My own story is similar to your husband's. I was terrible in high school and hated the school, teachers and the kids. I was small for my age and I got picked on all the time so I understand the current obsession with bullying.
I graduated but just barely making the graduation list in 1965. After HS I went in the Army and did very well and made the max in rank, pay and awards. When I got out of the Army serving in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969 I worked for 3 years. At the ripe age of 25 married and with a career going nowhere I started college against my will.
I graduated going full-time in 3 years on the GI Bill and began a career in the computer industry in 1976.
As you point out that there are pegs that fit and in the Army I fit pretty well.
If I were to be in high school today I'd need prozac or some other drug. I need a lot of structure in my life and without dicipline I fall apart. The kids today who are like me will fail. That is why I feel so strongly about this subject. The system doesn't work for people like me.
Right, and we can put a man on the moon but we can't structure education to fit more people's style. How I wish educators could be more flexible and allow kids to learn in the best manner for them. It seems that recognizing differences in people is seen as discriminatory, rather than discriminating, and therefore verboten. When education stops being one-size-fits-all, we will have a real advance.
For educators out there, I know it's very difficult to achieve that when you are teaching 25-30 students per class period. But people like me didn't need prozac. I needed quiet privacy and a computer that could teach me as fast as I was willing to learn, and let me concentrate for long periods on subjects I had trouble comprehending. I think then I could have learned more with one-tenth the teacher and student interaction I had in school. Would I have sacrificed people skills? I doubt it. I had plenty at home and church and among my friends. A few oral reports, a couple of joint projects with other students is all I think I would have required. What I needed was benign neglect from teachers, and then my teachers could have spent their time with students who needed that one-on-one instruction.