This sounds like an awesome idea.
- It’s a “limited, unscreened” school. […] It means that any student who is interested can apply–their grades and attendence record are not taken into account in deciding whether or not to admit them, only their interest. I think this is the best thing about the school. A lot of kids are just not interested enough in other academic subjects to get good grades, but they would make great software engineers. […]
That describes my high school career to a T.
- It’s not a vocational school. Unlike traditional vocational schools, this new school will have a rigorous academic component and will prepare students for college. But college is not for everyone–many of the best programmers I know were just not interested enough in a general four year degree and went straight into jobs programming.
That’s certainly what I wanted to do. To me, school was completely pointless — I knew what I wanted, and I had enough history and math and English literature that I could “page in” any further information as needed, even in the pre-Internet days.
Unfortunately, software development jobs were limited to those with college degrees at that point in history, which made little sense even at the time. Such a school would still have been perfect for me though; it might have even kept me interested enough in school to continue college past the one year that I took to satisfy my parents.
It’s far too late for me, but for the current crop of computer-geek teenagers and teenagers-to-be, I hope this sort of thing catches on quickly.