Community question: Describe something you learned in high school.
I was never the kid who looked forward to school every day. But when you’re raised by Haitian parents, one thing isn’t up for debate: school must be a priority.
Still, there were two subjects I actually enjoyed in high school: mathematics and history. Those classes made me feel like I was learning something meaningful, something that helped shape how I see the world today.
But the deeper I got into history, the more I realized that what we were being taught was often misleading, sometimes even intentionally so.
You might ask, why would they do that? Well, take math for example: no matter how you approach a problem, you’re aiming for one correct answer. History isn’t like that. What you learn depends entirely on who’s telling the story.
One teacher can make a group look heroic, while another paints the same group in a whole different way. And when facts are delivered without full context, it’s easy to believe a manipulated version of the truth.
It wasn’t until I started reading and exploring other perspectives on my own that I realized how much had been left out. So much critical information was kept from us or framed in a way that fit a specific narrative.
What I eventually learned in high school is this: the version of history you’re taught is often the version the system wants you to learn.
Since then, I’ve made it a point to keep an open mind and question everything I’m taught.
Gio founded TheGrowthFocusedGuy in January 2020 because he was fed up with debt.
His mission is to document his journey to Financial Independence in order to motivate and inspire others to get out of debt and begin building generational wealth.
