Chess perspective for an high school dropout

there are kids (10-12-14 years old) who are chess masters and obviously do not have much formal education because of their ages. so clearly, education isnt related to chess strength.

Magnus Carlsen even took a year off school to travel and play chess when he was in his early teens.  seems to me he is doing just fine...

Thanks a lot for your replies.

It means a lot to me. I'll have to assume who I am and not let people define me. But I am 26 years and even though it's never too late to going back to school I see little hope for that. I am working full time and have barely time for myself outside work. Also, school is far behind me..Not sure I coud come back and succeed at it. I don't have any interest in these subjects. For some reason it's different with chess, I can study the game and read books on it with passion...

Marshall Matters, the rapper, also went back to finish high school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC6Qbp0nip0

Chess isn't going to pay your bills or make your life any better fella. 

You have a formal education. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to read and write in this thread. It might not be as thorough as that of others, but none the less, you have one.

It isn't so much of a testament of your intellect that, you happen to have a chessic mindset and choose to play chess, as it is an indictment of, the incompetence of the education system. It fails to help kids discover themselves and embellish in what they enjoy, so that they can be all the can be.

It's designed to make sure kids get a basic education and provide assistance for the kids that are fortunate enough to understand "what they think they may want", and who have the ambition to take the initiative to try taking advantage of their opportunities. It is difficult to instill ambition.

I was kicked out of high school, where I really wanted to graduate from, when it was discovered that my family had moved outside of the district. My family couldn't afford to pay tuition for me to continue to go there. I got kicked out of my new high school, both the first and second semesters for attendance. I hated it. Once I was suspended the second time, it was also a manditory expulsion. I was going to have to appeal to the school board to get them to readmit me. I didn't care. I ended up getting my GED. Get yours.

BTW, I took tests in middle school that suggested I should be an electrical engineer. I thought better of it. My intution told me I'd be miserable, in spite of the money. Ironically, I ended up being an electrician. I still ended up needing to understand and use what an engineer does, but I don't sit at a desk and draw pictures. I would have hated it.

The bottom line is, whether you finish high school or not, or even being interested in or becoming good at chess, isn't necessarily indicative of a high IQ.  However, these things can possibly be signs of it. Intelligent people often become bored quickly, aren't easily amused and get disinterested quickly when they are held back, due to the general needs of the masses.

I personally never saw the point in all of the review that went into school, or being forced to absorb a bunch of information that was going to end up being useless later in life. Things like this bore and dishearten a kid, who is intelligent and wants something more. It added up to an extreme dose of apathy in my life.

You are still very young. You still have time to learn or do something.

You just have to find the right person, but I know the chance of you finding the good person is low. GL.

Other than math, science, and your native and a foreign language respectively school generally doesn't teach anything useful.  Even then you learn the formal (or "smart" as some put it) version of the language, not the people's version so you sound like a newscaster weirdo to them.

History, while interesting and important (for non-utilitarian reasons) can be learned over the internet and from relatives.  History if anything really teaches us how far we've come, back in the day Washington was considered a really intelligent and enlightened dude whereas today his beliefs would be seen as quaint and backwatery.  "Evolution?  No, I don't believe in that!  I want my scientifically unsound magical origin story!  All men means rich white men and easy to infer from context!  Why aren't Atheists being arrested freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from religion!  etc."

Like I said, we've came a long way, if time travel were possible and we brought the founding fathers over they'd shock and disappoint us.  Even Jesus, who was certainly ahead of his time, would be morally inferior to the average person today who knows that slavery, homophobia, and sexism are wrong, and that cutting off someone's hand is overkill for lifting a loaf of bread. 

You forgot industrial arts, art (subjective in some respects), and home economics...

History, while it appears to be perhaps unnecessary, in my personal opinion, without history, people make the same mistakes their predecessors did.

Dropping out of school gives you definite advantage in chess because you have more free time to study chess.

My son Nick didn't graduate high school and took up a cooking apprenticeship. At 25 he quit and went back to school (TAFE) to get his HS diploma and seven years later he became an Osteopath (5 yrs at Uni). Never underestimate your potential.

Speaking from personal experience, the education here (or at least in the schools that I've gone to) is great. It's definitely miles better then the education in countries like China, despite what many people in the US think.

I agree. We have fallen way behind in many areas. Currently we lead the world in the ability to blow shit up and prison population. We spend close to 800 billion on the military (more than the next ten countries combined) while our infrastructure is failing and our school systems are in ruin. Our health care system is in such disarray we are 64th in infant mortality. Behind Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to name a few. We are failing and it begins and ends with the notion we are the worlds policeman. We but our nose in where it doesn't belong and spend hundreds of billions annualy to do so... The time has come for America to clean up it's OWN backyard, before we go knocking on our neighbors door.

I technically never finished high school because I was home schooled. Ended up getting a GED. It was an interesting way to learn because I had almost no oversight. I picked out my own text books. No one ever graded any of my work.

I was a reading addict. I learned a lot even though what I learned was inconsistent and quirky. Just read whatever interested me and didn't read anything that didn't interest me. 

Didn't hurt me any. I didn't have any trouble in college and I am satisfied with my career.

But I'm not that great at chess. 

Personally speaking, I learned way more in my 2 years of high school in the US then I did in middle school + beginning of high school in China combined. Now maybe that's partly because I went to one of the best public schools in the US, but really, I can tell you, the education in China sucks, and no one knows it better than people in China. Sure, Chinese students may get higher scores on tests, but that's about it. The Chinese system discourages independent thinking and creativity, as the standarized tests are based pretty much entirely off facts from textbooks. Humanities classes are basically just memorization, not only of facts but also of the "correct" way to interpret those facts, and in science classes students we basically just learned how to calculate using formulas, and our textbooks were grossly outdated (to this day most chemistry and physics textbooks in China don't even mention quantum mechanics, and I didn't know that such a thing as quantum mechanics existed until I came to the US and took a sophomore level chem class). Also, since all students will take the exact same college-entrance exam after graduating from high school, and their scores on the exam will be the single factor that determines what colleges they can get into, students spend all 3 years of high school (it's 3 years in China, not 4) doing test prep. Even after a student has mastered the material, he can't move on to more advanced material, because that's not going to be on the college entrance exam, so why study it when you can use that time perfecting your test taking skills? Personally I'm really glad that I got out of that system and came to the US to finish high school, and so far my 2 years of high school in the US have been the 2 best years of my life.

Wow... that was probably my most serious comment ever on the chess.com forums...

Education in US is suitable to US, Education in Asia is suitable for Asia. Managerial, Research, and innovative skill is better learned in US, while students in Asia are taught to follow procedures. Researches have to be translated to procedures to be understood.

Would you like to be the guy in "Pursuit Of Happyness" BEFORE or AFTER his journey.........

You are mistaken. Societal decline is not the same as knowledge decline.

Do you think circuits ought to be learned in 6 years Elementary schools? Well, it only serves for some ego in education. So it makes you think that education in Korea is better than in the US.

BTW, How many US students in Korea? And how many Korean students in the US?

Even better if I ask you which one will you choose: go to Korea to study, or US? I know your answer is Korea.