Co., PO Box 377653, Chicago, IL 60637.