High school was a very difficult time for me, but I was also extremely successful during this time. My parents had arrived in Canada only two years earlier, and it would be some time before the disruptive effects of their interference with my education would become apparent. I was very fortunate that for several years in elementary school — probably the most formative years of my life — I could learn from excellent teachers without my parents continually disparaging everything they taught me. I began high school very, very far ahead of my classmates, and I had gotten that way by doing precisely the very things that my parents would discourage and attempt to prevent me from doing during high school: reading books not on the school curriculum, learning things by actually doing them, going around talking to people with an interest or expertise in a subject, and so on.
There were three interweaving strands in my high school life: academics, school-related extracurricular activities, and interests altogether outside of school… » [Expand post] [Permalink]