Podcasting “Give Me Slack”

On the parenting challenges of an era without second chances.

This week on my podcast, I read “Give Me Slack,” my latest column for Medium, about the second (and third, and fourth) chances I got growing up, and how scary it is that my kid — and yours — won’t get those chances.

https://doctorow.medium.com/give-me-slack-b4e88a007dbf

From the fourth through the eighth grade, I attended a groovy, publicly funded alternative school in Toronto. Much of the student work was self-directed, and they even kicked us out of school on alternating Wednesday afternoons, sending us out into the world to learn.

I started my high-school in a very straight-laced traditional institution, but I hated it. By the middle of the first semester, I’d stopped going to classes altogether — instead, I used my subway pass to ride down to the Metro Reference Library, where I spent my days requesting esoteric books from the stacks and looking up weird newspaper articles on microfilm.

Eventually, the school administration called my parents, and after a raging argument, I transferred to a public alternative high-school that was structured a lot more like my K-8 school. Then I transfered again, to an even looser, less-structured public high school downtown. It took me seven years to get a four-year diploma, in part because I spent a year organizing demonstrations against the first Gulf War, and another year in Mexico, writing.

I did graduate though, with honors, and enrolled and dropped out of four universities in quick succession. Three years later, I got a job in the tech industry, programming CD ROMs. I went on to be a web programmer, then a freelance CIO, then founded a startup, then went to work at EFF.

In the years since, I published more than 20 books, including several international bestsellers. I got an honorary PhD. I’ve got appointments at three universities on two continents. I’ve been a UN delegate. I feel like I got a lot done, and I’m certain that it’s because I was able to mess around, drop out, direct my own learning, and take a couple extra years here and there.

In other words, I had Slack, that prize of the Subgenius. And kids today do not have slack. 15 years ago, I taught on…