College and being prepared for it

Maybe a Prep School is the best for going to college. Their soul purpose is to prepare you for College from about 8th Grade on. Public High Schools in the U.S. are not designed for this purpose really. They have become over the years more of a babysitting service to try to keep kids out of drugs and trouble more than anything else with few exceptions.

For example, in my county the best public high school if you want to actually succeed in High School and College is in the most affluent district so that everyone who is serious about sending their kids to college in the county who can't afford a prep school tries to figure out how to rent an apartment house
or house in the district close to this one high school where kids really have a chance to get into a good college from there.

But, then there is the other side of it. Are your kids prepared for college? Does going to college burn in their breasts? Do they have a love of learning or are they just completely burned out from school by the end of high school?

A love of learning is important for everyone's survival whether they go to college or not. Not wanting to learn keeps people from surviving mentally, emotionally and physically. So, the ability to get the information you need in as easy a way as possible often is the difference between life and death and sanity and insanity in a person's life.

So, if I have a choice between college and a love of learning, I would choose a love of learning over college.

If college has no goal or useful function in a person's life but to party and get stoned with some new people you meet then life becomes useless on multiple levels at once.

So, college is only useful if you have some useful purpose for being there. Otherwise, it is just a place to meet people and get stoned and die in a car crash  some Friday or Saturday night doing something stupid.

So, college is a tool and understanding this is a good start. And a love of learning is going to do more for you long term than just forcing yourself to go to college for no good reason.