> My mom used to smoke crack in front of me when we were about the same age. Poor people do not have a monopoly on being shitty parents but let’s stay on topic here: the school system is necessary for the lower classes.

What they/we need(ed) is a better school system if and when necessary and an opt out entirely for basic skills training for gainful employment for the lower class, of which I was a part of back then and only until recently.

Not everyone was meant to go to University, Society cannot function without the essential workers we have who still work to this day despite COVID, most of whom do not have more than a secondary school education--this pandemic showed just how non-essential a stock broker or a contract lawyer, or even a Software engineer is in maintaining Society's core functions that we all rely on, and we would be remiss to conflate schooling with education or skills for that matter.

The school system in question was a place that kept people like me from attending University lectures by guest lecturers or seminal speeches on various topics I took interest in because I disobyeyed my teachers, walked out of class and left school when I got bored and corrected their mistakes and still had a 3.x GPA without even trying and openly told them I spent more time on the internet and in university lectures than in their class or homework so it was best to just ignore me and let me go at it alone instead of trying to make an example out of me, which they did and tried to get me on a technicality saying I didn't attend the 'minimum days' my senior year to graduate, proving to me it was racket for financial gain at it's core rather than a place to get an education or even a proper skills set.

These very same people sent recruiters and head hunters from universities on my behalf by my junior year as they wanted a success story to tell, when I refused because I had already got accepted at another university with a near full ride (something very important to me as I had all my money tied to up to my first start up) they were offended. A not so dissimilar thing happened in my freshman and sophomore year oat the first University I attended (I went to 3 by Junior year of a BSc because of countless budget cuts and politics in impacted majors that cared more about cashing in on out of state and foreign tuition rates than educating their own populace) when I got honors when the semester before I was put on academic probation for trying to take 16 units worth of classes at a another university while working 2 jobs (call center and my 2nd startup), but I digress...

That same HS education system tried to send me into Honors Classes on campus a year before but I disliked the hands on approach those teachers had to have with me for me to be accepted, as I had already committed to a life of autodiaditic learning by 16.

Had I simply had access to more things like lathes, CNC machines and welders when I was in HS instead of make-shift garages in apartment parking lots I would have been a very successful fabricator as I would later live with a very famous roll cage and suspension fabricator and a professional driver in motorsports who offered me a role in his operation as he wanted to expand and make more in house designs and felt I had something to contribute. I declined and instead I chose biology and got burned and then went into tech as is so common a story here on HN as I refused to play the academic game and still did more outside of it then I ever could inside, which is why I focused on Ag and culinary.