specific guidelines for defying school
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Athletics

Reading

One problem with literature is that it is very indirect because it is an entertainment, a critique, a sermon, a bunch of feelings, it is many things, which makes it so aimless and so harmful to engross oneself in. The quantity of literary material that exists is dangerous because it promotes the problem of information stuffing. Students absorb huge quantities of useless information, from books, TV, computers, music, conversations, et cetera, and all that information is competing with each other for a permanent place in your brain. That is the whole purpose of the information, to find as many hosts (brains) in as many humans as possible because if they find a place in your brain, you'll tell a friend about it, you'll produce more of it through speaking and writing, et cetera, and in the whole market of ideas, the survivors are those who effectively find a place in your mind. Information stuffing aids this process. The defiant practices information ignoring. He dismisses as many ideas as possible as irrelevant, including literature. He defies this kind of mmmiiccrocommpetitiiioon of ideas with the fact that he has a goal, an absolute standard by which ideas or memes, if you will, are selected for.

It is painful to think back to the days when I had to write all those stupid essays to pass my English classes. If you only knew how much I hate people like Shakespeare and Dickens who wrote all that literature crap. (The answer is nearly as much as I hate the conformists themselves.) I could swear to you that I will burn every copy of their books I can get my hands on. Essays are a particular problem because they force you to think the conformist way. You see, the problem is that they say there is no right or wrong answer, you're supposed to write what you think. More precisely, it is asking you to think in terms of conformist assumptions. Of course, the defiant doesn't think anything in terms of conformist assumptions, which is why essays may seem impossible to write for a defiant. I don't know how I passed my English classes, personally. Just remember that if you are having difficulty, there is nothing wrong with you, there is something wrong with school making you write all that nonsense. If you don't learn anything else in school, at least learn to blame everything on school (or society), not on yourself.

Another problem with essays is that you're supposed to write them fast. By doing it fast, your thoughts become those based on little thought, based on no strategy, since there is only time to adopt the conformist model. The trick is that they're trying to get you to accept conformist thought that way, with time pressure. It seems silly to think for a long time and not write anything, and they're trying to make you think it's silly, so you just start producing conformist stuff. Of course, no one is trying to make you conform; the real reason for this mechanism is that thinking doesn't produce any visible results (although the strategic results are far more important than the visible). Of course, none of the visible results produced at schools have any meaning. You are only made to produce them based on the assumption that if they don't apply the pressure, you will slack off. The system is made to work for conformists. All the visible results you produce at school are meaningless because their only purpose is to make sure no one is slacking off. Students are thus coaxed into thinking that what doesn't produce visible results is unproductive and undesirable. As a defiant at school, your only concern is the invisible results, which are the changes in your thought. There is no correlation between a student's ability to produce visible versus invisible results, except for the deranged who can't produce any results.

Another significant flaw with essays is that you are supposed to have your own opinion. You're not supposed to copy someone else's opinion, have no opinion, or blindly agree with someone. (These would be the preferred options for a defiant.) This is an illusion, however, because conformists constantly copy each other's opinions. You see, what you're really supposed to do is believe in the conformist set of opinions. But the only way to get you to do this is to make you want to have your own opinion, whatever that means. Again, the mechanism is a matter of evolution. Think of the students enrolled in programming classes. They also have to each turn in their own program doing the same thing. However, everyone is supposed is write their own source code. Just as you can express conformist opinions in millions of ways, you can write computer programs in millions of different ways. This kind of diversity, however, is useless.

Finally, the value of the subject of English (or whatever national language your country has) as a whole needs criticism. A popular idea is that as a core subject it deserves your attention and study. Baloney. Children learn to read, write, and speak pretty quickly, so the continued study is really irrelevant. And if you need to learn more, you can probably do so more effectively on your own. The language classes taught at schools around the world are likely to bring nothing. I can imagine why you might disagree, like if you are in a foreign country and your situation leads you to conclude that taking English classes is a logical aid to learn more, but you know what I mean...

Natural Sciences

I have no special comments about biology, chemistry, physics, and the related sciences, except that they contribute to information stuffing. A common habit of conformist over-achievers is to take many hard classes because they think it's somehow good for them. Really, doing nothing or watching TV is probably better than spending time with classes. It's especially dangerous to try hard in high school as you're more likely to get sick of school too soon. Reserve your strength for college. Your performance there is a lot more important than high school, and you may think you need to take all these hard classes to get in, but my advice is to take it easy while it's not that important. Personally, I was thinking I'd major in business while in high school because anything technical seemed contrary to defiance to me (my argument that technicality is irrelevant was correct, but I didn't take into account that this is why I should study it: because it is the least relevant to defiant philosophy, it gives me the most freedom both at school and work to retain my defiant way of thinking). So I hardly did any work at all in high school. Then I changed my mind, and suddenly I was in college and needed to have all this background in science and mathematics, which I had neglected. It didn't matter, though, because after doing nearly nothing for four years I was ready to put in any amount of effort, while for the other students it was the same old boring routine all over again, and what they had picked up through their AP classes gave them only a tiny head start over me. (Don't fall into the trap of thinking that hard classes will get you ready. That type of thinking makes sense in sports because physical activity improves your fitness and gets you ready for more. Academics is not like sports. The best preparation for the hard classes in college is NOT hard classes in high school. It is defiant thought to build up your drive and ambition. You want to save that energy for when you need it most. Don't worry about falling behind because it's mostly useless crap that the other students are painfully drilling into themselves.) You see, if you put in the effort early, it will mostly stuff your mind with data that it will forget again, and then when you get to college you'll do it all over again or discover that the classes you worked through aren't relevant for your particular degree at your particular college. I used to think that I had things planned, but there are so many unknown elements involved (courses and requirements change constantly everywhere) that you're better off putting everything off until you are absolutely sure you need a particular class, and then you take it and only for the credit.

'ok, ok,' you say, 'but how is watching TV better?' Well, at least if you get sick of watching TV, no harm is done. If you get sick of taking classes, that may or may not cause you problems.

Mathematics

Unless you're close to quitting school, my advice here is a little different than for the other subjects. The academic body of knowledge in mathematics up to the high school level is hierarchical and uniformly defined among various schools. That means whatever you study, you are likely to see it again, whereas in other subjects, if you forget something, you might not see it again anyway. For this reason, mathematics should be given more attention and effort because it is less likely to be wasted. If you need some specific advice as to what to study and ignore, you can e-mail me.

There is another important concern about mathematics, namely that the lecture style of teaching is the least appropriate for mathematics. Mathematics teachers should simply create a kind of honors section to let their students study independently and then go around answering questions on a one-on-one basis (the current function of honors sections is a bit silly, so you might as well do something different there). This is such an obvious and simple improvement, and I've seen it work in practice, which shows how slowly innovation propagates through school. Of course, if you are in a lecture style class, don't listen and do something more productive, if possible.

The conformist studies history because he wants to avoid making the same mistakes as the people of the past. The defiant keeps his mind pure of it because he wants to avoid thinking like the people of the past. Overconfidence and lack of fear are grave dangers here because without the utmost defiance conformist assumptions begin to sink into you. The explicit is always easily defied, the implicit and unseen are greatly to be feared. There are interesting historical facts, but in general, they require filtering too much information to find, so that history is generally best left alone. There is no need to fear missing something because if you cannot derive it using your own mind and common knowledge, it is probably an obscure thought, not as important as many others.

Conformists cite many other reasons for studying history, such as "for its own sake," "history is the foundation and background to everything," "to learn who we are and where we are from," "to teach discipline," and I know I heard many others, but I can't think of them now, but they are all wrong. Given that you have to take history classes, though, what does a defiant focus on and neglect? I can only tell you what I know from my personal experience. The books I remember best are (1) The Art of War, by Sun Tzu (written circa 200 BC; I remember it because of his competitive interpretation of the world), (2) The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (written several hundred years ago; I remember it for the same reason), (3) The Young Hitler I knew, which is a translation of Hitler, mein Jugendfreund; I remember it because Hitler's personality is depicted as similar to that of a defiant: he takes all of life with the utmost seriousness, (4) The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm; I remember because he criticizes the whole structure of society, like a defiant (though he does so more in The Sane Society). So whenever I had to do history projects that were vaguely defined, I would pick something related to the above subjects and books.

The older and more mature people get, the more they assume the attitude of choosing their classes for their personal benefit. It seems unproductive, irresponsible, and narrow-minded to them to act like a slave and only take a class because they have to. They feel better showing initiative and finding benefits in classes. Knowledge is good in their minds, and even crucial for things such as achieving their career goals.

Now, they openly admit that most of the information they learn, they never use in practice, but point out that once having learned, it is easier to re-learn it if you ever need it, or if you need it you'll know where to look for it, or more convincingly, that the merging of academic and practical knowledge is a difficult achievement that comes after many many years of experience. Of course, there are other conformists, such as my engineering mathematics professor, who say, "You want to know the real-life applications of what we just learned in class? The exam. You take the exam, get a degree, and get a job. That's real life."

It is very true that whether you have personal career goals, or whether you want to further scientific knowledge, valuing knowledge is helpful (and much much more so for the latter). For a defiant, it distracts. His goal is neither to bury himself in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, nor to advance his career at the expense of strategic thought, especially since there are plenty of career options that do not require a conformist affinity for knowledge. Because he is concerned only with the most fundamental knowledge, which involves defying public common sense in every manner imaginable, the details all take time and creativity away from this effort, and therefore must be avoided if at all possible. Thus, the defiant will ignore knowledge, whether at school or at work, whenever he can get away with it (and you can get away despising just about everything, I did!), for ignorance, not knowledge, is strength. I must point out, though, the conformist tendency to assume that they can defy public common sense and value knowledge at the same time. Defiance is a full-time effort, a way of life. To a defiant it is analogous to a betrayal and a crime to be pursuing senseless knowledge, instead of retaining one's childish plasticity and ignorance of mind to facilitate future collaboration.

At least in athletics, there is a practical reason to assemble students of similar age at the same place at the same time. In the classroom, this fact is often wasted, as sitting through a class is little more interesting than watching TV. Granted, it is much much better than if we had to sit at home listening to the teacher on the screen, it still doesn't come close to what could be. What disturbs me about athletics is that the training style practiced in schools tends to assume student laziness unless pressure is applied. There is a bias toward the principle of "no pain, no gain," meaning you can end up enduring useless pain for no gain. While athletics themselves serve no direct purpose to a defiant, the experience can have value, and I do encourage defiant participation in athletics as long as there is interest. Any interests a defiant has that does not directly overlap or conflict with defiant thinking are probably best pursued as long as necessary, until the interest disappears, if ever.