Jaden Smith in a scene from After Earth.Columbia Pictures./The Associated Press
Jaden Smith wants his 4.5-million Twitter followers to know that school is uncool.
The teen son of actor Will Smith and brother to singer Willow Smith is catching heat for his recent Twitter rant in which he vented about school, education and the pitfalls of modern society. Hell hath no fury like a confused 15-year-old actor.
Best known for his screen roles in The Karate Kid and the recent box-office bomb After Earth, Jaden took to Twitter last week for a one-sided conversation seemingly taken from the rebel-without-a-clue guidebook.
His first tweet: "People Use [sic] to Ask Me What Do You Wanna Be When You Get Older And I Would Say What a Stupid Question The Real Question Is What I Am Right Now."
Next: "All The Rules In This World Were Made By Someone No Smarter Than You. So Make Your Own."
Then Jaden got right to the point: "School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth," he tweeted, followed by: "If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth." (Really? How would that work?)
And then Jaden, a best friend of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, wrapped up his disturbing discourse with the tweet: "If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society… Everybody Get Off Your Phones And Go Do What You Actually Wanna Do."
The shocking part, besides the fact a 15-year-old doesn't know how and when to capitalize words, is that Jaden and his superstar father are actually engaged in the education business themselves. Or were, rather.
Back in 2008, Will and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith founded their own school, The New Village Leadership Academy, in Calabasas, Calif. The Smiths reportedly pumped millions into the school, which employed non-traditional learning methods, but it closed down last June.
And if Jaden does seem slightly misguided, that could be due to Papa Will's offbeat parenting methods.
In a recent interview with Haute Living magazine, Smith the elder said, "I think that, specifically in African-American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there's a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I realized with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person. Things like cleaning up their room. You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don't tell our kids to clean their rooms."
In the same interview, Jaden's father dispelled the recent rumours that his son was seeking emancipation. "He is definitely not going anywhere; he is so scared of being out on his own."
All of which is pretty normal for a teenager, just like hating school and teachers, but should Jaden really be complaining when he's living a privileged celebrity existence, and most of his education is likely coming from private tutors? Time to grow up, kiddo.