This article on eating a donut "wrong" and other rules that don't exist got me thinking about the rules that don't really exist--but that we live by anyway.

Rules that don't exist, like:

• You must get a diploma to get a job after high school. (Nope! You just need to graduate, which is not the same as getting a diploma.)
• You must memorize X, Y, or Z. (How many adults still have that memorized? How many ever found that information useful?)
• You must be able to write cursive. (Besides a signature, who uses cursive?)
• In order to be properly socialized, you must only be around people who happened to be born in the same year as you. No one significantly older or younger. (Hahahaha, that's like anti-socialization.)
• If you don't have curriculum officially published by a big-name textbook company, you're going to fail life. (It's not always teachers or even people who know what they're doing who are writing these textbooks.)
• You must learn the same things as everyone else. (Nope!)
• You're not smart enough or mature enough to choose your own curriculum or subjects. (And yet, next year when you graduate, you're supposed to be an adult and be able to make all the big decisions.)
• Don't even think about getting ahead. (Please, by all means, go for the gold!)

What are the rules that aren't real in your education? Think of every reason that's holding you back from hacking your education. That reason is probably a rule that doesn't really exist.

Is history important to study because of the particular time period you're looking at, or because it teaches you a different way to look at the world? 

I would argue it's both, but leaning more towards the latter. In that case, studying the history of Rock or the history of video games would serve you well.

Open Culture, a source for free classes, audio books, textbooks, language lessons, etc., recently posted "Pong, 1969: A Milestone in Video Game History." Check it out, then check out the link to play browser Pong on your computer. Fun times.

What do you think? What is the value of studying history?

Common answers include:

• to learn from the past
• to understand who we are and where we came from
• to understand other cultures and peoples
• to see the world in a different way (as a historian)

Do you agree or disagree with any of these? Based on your answer, is it valuable for you to be studying history?

This post argues that nothing, least of all games, are useless.

Yes, indeed. I must agree--after all, I teach the Video Game Academy on the same principles.

Read this now: The Teenager's Guide to Opting Out (Not Dropping Out) of School.

There are a lot of great ideas in this document, and it will boost your confidence in self-education. Opting out of school IS an option. It will NOT destroy your future; more likely it will enhance your future.

Most people don't know two things: 1) that opting out is an option and 2) why school is so horrible.

Opting Out

Dropping out, as we've all been told, is usually limiting, but that's not your only alternative to traditional high school. Call it opting out, call it homeschool, call it whatever you want, but the alternative exists, is perfectly legal, and is probably far better suited to you.

Homeschooling, as opting out is usually called, is legal in every single state. And, no, your homeschool doesn't have to follow whatever steretype just popped in your head. That's the beauty of it. It's personalized for you, for your situation. You don't have to have a parent hovering over you (which is a relief for both you and your parent). You don't have to have worksheets or expensive curriculum or a weird religion.

Most of us don't realize that you don't have to homeschool like everyone else and that it's a viable option for us. 

School Stinks

Feel like school is repressive? That's not your imagination. Schools were designed to create workers for the industrial age. To teach you how to fulfill someone else's idea of your role in life. As the Opt Out document mentions, "Public schooling was never meant to foster intellectual growth." 

We are past the industrial age. We are past the time when a manufactured student has the advantage. Because of the way our world runs today, you actually are more likely to have the advantage when you opt out, when you homeschool.

Take Control

You have the option to choose your education, to choose how and where and what you learn. Take it and take on the world.

I belabor  this topic because it's so important and so often overlooked. What is the point of high school? If you don't know, your education will not be focused, and you'll end up studying all kinds of useless, unimportant, and unrelated things.

Seth Godin, brilliant mastermind and one of the three bloggers I follow frequently, recently posted on his idea of the purpose of high school: What's high school for?

It's a brilliant purpose statement. My favorite is "An insatiable desire (and the ability) to learn more. Forever." That one really drives me to make learning fun, to show you how the fun things you love--like video games--are already teaching you.

Are you in high school? Take Seth Godin's ideas, write your own purpose statement for high school, and find a way to fulfill all your points. 

Need a bonus incentive? Write about this process in your college admissions essay, and you're sure to impress.

What do you think of his article? I've seen some criticism that it's a hopelessly complex list for teenagers, but I think you are smart enough and intelligent enough to handle it.

A week  ago, I was putting my 15-month-old in the car after church when suddenly SOMETHING WAS WRONG. She had NO expression on her face and her little body was stiff as a board. We rushed her inside the church where, thankfully, there were some doctors. She wasn't breathing and they couldn't find a pulse. She started convulsing in a seizure.

The doctor did CPR, someone called 911, and all I could do was watch helplessly as my baby girl was (I thought) dying.

The seizure stopped and she took her first breath of air in minutes. The ambulance came and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the ER. Turns out she had a febrile seizure which isn't that uncommon and is caused by a sudden, high fever.

Don't worry--she's perfectly fine, now! She had a fever for three days and is perfectly back to normal--happy as a clam and loving the extra attention I've been showering on her.

All I can think of is how grateful I am for the many many people who were there to help--and they were able to help because of their education.

The doctor on the scene knew CPR. He'd gone through years of education and knew what to look for. Unlike me, he knew how to not panic and how to think fast.

The ambulance guys were all trained and knew what they were doing.

The doctors and nurses at the hospital had gone through tons of education and work to be able to help injured and sick children and their desperate parents.

Even the technology folks who designed the high-tech equipment in the room knew what they were doing, and we could watch my baby's heart rate on the touch-screen monitor.

Thank you, for all those who are working and learning to save others' lives through your education. Whether you physically save lives or emotionally mend broken hearts and spirits, whether you design or install medical technology or know basic CPR, or even know how to handle emergency situations, THANK YOU.

Whose lives are you saving with your education?

Sons of Valor

Donna Goff, who spoke at the HECOA conference I also spoke at, prompted this post by her facebook comment yesterday: “In 2007 we studied the hero journey, history of Western civilization (1215 AD- 1620 AD), The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in a class I called Sons of Valor.”

I checked out her website for more information: in this class, they played strategy games, learned about statesmanship, talked about speeches that changed the world, history, scriptures (this was a religious homeschool), Shakespeare, all sorts of things that sound spectacular when combined together like this.

It’s the combination

Some of my favorite classes in college were the honors courses, which did what Donna Goff does--combine different resources based on a theme, not necessarily a specific subject. It’s the combination of these various resources that sparks the interest. The Art of War, on its own, might not sound too exciting to you, but pair it with Lord of the Rings and perhaps an examination of the strategies in the Revolutionary War, and suddenly it’s all fascinating.

Humanities and the Arts

Almost all colleges offer this class, under one title or another, usually in two parts: ancient and modern (or less ancient). I took the latter. In the class, we basically walked through the major art, literature, and music of the Western world. Of course, while you’re learning about chiaroscuro and Impressionism, you get a strong dose of history and politics and philosophy and science and just about everything.

Tolkien

I also took a class on Tolkien. In it, not only did we read The Lord of the Rings, but we read medieval literature, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; read ancient literature, like Beowulf in OLD ENGLISH; studied philology and created our own languages...

Not only is each of those things worth studying on its own, but together, they formed a united whole that changed the way we understood the individual parts. Beowulf was no longer just some weird, somewhat boring, story about monsters. It was a source document for Lord of the Rings, it was a new language to learn, it was a political and cultural commentary.

This is why I majored in English

I love reading, it’s true, but the real reason I majored in English was my desire to learn about philosophy and psychology: how people think. I only took an introductory psychology class and never took a philosophy course, but I didn’t need to. The point of English is not so much the words, which can be breathtakingly beautiful or painfully sharp, but it is to explore the way people are: what they think and what they do.

So, in effect, my college experience was directed by an overarching theme: to explore how people think. Everything I did was related, in one way or another, to this theme. It made the classes or texts I didn’t particularly care for more interesting and relevant.

What’s your theme?

Some of us don’t have the choice on what to study--especially students stuck in public school.

So if you can’t literally create themed classes, can you give yourself a theme for high school? Or for this year? Maybe your junior year you’ll try to figure out what love is. What does your Biology class suggest the answer is--hormones? Your English class and The Scarlet Letter or Romeo and Juliet? Your history class with different kinds of love--love of country, love of self, love of war, love of power?

I thought about posting a list of themes most people find compelling, but... that’s not the point. You’re not most people. You’re you. Your theme will be something that speaks to you.

For example, a theme that propelled me through one particularly heavy semester was that of individualism. It was fascinating combining the ideas of individualism from ancient Greece, where individuals who stuck out tended to get exiled, even if they were heroes and saved the city, to the feminist themes in writers like Virgina Woolf. And the ideas that sparked by combining ancient Greek history with A Room of One’s Own were the most fascinating, most original, most compelling ideas I could ever come up with: all because I had a theme to follow.

Effective?

This is why I teach courses like the Video Game Academy, which is a college prep education built around the theme of video games. Themes are so highly effective that you don't need to worry about motivation so much. Themes help you see the common threads running through math and philosophy, Shakespeare and biology. Themes enhance and deepen your education.

Choose a theme. See where it takes you.

Burnt out? It's no wonder--you’ve already been through years of education, you probably have years ahead of you in high school and college, and education is all too often boring and irrelevant.

Here are the 7 best ideas I’ve come across in my research on motivation difficulties, especially for smart kids who tend to avoid homework. I originally sent this list to a mom whose bright kids were having difficulty staying motivated.

1. Study less

I know, I know, this sounds crazy, but it actually works.

Step 1: Have a fixed schedule so you KNOW when you’re finished studying.

And when you’re supposed to be studying. It needs to be okay for you to do nothing school-related in your non-study time, as long as you are actually studying during study time.

So let yourself relax. And tell your parents your plan so they don’t freak out, either.

Step 2: Learn to study better.

Most students are inefficient when it comes to studying so their time is wasted. When you learn to study better, you will get more done in less time, which gives you more free time to relax.

"4 Weeks to a 4.0" at Study Hacks is the perfect starting place to efficient studying. I highly recommend this method because it works. It’s the sort of thing I did in high school and college. I did very little studying and was able to do well because of the system I’d set up.

Step 3: Consider allowing some school-free time immediately after school.

You’ve just spent HOURS at school, and the prospect of HOURS more of homework and studying is often daunting. A break immediately after school works for some, doesn’t work for others.

2. Have a major goal purpose in studying

Why would you WANT to do well in school? You will find motivation in your answer.

Maybe you want to do well so you can get into college... but why? Why would you want college? Glory, fame, and riches? To boost your intelligence muscles?

Do you want to do well to get a good job? What does a "good" job mean? If you could be paid to do anything, what would it be? How does that particular job relate to this particular assignment?

Good grades are usually not sufficiently motivating on their own.

This is where ideas like Robinson’s The Element come in. Connect your passions--THE most powerful motivator--to your education, in any way you can.

3. Make studying relevant

Similar to the major goal, is there some sort of emotional trigger you can tie to your homework assignments? Algebra suddenly isn’t just about passing this week’s test, it’s suddenly a step towards that perfect life you’ve dreamed of as an artist.

Consider what your big goals in life are. How do you want to change the world? When you come down to it, most teenagers, however secretly, do want to have a significant impact on the world. How is your education a path to changing the world?

Can you make the assignment real? Sometimes you have a choice in what project or assignment to do. When this happens, perhaps you can do something real with the assignment. Instead of just drawing a picture of a city, propose your ideas to a city planner.

4. Break it down

"Studying" is such a huge, vague idea. Break it down into smaller, achievable bits. Instead of studying for the test, what if you were just studying for ten minutes? That’s all. If you can, after a 10 or 20 minute break, study for 10 more minutes. And by study, that’s a complete focus. Use a timer if necessary.

At first, even just 10 minutes will be hard to focus on studying--and only studying (shorten the time if necessary), but the upcoming 10 or 20 minute break will help motivate you. As you repeat short bursts of studying, it will become easier, just as lifting weights becomes easier over time.

5. Build habits

Read "4 Weeks to a 4.0" at Study Hacks.

Turn your studying over to an autopilot.

Decide to study before it’s actually time. Just as you likely were taught to say no to drugs before you ever were offered any, this method is great because it minimizes the effort required to study. If you’ve already made the choice to study at a specific time, you don’t have to agonize over the choice every single day.

6. Use peer support

Announce your study goals on Facebook or Twitter (@ or DM me @hackhighschool so I can cheer you on!). Public accountability helps most people.

7. Clone what works

What is working for you now? Is there something that gets you to occasionally study or stay on task? Keep track--maybe a running list in your back pocket or on your iPod. Try some of these methods, find what works, and repeat.

I will continue to post more ideas on HackingHighSchool.net. If I offered an online course on using passions/interests to motivate teenagers in high school or on avoiding burnout, would you be interested?