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I went to an International Baccalaureate high school in Chicago that taught for the test, from start to finish. "The test" is actually a series of exams over two years, but all of the material that I learned for basically all of high school was intended to be used at some point in essays or problem sets contained in those tests. By senior year I was doing homework constantly to stay caught up; there was basically no question that there would not be time to learn about things that I was interested in that were outside the scope of the curriculum; I had to answer questions and write essays in a very particular way, and there was always at least a form of the right answer. 

I basically allowed it to crush me. It was totally set up based on punishments and rewards and I really fell for it; I did what I was supposed to do to get good grades and good exam results (which I did get, but which have never, ever "mattered" in really any way). I definitely learned some important analytical skills but it took all of the excitement that I remember feeling about learning and so compressed and distorted my experience of being educated that I came to really hate it. I came to have an attitude that was basically a kind of muscular focus on the bare minimum: I would just declare whole subjects or schools of thought irrelevant for me, either because I knew it would be challenging and wasn't worth risking the (very high, for me) stakes of doing poorly or because I assumed there was just nothing to it because I had reduced the substantive content of things so dramatically. 

Waldof schools seem really great because they at least try to provide an experience basically diametrically opposed to what mine was. Taking this class, talking about these issues and thinking seriously about how important education is has made me consider trying to get certified and maybe eventually teaching at my high school or another high school. I feel like I have a pretty good idea, now, that some of the things that my teachers did don't work for every student, and I would relish the opportunity to offer "an alternative" within that particular institutional context...