It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. What is school for?

I did not love going to school.

Meet Karen McKechnie. She is a senior at Cornell College, and she was our intern this summer.

I would say that at the worst, I would attend maybe three or four of my classes a day.

And I remember my high school counselor telling me, oh, like, you're technically a truant

right now, Corin. And like, there was some truancy meeting coming up because my attendance

was so poor. But I then did not attend the truancy meeting. So that would probably be one of the low points.

This is Madison's West High. And in this hallway, there are dozens of kids shrugging off their

backpacks, opening lockers, getting ready for another day of tests and assignments.

This is the place where Karin skipped all those classes, but where she also met a few teachers

who inspired her, who got her thinking about what education could and should be, what school is for.

And that's our question this hour.

And Karin?

Well, actually, Karin is planning on coming back to this school, or one like it, as a teacher.

Even though there was so much about it she didn't like.

School felt like a sort of sterile artificial site where you go, you do homework,

strive to get those days, rinse and repeat.

It was exhausting, And I looked around and didn't seem like that many of my

peers were happy and neither was I. So even though I was pretty disenchanted with school, I ended up falling in love with a high school English class.

The teacher who taught that class, Mr. Storm, would come to class and describe something that had happened to him.

And it would be connected to, say, Macbeth.

It was the first time that I'd felt like learning in life

...