7 Highly Successful High School Dropouts
It’s a common belief in America these days that without a high school diploma, you have no future. This opinion may be true to some extent, but it’s certainly not a hard and fast rule. There are a lot of highly successful people in this world who never even completed high school.
One of these successful people is Flava Flav, who dropped out of school when he was only 13, although, admittedly, it shows. He’s now planning to return to school to get his G.E.D., and the ordeal may even become a reality show on VH1. He’s not the only celebrity that dropped out of high school and still did well though. In fact, some high school dropouts are actually pretty brilliant.
Image Via Jeremy Farmer Photography [Flickr]
Dave Thomas
The founder of Wendy’s, Dave Thomas started working in the restaurant industry at only 12 years old. His family was constantly on the move and at age 15, he refused to keep moving with his parents. He was working part time at the Hobby House restaurant in Fort Wayne and dropped out of high school to start working at the business full time.
After working as a mess sergeant during the Korean War, he began working for KFC, where he was able to help turn several of their failing franchises around. In 1969, he sold of the KFC franchises he owned and opened his own restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. He named the restaurant after his daughter, who was actually called Melinda, but was nicknamed Wendy. These days, Wendy’s is the third largest burger chain in America.
In 1993, Dave decided that he didn’t want to set a bad example for any youngsters out there, so he enrolled at Coconut Creek High School and earned his GED.
George Bernard Shaw
Famed Irish Playwright George Bernard Shaw held an outright animosity towards schooling that he maintained throughout his life. He was quoted as saying, “schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parent.” Not surprisingly, the writer never completed his own education, having dropped out of the Dublin English Scientific and Commercial Day School.
His main complaints about schooling was the standardization of the curriculum, which he believed deadened the spirit and stifled the intellect. He also deplored the corporal punishment being used in schools, although most modern teachers and parents would agree with him on this issue.
Source Public Domain Image Via Wikipedia
George Eastman
Creator of the Kodak Camera Company, George Eastman, was forced to drop out of school due to financial circumstances. At only 14, his father died and the only way George could keep his two sisters and mother alive was to quit school and begin working as an office boy full time. By the age of 26, Eastman found his true calling and began working to improve the emulsion process involved in photography. He thought the liquid emulsions proved quite a problem as they were excessively sticky and had to be used quickly before they dried. In only three years, Eastman had perfected his dry emulsion plates and he started his own photographic business in 1880.
Source Public Domain Image Via U.S. Library Of Congress
Quentin Tarantino
While a lot of famous directors hone their skills during college, Quentin Tarantino built up his film knowledge by working in a video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California.
He not only never went to college, but he quit going to Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California in his freshman year. He started learning the acting craft in acting school at the James Best Theatre Company in Toluca Lake, but it really wasn’t until he started working at Video Archives with Roger Avery, also a director these days, that he really began sharpening his future skills. Some people complain about Tarantino’s movies having too much focus on the dialogue, but for a high school dropout, I’d say that’s not such a bad thing.
Source Image Via pinguino [Flickr]
Richard Pryor
If comedy really is born from tragedy, then it is only logical that Richard Pryor became one of the top comedians of the seventies. Pryor had anything but an easy life.
He was raised in his grandmother’s brothel, where his mother “worked” and his father served as her pimp. At only ten, his mother abandoned him and his strict grandmother took over his care, beating him whenever she thought he was acting “eccentric.” With a home life like this, it’s not all to surprising that he ended up being expelled from high school at 14.
In the end, Pryor ended up proving the adage that “whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” and his comedy career was one of the longest lasting and most successful of the last fifty years.
Source Image Via Alan Light [Flickr]
Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings started broadcasting when he was only nine years old. He followed the footsteps of his father, a respected radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and operated as the host of a CBC children’s program called “Peter’s People.” Surprisingly, his father was out on assignment when Jennings was chosen for the gig and he was furious at the network for hiring his son solely because he was the son of a broadcaster.
When it came to schooling, Jennings was a great athlete, but a terrible student, which he said was due to “pure boredom.” He failed to pass the 10th grade and dropped out as a result. He tried to attend Carleton University, but “lasted about 10 minutes” before he dropped out there.
After school, he started working at The Royal Bank of Canada, but he dreamed of being a professional broadcaster. I’d say did pretty well at meeting those goals, wouldn’t you?
Peter Jackson
Before he directed the Lord of The Rings, or even his cult classics like Meet The Feebles, Peter Jackson was just a film-obsessed kid. He was trying to make his own film by age of nine, complete with the special effects he loved to see in shows like “Thunderbirds.” After he saw the original King Kong, he started trying to mimic the stop-motion from the film. He spent his entire childhood and all of his teenage years making short films and developing his own special effect techniques, which even included making his own minuscule models.
When he was 16, he dropped out of high school and started working as an apprentice engraver in a newspaper photography department. He kept living with his parents so he could save money for film-making supplies, which he soon used to begin production on what would become his first full-length film, Bad Taste. When you know that your future is film you don’t have a real need for the three Rs of “reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic.”
Source Image Via Natasha Baucas [Flickr]
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School Answering Machine
There’s a video clip making the rounds on the Net about a supposed school answering machine.
The story goes like this: When administrators of the Maroochydore High School in Queensland, Australia, implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for attendance and homework, parents of children with failing grades sued. The staff of the school recorded this answering message as a response:
The video clip is going viral, perhaps it strikes a chord, but unfortunately, it’s a hoax. Old Internet hands will remember a similar clip circulating back in 2002 with a different school name, the Pacific Palisades High School.
Snopes said:
In 1998 the sole high school in the Palisades Charter Schools group, the 2,400-student Charter High School, instituted an attendance policy mandating that any student absent without a valid excuse ten or more days per semester be failed, regardless of his academic achievements. One of the results of this policy was that in February 2002 forty Palisades High teachers assigned a total of 130 failing grades to students whose classwork would otherwise have merited passing grades, because those students recorded absences and tardiness in excess of the school’s stated attendance policy.
After vociferous complaints (and threats of lawsuits) from parents who contended they were unaware of, or didn’t agree with, Palisades High’s attendance policy (even though every student and parent had been informed of it), LAUSD officials said the failing marks might have to be voided because the attendance policy was not submitted to and approved by the school board. Without board approval, the school must follow the policies of the LAUSD, which states that students must be graded on the work they do and attendance may not be used as a reason to fail
them.
The staff of the Pacific Palisades High School did make the answering machine recording though it was never put on the school’s system.
Still. It’s funny. Thanks alientango!
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High School Course in ... Domestic Security
Remember our post about boy scouts trained in anti-terrorism? In one high school in Maryland, you can even take courses in domestic security – but before you cry foul, consider this: it may simply be a good career move for the kids.
Meade High School, where Edler teaches, made its own history this year. The long-troubled public high school become one of the first in the nation to offer a four-year course in domestic security. The goal: to help graduates build careers in one of America’s few growth industries.
"This course will help me get a top-secret security clearance," said Darryl Bagley, an eager 15-year-old. "That way I can always get a job."
Meade offers its 2,150 students a standard high school curriculum, including electives like advanced calculus and carpentry. But the 90 ninth-graders who chose the new homeland security program this last school year focused on topics torn from the headlines: Islamic jihadism, nuclear arms, cyber-crime, domestic militias and the like.
New themes even were added to their science, social studies and English classes.
"There’s a lot of homeland security issues in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ " said Bill Sheppard, the program coordinator. "Like, how do you deal with infiltration in your own family?"
Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times has the story of agents in the making: Link (Photo: Chris Usher / LA Times)
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Why Is It So Difficult To Fire Bad Teachers?
Putting a man on the moon, solving Fermat’s Last Theorem, or firing a tenured teacher because of incompetence or even criminal behaviors: which is harder?
While most teachers are good, decent people with the thankless jobs of teaching unruly kids with dwindling resources and ever-increasing class sizes, there are a few bad apples that really ruined school for a lot of children. But why is it so difficult to fire them?
Jason Song of the Los Angeles Times investigates:
Joseph Walker, a former principal of Grant High School in Van Nuys, was sued by a special education teacher whom he tried to dismiss for alleged repeated sexual harassment. A civil jury sided with Walker — but the review commission decided the teacher shouldn’t be fired. The case, now in the courts, has dragged on seven years.
Confronting uphill battles like this, Walker said: "You’re not going to fire someone who’s not doing their job. And if you have someone who’s done something really egregious, there’s only a 50-50 chance that you can fire them."
Walker is now principal of Discovery Charter Preparatory Academy in Pacoima, where he said he had fired three teachers so far this year. None were fired during his three years as head of Grant. The difference: His school’s teachers are not unionized and can be fired at will.
(Photo: Joseph Walker. Photo credit: Liz O. Baylen / LA Times)
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Don't Want to go to Your High School Reunion? Send a Stripper Instead!
[YouTube - Link]
Who hasn’t hesitated about going back to their high school reunion? Andrea Wachner decided that she’s going to do something different. Instead of going herself, she sent a stripper to go as her!
Even better, she set up filmed the event for all of us to enjoy …
– via nontt
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