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Comment by geomark | Hacker News Reader

There was a recent large scale study that claims PM2.5 levels present in cities have a significant effect on healthy children's lung capacity, that by the age of eight children who live within 100 meters of a busy street have a 6% reduction in lung capacity compared to those who don't. Now this study. Jeesh.

I am particular interested in these studies because my family lives in a very clean rural mountainous area in Thailand and my son is attending a pretty good international school here. But I am considering moving him to a bigger and better school in Bangkok - a dirty, polluted, congested city. If this study is true then am I really gaining anything? The difficult tradeoff was health impact for improved educational opportunity. But if the pollution equates to a one year loss of education then maybe there is little to no gain.

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I have a lot of experience tutoring math in small classes to many students, including a couple who went on to earn gold medals in International Physics and Chemistry Olympiads. (I no longer teach due to my current research and startup work.)

I'd say your child would gain much more from having good private tutors you hand-pick from local schools/universities/private tutoring centers (depending on the level of your son's attainment and the qualifications of the teachers). Also, for certain subjects, you could be a great teacher yourself.

Even without taking pollution impact into account, using the hours saved from commuting in a very congested city to study one-on-one or in a small group would likely net a bigger gain than what quality difference there is between the good local school and a top school in the capital city. The key conditions are 1) having qualified tutors who fit with the student's personality and interests and 2) regular schedule so the student does not spend the extra hours playing mobile games instead.

Another key advantage is your child can use the best educational materials available on the Web, paid and free, such as Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown, and the likes for learning. The presentations there are often head-and-shoulders above the techniques most school teachers typically use to explain concepts in class.

Edit: For a downvoter who I assume might disagree with the last paragraph, you need to go visit average schools in a developing country to see how the teaching is like.

I am glad to read your suggestions, coming from someone with experience. And indeed I have been doing some of this. The teachers at his school are very good. It's other issues that I'm not satisfied with (detailed in my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17867556). I do teach him a lot. I'm an EE and can write code. So I have had him do a bunch of code.org, robotics projects, maker projects, and we do lots of reading together. He's strong in those areas. Currently do tutoring only in Chinese and music. And yes, he has pretty strict limits on game playing time. So maybe I should stay the course as you suggest, supplementing as needed.

Keep in mind that one good thing about air pollution is it’s relatively straightforward to mitigate once you’re aware of the problem. PM2.5 filters can be had for relatively cheap (see Smart Air), and you can wear a mask when you’re out on bad days. Unless you’re really lucky, his peers in Bangkok probably won’t make him feel great about wearing a mask, but just having clean air at home will help a lot. Then maybe you can talk the school into filters, plus policies about athletics on bad days. I’d be surprised if they don’t have these already.

What you describe sounds great, just one remark - I hope you are also allowing him to just be a child, play outside, wander around, do foolish things, have fun with peers etc. Without these, a child doesn't have a proper childhood and effects will be felt negatively for the rest of the life.

Neglecting the air quality etc., is there any specific reason to believe you would gain anything by moving your son to another school at this age?

Personally, I think that a much better move is to stay where you are and instead save up to fund a one-year exchange to a prestigious international university when he's been at some national university for a couple of years. AFAIK many prestigious universities accept almost an unlimited number of international exchange students, as long as they can pay the tuition fees.

I've been wrestling with this for a while.

First issue with the school is the quality of classmates. It is a small school with small classes, which is good, right? Except there are only six students in his class this year and his classmates are generally low achievers, poor English speakers, and pretty lousy friends. I want him to be surrounded by high achievers and have some choices when it comes to friends. Seems unlikely that will ever happen at this school.

Second issue is that the school is pretty stagnant. At a time when international schools in Thailand are booming, adding new campuses and programs every year, this school is just plodding along with its old tired facilities and pathetic extracurricular offerings. I've been trying to make up for that with lots of after school activities like having our own little Maker Space, doing robotics, and visiting the museums and children's activity centers in Thailand which are very good. But he doesn't get to do that stuff with kids his age because of issue number one.

I was a volunteer judge earlier this year at a robotics competition held at one of the international schools in Bangkok. I got to see what a number of schools are doing and it is pretty impressive. One of the schools I particularly like has a STEM program in association with MIT, and a performing arts program in association with Juilliard. They are also introducing robotics into the primary curriculumn this year. Impressive stuff.

I'm planning to do as you suggested but that is still a number of years away. Need to figure out what I'm going to do near term. And moving to Bangkok just seems so painful.

Ok, enough of this long winded personal issues rant.

A general idea could be to get your son to participate in a local university, if it is a good one, or take him to events/summer programs in a top university in another province for a few months each year.

Since your son is likely very good with English already, it might not be necessary for him to continue studying in an international school (I understand there are trade-offs). It might be worth it if he moves to a top local school, where more high achievers study instead.

For something more specific, I think I might be of some help. Please send me an email (in my profile) if you'd like.

Cities are places of opportunity; most of it is in networking.

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