This week I was speaking to a group of K-12 educators about my usual: the need for more free time, free play, self-direction, and real-world adventures/responsibilities in childhood if we want to raise happier, healthier children.

A frustrated high school AP history teacher then raised his hand and asked: what are we supposed to do?

Give less homework and less test prep and have our children fail? How does that help them? How does a college see that the child with a bad grade on their AP test is a great, smart, happy human they should admit despite an unimpressive transcript?

And … I didn’t really have an answer.

So I have been thinking about his question, and his anger, ever since, and here are my somewhat jumbled (and sympathetic) thoughts:

It is true that, lacking a way to measure almost anything other than academic success, colleges default to grades and test scores as a measure of worth.

The result has been a grinding, decades-long slog to the top of an ever-growing mountain of test prep and AP classes. And much of this is simply to present the child attractively to college.

Not that learning math, history and so on isn’t important and, to some students, a total turn-on. — I loved my English classes. Only it’s like only developing your left bicep. What about the rest of your body and its functions? Are you only going to use your incredibly developed left bicep for the rest of your life?

Until schools decide that their job is not just to turn out “good students” but good children — curious, self-starting young people — AND until colleges recognize that that’s who they should be looking for — AND until parents consciously admit that a well-functioning human, not college admissions, is the ultimate goal anyway — well, it IS a Gordian knot.

I feel for the teacher. I feel for the students. I feel for the administrators and parents — everyone caught up in this very narrow definition of worthiness. And, aside from offering free school programs that promote free play and independence — through my nonprofit Let Grow — I am also doing a teensy bit of guerilla combat to fight back.

Every year I interview a handful of high school seniors who have applied to Yale. I’m an alum interviewer, tasked with telling Yale what I think of the few candidates the admissions office sends me.

This year, one of the children assigned to me told me right off the bat that she was having a lot of trouble with her AP chemistry class as well as her math class.

Hmm.

Then the talk turned to thrift shopping, her passion. Mine too. Only she doesn’t just buy stuff. She is also trying to stem the tide of fast fashion and waste.

So she started a thrift shop at her school. With intense cajoling, she got students and teachers to bring in clothes. The shop netted $500 — which she turned around and donated to a nonprofit that recycles designer castoffs. Then she made a little documentary about the organization.

She also started a book club, and she edits the yearbook, and she was convinced by her fellow students to run for student council. Yep, now she is class president.

Her report card may not be super impressive. Her AP credits may be few. Yet she is a girl I’d want as a student, roommate, friend. I’d want her at my college.

To the AP history teacher’s point: Not every college will see this. Most are shoveling the children into admit/reject piles based on academic — and sometimes athletic — achievement.

Yet life is so much wider and wilder.

Raise a child who tanks at trig but knows how to start a business, make a movie, read for fun, and enjoy life, and maybe you’ve got a Yalie, maybe not. Yet one thing you’ve got for sure?

A winner.

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