
I would never send my kids to school (2017) - garaetjjte
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/I_would_never_send_my_kids_to_school
======
NikolaNovak
Have to read more to be able to comment meaningfully, but an early red flag is
distilled in this statement:

"I am looking for a formula for mass-production of little Nobel Prize winners,
researchers, engineers, and creative problem solvers"

There are _many_ potential educational systems that would do better for the
top [1|5|10]% of learners, while doing far worse for the remainder of the bell
curve (however it is defined). One has to be upfront and honest with
themselves, and audience, if the goals and proposals will benefit all overall,
or select few. I am not yet convinced that less-structured approach will
provide clear benefits for everybody :-/

~~~
spamizbad
People routinely criticize rigid schooling yet the very people they aspire to
emulate are products of such systems. The people who often struggled in such
systems (artists, athletes, celebrities) are looked down upon. Even
entrepreneurs, by in large, did well in school. For every Steve Jobs there's
10 other founders who were former super students that aggressively tracked
into tier-1 schools through hard work and (yes) conformity. No offense but
every founder story I read about their "rebellion" is almost silly. It's
always like "My parents wanted me to be an investment banker but I said NO!"

~~~
Barrin92
Yes, if you look at extreme versions like the Soviet system it by and large
did what it was supposed to do and produced for all it's other flaws a pretty
solid amount of very well trained experts, and a very highly educated general
populace. I'd include athletes from your list as well because they also tend
to thrive in very rigid environments, artists and celebrities less so.

In my experience whenever I hear people talk about unschooling or free thought
for their children it isn't about children at all but about the political
beliefs of their parents. There's still this kind of 60s hippie or California
'free spirit' individualist attitude that also has a renaissance in 'hacker'
circles. It seems to me more about the beliefs of a certain social class than
generally about education.

~~~
Fins
That's a rather charitable view of the Soviet education system, probably
colored by the biased selection you'd see in the West.

By 1990, that "very highly educated general populace" was setting out jars of
water in front of their TV screens, so they would get charged with healing
powers of ESPers

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cwyers
I don't always feel great about sending my kid to school, but until you can
get a critical mass for some kind of alternative, the cost in social isolation
for keeping kids out of school seems way too high to me.

~~~
ChrisSD
There is also a cost in learning. I'll doff my hat to parents who have the
time, energy, resources and ability to teach their own kids a wide range of
subjects but in practice this seems to be the exception. Most homeschooled
kids I've known have been very behind their schooled peers.

~~~
peterwoerner
I taught a couple of home school co-ops during school. I found that for this
particular group, these kids basically didn't learn math, but were good
writers, well read and eloquent speakers.

My wife says that they were all incredible awkward to be around, so there may
be something to the social thing.

~~~
siempreb
> so there may be something to the social thing

You have a point there. In regular school you are forced to be 'social' or
risk punishment. I put 'social' in quotes because I think what is considered
social is subjective and mostly made up. But watching how people are treating
one another in this world I'm not sure if that social component is really
working out good. Homeschooled kids are definitely not as slavishly as the
'socially' drilled kids from regular school.

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ping_pong
I'm struggling with this right now. My 7 year old child is "profoundly gifted"
which is an IQ above 145 (he is almost 160). He is mostly a wonderful child
and he is very very smart. He is well above his peers and is mostly sweet but
he has extreme behavioral issues many times throughout the day. He has friends
that love to play with him but like a German Shepherd, will out of nowhere
attack them verbally because he perceived a slight and will scream and say
horrible things. We have sent him to psychologists and behaviorists and burned
through our savings and spent close to $200k over the last two years and we
have run out of money. I'm getting close to the point where I accept that
school isn't for him.

I've been told that most schools do not cater for profoundly gifted children,
especially the asynchrony of the emotional development. I don't blame the
schools because children like my son are very extreme. I don't know what
setting is right for him, but we have no choice but to look into home
schooling, let him grow academically and in emotional peace, and maybe when
his maturity increases we can reintegrate him with other children. Or maybe
home schooling will be such a relief for him that his anxiety or whatever it
is that is causing this will get naturally alleviated.

~~~
socalnate1
Not sure if this is helpful or not; but I have a very similar 8 year old.
(Although his emotional maturity isn't quite as far behind as your child, and
his response is to shut down rather than attack.) Similar challenge with IQ
where he works 3-4 years ahead of grade levels and tests as profoundly gifted.

We found a charter school that mixes home school and in class education. So he
is in a typical school environment 2 days a week and we home school the other
three days. This has been a good mix for us; he can get some socialization at
school (plus other activities we are involved in). It's not as all
encompassing and stressful as a full 5 day a week school would be. We can do
academically advanced work 3 days a week; while still giving him a chance to
work his underdeveloped social skills with a little less pressure on the
system. Best of luck; parenting can be hard :)

~~~
ping_pong
Thank you. This is an interesting idea. I will look to see if my area has
something similar (SF Bay Area).

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velcrovan
I was homeschooled for all but 2nd and 3rd grade. I have mixed feelings about
my experience of it (for me it worked out sort of OK for various lucky
reasons) but no mixed feelings about the concept of it, and I now believe it
should be illegal. It's possible, even common, to have a terrible social
experience AND a terrible education in homeschooling.

Most of the reasoning for it was that public schools are evil and stupid and
raise evil drone kids with evil drone values. This is a terrible perspective
to inculcate into your children and it warped my view of everyone around me
well into my twenties. Also the homeschooling community tends to self-select
for a lot of the most narcissistic and BPD types of parents who actually do
inflict major developmental and psychological damage and abuse on their
children.

There was also a smattering of justifying it to the effect of "children learn
better at home than they do in a classroom environment". This may be partly
and technically true, but in practice it gets cancelled out by the fact that
most parents are not actually able to educate children effectively past a 3rd
grade level.

There are always exceptions. The broad exception, as usual, is when the family
has plenty of money and the parents have LOTS of autonomy over their work
schedules. The home-schooled children of doctors and lawyers that I knew had
private tutors in some subjects and did all kinds of travel, participated in
sports and robot building competitions, even worked for state legislators as
part of their "high school".

Long story short, I am sending my children to Minneapolis public schools. As a
parent, I hugely get the desire to keep your kids close and be their
everything all the way through to adulthood. It was hard for us to watch our
six year old get on the school bus and think about this first chapter of our
lives together was in some sense ending. But I also know from experience and
observation, the protectionist instinct to keep your kids that close for that
long is really not healthy.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
"I didn't like it, it worked out badly for me, so it should be illegal for
everyone"? That seems like a bit of an over-reaction.

> There are always exceptions.

And yet you believe it should be illegal. It's going to be hard to make it
illegal and still allow the exceptions, though. "Illegal unless you have
plenty of money and autonomy over your schedule" is a pretty sketchy law.

~~~
velcrovan
> "I didn't like it, it worked out badly for me, so it should be illegal for
> everyone"? That seems like a bit of an over-reaction.

It actually didn't work out that badly for me, I thought I made that clear. It
worked out badly for most of the people I know, though.

I think it should be illegal because it's broadly unhealthy for society. It's
part of a broader belief that the way to fix a suboptimal public education
system is to make sure all parents have big incentives to invest time and
resources to improve it, rather than for the wealthy to flee and create a
system that works only for themselves and leave the public system and the
remaining people it serves to wither on the vine.

> > There are always exceptions. > And yet you believe it should be illegal.
> It's going to be hard to make it illegal and still allow the exceptions,
> though.

Yes, despite the fact that some kids (such as myself) did OK under
homeschooling, it should still be illegal. I also knew a kid who learned to
drive a stick at age ten with no license, and he didn't die. He was an
exception. Still a bad idea that should not be legal.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> I think it should be illegal because it's broadly unhealthy for society.
> It's part of a broader belief that the way to fix a suboptimal public
> education system is to make sure all parents have big incentives to invest
> time and resources to improve it, rather than for the wealthy to flee and
> create a system that works only for themselves and leave the public system
> and the remaining people it serves to wither on the vine.

By that logic, private schools should also be made illegal. And that should be
a higher priority than homeschooling, because (I believe) more people send
their kids to private schools than homeschool. (Also by the same logic,
charter schools and magnet schools are suspect.)

I mean, you are correct in saying that that may be the best chance for the
public education system. However, I think that your proposed solution is not
only misguided, but heavy-handed authoritarian to boot. Let's throw away
parental authority over children, and give it to the state, so that the
schools will be better? No thanks. I want the schools to be better, but not at
your price.

~~~
velcrovan
> By that logic, private schools should also be made illegal.

I used to think this too, actually. But now I think that Finland’s approach
satisfies the goal while being a bit less drastic. Private schools are still
allowed, but are not allowed to charge tuition fees (they are funded by a
state grant if approved), are not allowed to have a selective admission
process, and must offer the same educational and social services as the
municipal schools.

It’s important to remember, the current system we have is heavy-handed and
authoritarian too. It traps lots of people in an underfunded system and then
tells them that system is hopeless and they are bad for using it. And parents
do not “give up authority over their children” by sending them to public
school. By fearing and vilifying any state action whatsoever, what you end up
doing is vilifying, fearing (and eventually crippling) democracy. Instead of
doing this, consider looking at measures that have been tried, proven to work,
and have high satisfaction where they have been done, and join me in
advocating an evidence-based approach to improving life for normal people!

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Parents do not give up control of their children by sending them to public
school. (At least, not in the sense I meant. They do, voluntarily, give up
some control, but that's not what I was talking about.)

But parents _being required_ to send their children to public school is a
forced removal of control from parents. No, I will not join you in advocating
that (not even if you include your restricted version of private schools). I
trust the median parent to decide what's best for their children more than I
trust the state.

~~~
velcrovan
How do you feel about truancy laws?

Also:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Ambivalent.

Also: I'm not going to watch a video to try to figure out what your point is.
If you've got something to say, say it.

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misterdoubt
Cached:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20181117200216/https://supermemo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181117200216/https://supermemo.guru/wiki/I_would_never_send_my_kids_to_school)

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KirinDave
A discussion about how school is modeled seems on point for this site, but the
author of this seems a bit... zany?

"Before humanity is taken over by AI?"

~~~
wayoutthere
Yeah, I get the sense that this guy attached himself to a topic in the early
80s and has been on a self-directed tangent ever since. He makes a lot of
unfounded claims, peppering in _just_ enough references to sound credible.

I’m sure he believes everything he says wholeheartedly, but self-directed
learning without guidance can lead you to pick up some weird ideas before
having the context to understand why they’re “weird”. I don’t think he’s
entirely off-base with his criticisms of the school system, but I also don’t
think he presents any arguments that aren’t well-established already.

The question of which sources to trust (and thus learn from) is the biggest
reason _not_ to go entirely self-directed with learning. One is equally likely
to end up with a theological argument as a scientific one depending on which
sources you were introduced to first.

~~~
saalweachter
I feel fortunate in that most of the zany ideas I attached myself to in my
late teens/early 20's were re: physics and mathematics. Because they could be
pretty easily shown as nonsense with just a tiny bit more education and
thought, like concretely, useless nonsense, for very straight forward easy to
demonstrate reasons, I was able to later discard them without too much
difficulty, and accept that I didn't actually have any Big Ideas about math
and physics, ideas that were going to change the world.

If my Big Ideas about how the world works had been about something more
difficult to prove or disprove, like sociology or psychology, I kind of think
I would still believe them, because it's one thing to elaborate your maths to
a logical contradiction on a couple of sheets of paper, and another to run a
well-controlled experiment with thousands of subjects.

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leftyted
There's a movie relevant to this topic called Captain Fantastic. It's about a
father who raises his kids in the forests of the Pacific NW.

I do think it's true that school is oppressive. I guess it's oppressive for
the same reason modern mass societies are oppressive: strict conformity is
tacitly enforced. The nail that stands out (for whatever reason) is usually
hammered in. Of course we also gain a lot from the way we've arranged our
societies (and our schools). We're optimizing for the best outcomes on average
-- and we may be doing that fairly well -- but that doesn't mean we're
anywhere close to optimal for a given individual.

Unfortunately, "optimal for each individual" may not be a realizable goal. But
if you have the resources, alternative means of educating your children seem
tempting.

It's also well-documented that girls seem to tolerate school better than boys
(and get better grades), which is interesting.

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wallflower
If you found this interesting, you may find John Taylor Gatto’s “The Six-
Lesson Schoolteacher” fascinating. He is mentioned in the linked book, of
course.

[http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619435)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182727)

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paulryanrogers
There is a lot to read here. So far as I can tell it's a mix of proven ideas
(spaced repitition, need for sleep, exercise, etc) and speculation (everyone
is better without heavily structured schooling).

My guess is we could use more customized, self-driven efforts in schools and
intermingled age groups. Though I doubt his vision would be practical without
devoting a lot more resources per child.

~~~
tyri_kai_psomi
> ) and speculation (everyone is better without heavily structured schooling).

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-
sc...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play-
europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare)

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-
finlands-s...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-
schools-successful-49859555/)

This isn't speculation. Some of the best performing primary schools in the
world are in Scandinavian countries, and they have a heavily unstructured
"structure" if you want to call it that, day consisting of mostly playtime and
activities, no standardized tests (even when there are testing, the results
aren't publicized).

A far-cry from some of the rigor and structure our kids face here in the US,
where the primary objective seems to have been to raise obedient subservient
factory workers rather than inspire dreams, aspirations, and creativity and
teaching children how to truly learn, rather than simply perform a task.

~~~
topkai22
Picking Finland as a model is problematic. Compared to the US, it's a small,
socially homogenous country that speaks a language isolate.

A much better comparison is Canada, which demographically and socially is much
closer to the United States but ranks even higher than Finland in education
scores.

AFAIK from my contacts in Canada, their schooling system is very similar to
the US, but had much better results.

~~~
tyri_kai_psomi
I am not just picking Finland however. I am picking Scandanavia as a region,
which consists of 21 million, or a little over half of Canada's population.
The sample size is large enough, in my opinion.

It passes the smell test as well: teaching children how to learn versus
teaching children how to perform a task or pass a test Obviously the former is
going to be better.

Not forcing children to sit in classrooms for the majority of the day is
obviously going to be better.

Not being obsessed with standardize testing losing sight of the overall goal
of preparing your children for life sounds obviously better.

Starting at 7 years old sounds obviously better - I can specifically attest to
this as a parent, where Americans seem obsessed to have their glorified
daycare service aka "preschool and kindergarten" so that they can work more of
their already overworked life away)

Irrespective of the above points: I get it (the point about population size,
different countries, economic systems, political systems, etc). This fact is
brought up every time a desired attribute about a smaller country is
mentioned. The things I am talking about are irrespective of population size.
It requires a perspective change and getting rid of politicians that still
somehow think the turn of the century, industrial-age, overtly standardized
school system we have built here in America that more resembles a prison than
a place of learning is working and just needs more: more money, more teachers,
more books, more standardization (now we need to account for all different
metrics and biases! more money to the test generators) etc, so we can keep on
chugging along with this failed system when the elephant in the room is the
system itself is what is a overall failure and needs a complete rebuild --
which is exactly what Finland did in the 60s when it had similar challenges
from the Soviet-era education system.

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packet_nerd
It's interesting to me to think, compared to our evolutionary history, schools
are really really foreign and unnatural. Until relatively recently, the
average kid would have grown up in a small community surrounded by her
parents, relatives, and other adults. At toddler age she would play with other
kids or find ways to amuse herself, later like 5, 6 and up, she'd start to
help out with chores.

Whereas at a school kids are cooped up in a high pressure environment, with
other kids who are all just as immature, and a few adults to supervise.

My parents homeschooled my brothers and I. I'm really torn as to whether I
want to do the same for my kids some day. One the one hand, I feel like it was
a good healthy environment to learn and grow up. On the other, I've always
felt like I don't fit into society and sometimes am jealous of "normal"
people.

~~~
onemoresoop
_> I've always felt like I don't fit into society_

Many who were not homeschooled feel the same way. I don't think this has to do
with being homeschooled or not, it has to do with how some people adapt better
than others. I went to regular school and sometimes I get that feeling that it
is hard to fit in with the average, but that is not a bad thing after all.
Modern times are quite tough for everyone. Perhaps we all have that feeling
but never talk about it.

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joshuaheard
Someone needs to disrupt education from the current Industrial Age model to a
more current Information Age model. I lean towards a self-paced video model
like Khan Academy, with some personal instruction to answer questions, along
with some group activities to socialize the children. Unfortunately, our
government and union run education institutions resist any changes.

~~~
siempreb
It's even pre-industrial age model. School and its strict class system
originate from the church. And I totally agree it should be disrupted by a
more scientific proven model so kids can actually start to enjoy learning. The
problem is that we have billions of people that were conditioned in
traditional school. There is practically no way to change those peoples minds,
whatever argument you come up with, it's futile. That's all the downvotes ;)

~~~
joshuaheard
You're right, there are some elements from the Agrarian Age, namely getting
summers off to help with the harvest. But, if it's one thing I have learned,
it's that anything can be disrupted!

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user_50123890
School is supposed to be a place of learning. Instead, it became a daycare for
kids to spend their days in autopilot mode

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dvfjsdhgfv
Man, this is rant level 1000. It seems the guy was really hurt by the school
system.

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GrumpyNl
Sounds like someone had a bad school experience.

