Now I'm wondering if abolishing high schools will also make work places more tolerable. The complaints I personally have (and hear from others) about work often resemble the complaints about social dynamics in high school.
Basically, you have to do well enough in school/job to keep the teacher/boss happy. If you do too well your classmates/coworkers resent you and start sabotaging you. If you really do too well and make the teacher/boss feel unneeded they start sabotaging you as well to put you in your place.
In my experience the vast majority of people (adults and teenagers) are not introspective enough to recognize or admit when they start behaving in this destructive way. I started seeing this in high school and assumed that people would grow out of it. I now realize most people never grow out of this, and sabotage other people as a way to manage their insecurities. If I hadn't started experiencing this in high school, I might have had a harder time recognizing it in the work place. On the other hand, maybe high school is training people to behave like this.
Basically, you have to do well enough in school/job to keep the teacher/boss happy. If you do too well your classmates/coworkers resent you and start sabotaging you. If you really do too well and make the teacher/boss feel unneeded they start sabotaging you as well to put you in your place.
In my experience the vast majority of people (adults and teenagers) are not introspective enough to recognize or admit when they start behaving in this destructive way. I started seeing this in high school and assumed that people would grow out of it. I now realize most people never grow out of this, and sabotage other people as a way to manage their insecurities. If I hadn't started experiencing this in high school, I might have had a harder time recognizing it in the work place. On the other hand, maybe high school is training people to behave like this.