Abolish High School (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Abolish High School (2015)

harpers.org

189 pointsjohntfella312 comments

This article is a good platform for a series of solid specific observations. I particularly liked this one toward the end:

“ It could mean compressing the time teenagers have to sort out their hierarchies and pillory outsiders, by turning schools into minimalist places in which people only study and learn. All the elaborate rites of dances and games could take place under other auspices. (Many Europeans and Asians I’ve spoken to went to classes each day and then left school to do other things with other people, forgoing the elaborate excess of extracurricular activities that is found at American schools.)”

Hallelujah. End the role of high school as a monolith for teen life.

I also liked the call for more fluid stratification of students:

“ It could mean schools in which age segregation is not so strict, where a twelve-year-old might mentor a seven-year-old and be mentored by a seventeen-year-old; schools in which internships, apprenticeships, and other programs would let older students transition into the adult world before senior year. ”

This all essentially boils down to “freedom.” Meaning also flexibility and choice. For all the expectations piled on high school students they are given very little agency.

> Many Europeans and Asians I’ve spoken to went to classes each day and then left school to do other things with other people, forgoing the elaborate excess of extracurricular activities that is found at American schools.

This doesn't ring true to me. Unless you played sports there was really no reason to hang around after school. Contrast this to many Japanese schools where being part of a school club is more or less expected.

"This all essentially boils down to “freedom.”"

But school is about creating obedient subjects so that the government can maintain status quo. I don't see them promoting anything that is radically different which has the potential to undermine the thought processes that support out institutions.

Ok. Where is the evidence that schools are created to create obedient subjects for governments to maintain status quo?

The UK government uses public schools to push their preferred narrative around British history and “Britishness”.

However, I think the real reason for schools is that the government sees a return on investment via taxation of a higher skilled workforce.

Schools kind of are for that, but it's not actually a bad thing despite the negative framing.

The goal of the public school system is to create active, disciplined, stable, civilized citizens with strong bonds for each other despite natural tribal tendencies.

Seems like they are failing then. A substantial majority of people do not understand thw way the government is supposed to work nor their parts in it.

https://woodrow.org/news/national-survey-finds-just-1-in-3-a...

It is working. Americans generally feel American, Chinese feel Chinese, Romanians feel Romanian.

That's the great end product of school education up to about 14-18 years.

I meant in the active category.

Just look at stuff like voter turnout. How many people write their representatives, or read the actual text of a bill (usually easier at local and state level single the federal ones tend to be much longer), or send a comment to an agency about a proposed regulation change? Pretty often I hear people say things that are wrong about their rights. How can we demand and protect our rights if people don't even know what they are? Even if you read the constitution, the actual implementation is greatly different and even contrary to the text.

Active doesn't only mean politically active. I actually meant it more in the "economically" active. Free, public schooling has lifted many, many people out of poverty and into the middle classes.

Most people aren't political. I don't think there's any way to change that, they just don't care.

I don't just mean politically. There are civic duties that are apolitical. Take jury duty for example. Many people make up excuses to get out of it. Being an informed voter, regardless of party, is a civic duty.

"Free, public schooling has lifted many, many people out of poverty and into the middle classes."

Has it though? Maybe historically (generations ago). The poverty rate has been largely stagnate for the past 30 years at about 13% give or take. Even 50 years ago it was about 19%. Desegregation and safety net programs arguably played a bigger role in that improvement. There are some public high schools that have abysmal graduation rates and college readiness rates in the single digits.

Things don't necessarily progress indefinitely, they can also regress.

Take away the free public schools and illiteracy rates will surge and we'll be not that far off from the poverty rates before free public schooling began. Sometimes maintaining something is an achievement in itself.

I'm not talking about taking then away. I'm saying they aren't doing a very good job, especially in some locations and in some subjects. Are they better than nothing? Sure. It would be pretty sad if this is the best we could possibly expect though.

Well, this is going to be one of those things Americans wouldn't conceive, but the US should probably have federal schools.

As far as I know there are public schools, but the curricula are dictated by states and paid by states and by local taxes, primarily.

I might be wrong, that's just based on what I read in the US press.

Here's some good background.

https://fee.org/articles/the-origins-of-the-public-school/

He's an economist, with an ideological bent, not a historian.

So? Do you want to post some links that you feel are credible that refute this? Because based on your current argument/reasoning you own comment is invalid because you're not a historian.

John Taylor Gatto was an award-winning public school teacher who argued roughly that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto

He isn't an historian.

You didn't ask for a historian, you asked for evidence.

Historians are the only sources you'd accept for evidence?

I guess that's your prerogative, but I'm not going to put in any further effort to help you find the evidence you asked for.

FYI, I don't necessarily agree with Gatto, but he makes the strongest case I've seen for the position you're arguing against. You should start with him if you want to refute it.

Anecdotally, I know a lot of teachers, and not a one of them is the least bit interested in creating minions subservient to the state.

I know a lot of teachers as well, and almost all of them bemoan how the curriculum they're forced to teach to is structured - especially those in the social sciences.

It's by and large not the teachers that are the problem with schools, it's the system itself.

Then why all the fighting over politically based things covered in many schools, like CSE, anything religious, critical race theory, guns, etc? Most schools and teachers are looking for answers that fit their own ideas or preferences and grade outside-the-box answers as wrong, even when there's merit to them. There are people on both sides of the political spectrum that believe that specific topics should not be covered because it amounts to indoctrination, even if the teachers are attempting to cover in a nonindoctrinaring way.

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Ivan illich

> (Many Europeans and Asians I’ve spoken to went to classes each day and then left school to do other things with other people, forgoing the elaborate excess of extracurricular activities that is found at American schools.)

Those extracurricular activities are opt-in activities to be done with other people.

The more kids are surrounded by technology, the more I appreciate structured social activities. Some kids are definitely motivated to get up and out of the house and do things in the real world day after day, but now that everyone is surrounded by endless digital entertainment it's tempting to just stay home and do... nothing.

I have great memories of school-centric extracurricular activities. All of my friends at the activities enjoyed them too. With few exceptions, we weren't forced to be there. We actually enjoyed it and had fun.

I understand that some people had negative high school experiences, but I'm always stunned to read HN comments insisting that everyone must have had a miserable time in high school.

That said, there were a few families who opted out of our high school and decided to home school. The few kids I knew who were forced into home school by their parents were not happy about it. I don't exactly see how forcing everyone out of the high school structure would somehow improve that situation.

To be fair I stayed at home a lot during my high school years and I wasn't doing nothing. I was teaching myself how to code, working on cryptocurrencies, and interacting with people on forums that felt a lot more authentic than social media today. One of those interactions turned into a long term relationship. It's not all bad.

Definitely think it's important to have physical learning and the social interactions that come from that though, but beyond that you don't need to force people to do extracurricular stuff at school.

(The standard subjects should be well balanced and have a mix of things, from maths and science to art and PE, etc, with a gradual increase in flexibility and self-choice in what to keep).

I just wished I had had a choice. In my country, homeschooling is illegal and alternative schools get shut down by the police.

I am always surprised when I hear about home schooling. When I was a kid it was a given that a school is mandatory. Parents worked, and also what qualifications do they have to teach? At least in early education, pedagogical knowledge is really important.

Early stuff is pretty easy to remember and curriculums exist for home schools. Tutoring communities have formed, too.

In most homeschooling families, one of the parents stays home to be the primary teacher.

Many of the best teachers I've ever had didn't have education degrees and were totally outside of the formal academic system.

The worst teachers I've ever had were all in the academic system.

I don't think the pedagogical knowledge and credentials have much to do with whether someone is a good teacher.

> Many Europeans and Asians I’ve spoken to went to classes each day and then left school to do other things with other people

In China those things would often be cram schools. In Korea that’s even more common, practically universal. If you think the college rat race and obsession with prestige in the US is bad it’s nothing like as bad as in developed East Asia. (Japan may be slightly less awful but still much worse than anywhere in the cultural as opposed to political West.)

Australian here, a more limited role of extracurricular activities do t always mean more cramming. I know that's not what you said, but that's the implication I got from your comment

Age segregation moderates bullying.

Does it though? I feel like the classes in which I had the most camaraderie with others were the mixed-age ones (math, grouped by ability, AP classes, and swim, a mixed bag). Likewise, the significant majority of my friends were first in grades above, and then below me. And it's not as if people of the same age can't bully each other.

Even with younger children I don't think it's as much of an issue for bullying. In fact, if such mentorship programs are voluntary, I'd wager there would be less of a problem; you'd be surprised at how empathic children can be when placed in an older/younger pair. There's also an self-evident dynamic of power there - it's when children are expected to act as peers that squabbles for power most frequently manifest as bullying.

I really doubt that and given that there are no school systems that don’t age segregate I am virtually certain there’s no evidence to that effect.

Smaller classes and teachers who aren't checked out moderate bullying.

It's expensive because you have to pay for a lot of good, motivated teachers, but it works.

If you put a 14 year old with a 12 year old, the 14 year old doesn’t feel any need to bully the 12 year old. They are naturally higher in the hierarchy and don’t feel any threat from the 12 year old.

The same is not true with two 14 year olds.

I went to a mixed age school and then left that to go to a segregated school. The first had no bullying and the second had a lot.

WTF? I was definitely bullied by kids 2 years ahead of me.

I believe bullies choose weaker victims, and fear almost-equal rivals. Other explanations are possible for your anecdatum.

voluntary extracurriculars outside school are the privilege of affluent families. extracurriculars at school help kids from less educated background to do choir, theatre, arts and team sports, ...

In my experience in Germany this was not the case at all. Sports clubs see youth work as a way to ensure their own future, not as a profit center. I suspect youth work is also often subsidized.

you have to go to your sports club. who gets you there initially? if your family doesn't support you, getting into sports needs quite some luck. I'm with you once you're in other parents might compensate and support you. Vive le "Ehrenamt". greetings from Bavaria.

One of my fondest memories of my childhood in Germany was trying out all the different sports clubs in my home town during summer break. All the sports clubs organized events where they showed their sport, with the hope of recruiting new members, and there was a "vacation-pass" which listed all these events along with other stuff like free entry to museums and the like. It was a great way to spend the vacations at home, being entertained at very little cost, especially for less affluent families who didn't go on vacation abroad.

Whenever a teacher got stuck trying to explain something I always jumped the opportunity to do it for them. Since I just learned the subject myself I understood how one could fail to understand it.

edit: of course there is also something to be said for surrounding yourself with knowledgeable people if one wants to learn something. (as opposed to oblivious teens)

I suppose it depends on whether it is important to build long-lasting relationships in early life. A lot of people I knew ended up back together in their later life despite living hundreds of miles apart for over a decade. I’m not sure there is any better opportunity for this. No other time in life comes even close to the bond permanence of high school.

This really resonates for me. High school was a colossal waste of time, and a very unhealthy environment, that I think made me a worse person for a time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help my kids skip high school, but I don’t quite know how to do it.

As the author, I don’t think that it should be banned, but I agree that kids should not be forced to attend. If anything, merely removing the mandate might make the experience of those who stay a lot better. For me a lot of the stress came from the hostility and bullying that the kids who did not want to be there inflicted on anyone who dared to show interest in class, ask questions, or, gasp, pass classes.

Has anyone found an alternative path for their kids to avoid high school, and if so how did it go?

No sure about your state but I’ve known people in Canada who avoided it by doing core subjects via correspondence programs. It freed up time for them to pursue other interests or work. It didn’t seem to be a barrier to them getting into any public universities, but I don’t know how that works in the US where elite education seems to matter a lot more.

We are homeschooling my son and he’s be a senior this next term. It’s gone very well for us, academically and socially and the like, but now we have to make him a transcript for college applications and he followed a job-standard curriculum. We were counting on the SAT scores being an important part of his transcript, we’ll see how changes in that vein work out.

Every year we ask him if he’d like to return to conventional schooling, he’s not tempted at all. His not-school devotions are numerous, so it’s also been rewarding from a family perspective.

> he followed a job-standard curriculum

What's a 'job-standard curriculum'?

I assume they meant "non-standard curriculum"

Then the question is perhaps even more relevant.

Not OP, but could be something like ‘radical unschooling’, where the kids set the curriculum.

Yes, sorry for not catching this in the edit window.

'bog-standard'?

What does a typical day look like for him and in what ways does he form and enjoy friendships?

> For me a lot of the stress came from the hostility and bullying that the kids who did not want to be there inflicted on anyone who dared to show interest in class

Are american schools really that shitty? I thought it was a movie trope.

I was walking down a hallway once in middle school and a kid I had never even talked to just walked up and punched me in the ear. Just an idea of the random violence that happens, as well as the psychological warfare campaigns these kids are capable of launching. It is definitely not just a movie trope.

Isn't that a pretty serious crime? I hope you reported it.

Teachers often won’t/can’t do anything about it, why would the child think the cops would care

Teachers get a lot of (empty) praise in the US. But many of them allow bullying. Many ARE the bullies. I've known a teacher who sold drugs to students. I remember a classmate who was r*ped by a teacher.

I had a few good teachers in high school. I had excellent teachers in middle school. It is a profession that should be respected but there is a chicken and egg problem:

1) teachers are not respected by parents, administrators and politicians, 2) so very few of the people that would make great teachers go into teaching

And in some states like California, it's very easy to become a teacher on an emergency credential. In the mid to late 90s when I was in school, most of our teachers were like 23 or 24 and were on emergency credentials. They were not the good ones.

Why r*ped?

You will probably be suspended or expelled. I wish I was joking, but the schools usually have a zero tolerance policy which around here means both the bully and the bullied are considered equally at fault.

They're then given a "fair and equal" punishment: An academically ruinous suspension for the kid that cares, and a vacation for the kid that doesn't.

Every single problem America has, the kids end up paying for. This grew out of our sue-happy 80s/90s culture. School administrators basically opted out of their job because they were afraid of lawsuits.

Fights between minors are usually not treated as criminal matters. I think the formal mechanism is some wording about 'horseplay' or something.

Depends on where you are. Many schools are required to report any criminal activity, including assaults (fights). Then there's the no tolerance polices too.

The no tolerance policy is for the school’s benefit, not the students’. If you fought back you were fighting which means you will be punished too.

‘Fighting back’ isn’t defending yourself - it’s just fighting. People should leave and get an adult if they’re involved in a fight.

Lol it sounds like you've never been in a fight. How about if you're cornered or pinned? And how about if they're faster than you? Sometimes fighting is your best or only option. If it wasn't, then the corporate lawyers wouldn't allow 'fight' in the 'run, hide, fight' internal threat training. Not to mention, punishing people who defend themselves is counter to the laws and beliefs of society. So much for schools preparing people for life in the real world.

> run, hide, fight

Can you see the order these are in?

And people who think they're fighting back usually don't do the minimum to defend themselves. They very quickly turn into just brawling themselves as much as the other person was.

Your right to defend yourself means doing the bare minimum to stop the threat against you or others. It doesn't mean 'standing your ground' and 'fighting back' like they think it does. You can see how when a teacher comes around the corner someone who's decided to fight back looks just as bad as the person who started it in many cases.

"people who think they're fighting back usually don't do the minimum to defend themselves"

Do you have any data on that? I rarely see people become excessive in defending themself.

"Your right to defend yourself means doing the bare minimum to stop the threat against you or others. It doesn't mean 'standing your ground' and 'fighting back' like they think it does."

It does mean doing the bare minimum. Who decides that? Usually great deference is given to the individual in the situation because it's not possible to cover the nearly infinite factors under legislation. There are states where you can 'stand your ground' in that you do not have to prove that you tried to run from a place you were legally allowed to be before defending yourself. Just because the words are in order does not mean that you have the option to do the first two. Things happen fast. You can skip levels in the force continuum if the lower levels are no longer an option.

With all the cameras in schools, I would think a review of the tapes should give a pretty idea of who struck first. Depending on the location, if neither party can be confirmed to be the aggressor, then both parties can be charged with a lesser grading or offense. So it would seem that treating both students under the harsh no tolerance policy would be inconsistent with the laws of the real world and society's views.

> I would think a review of the tapes should give a pretty idea of who struck first

But this bit is exactly it - you can have not struck first and still be in the wrong by fighting.

Generally, not true.

"Kids will be kids. Why are you causing trouble? Can't you just try to get along?"

To who? The crime police? They're the people who go around randomly punching people, a few years older.

It’s a school. If you go to the police they’ll do their best to make it a school internal matter and the school will do their best to make sure there’s no external record of it happening. Maybe someone will get expelled. Absent broken bones or severe permanent scarring that’s about it unless you’re going to lawyer up.

Impulse control isn't particularly developed for long after high school ages.

Kinda makes you question other things people that age claim as absolutely true like "true love" or "worst day ever" or "my biology is wrong"

That's bullshit. You don't need super strong impulse control not to punch randoms unprevoked.

Teens will do impulsive things sometimes, that doesn't mean they get a blank cheque to hurt and assualt those around them.

>Kinda makes you question other things people that age claim as absolutely true like "true love" or "worst day ever" or "my biology is wrong"

In all of those cases, the best thing to do for a teen's mental/emotional wellbeing is to take it seriously and treat them with respect. Everyone has to gain lived experience by living it, and you shouldn't try to invalidate their feelings just because they've experienced fewer of them.

I was in 7th grade and a 9th grader did the same to me. I am happy to report that sometimes the bully regrets his decisions.

For people wondering about police, this was around 1986 so no police got involved. Things did not work that way back then.

Depends a lot on the school, or possibly more specifically: the location or demographics of the school. Many high schools with motivated students (eg where I went) have few issues and good education outcomes. Some others are little better than prisons with dysfunctional students.

Can't you change schools?

In slovenia, you first go to elementary/grade school (used to be 1+8, now 9 years) until you're ~15yo, then you apply for high schools, and depending on your grades and other stuff, you get accepted to your chosen school (either "gymansium" - basically 'everything', or some kind of specific/trades school (mechanics, electricians, construction,...)).

Usually if you're good in school, you get to a good high school and also have good classmates (atleast on your level)... but even in shitty, no-limit school (eg. 3year construction school), discipline is not really a major issue, and really shitty students either fail or get expelled very soon.

Distance and local regulations can make this tricky. Most people are zoned to a school based on where they live, and alternatives can be inconveniently far. Main exceptions are magnet or charter programs, but these can be competitive.

In the US, typically:

- you are assigned a school and changing schools varies from moderately difficult to impossible

- kids under 16 cannot get to any high school other than their assigned one because they can’t drive (and at 16 they’d need a car, which not everyone can afford)

- everyone HAS to be in school all day. It’s day care so parents can work.

What you described in Slovenia sounds much better. It sounds like college in the US: people are there because they want to be there. High School in the US is just… a mess. There are people who think the point is to perform in the school band, or on the sports team, or in cheerleading etc. There are people who think the point is to hang out and have friends. There are people who think there is no point. And there are a few who think the point is to learn.

Schools very a lot and in a place this big you can find all kinds of schools, but from everyone I’ve known the typical experience is academically a waste of time, and people’s feelings about High School are almost entirely determined by how many friends they had and thus how much fun they thought it was.

> - kids under 16 cannot get to any high school other than their assigned one because they can’t drive (and at 16 they’d need a car, which not everyone can afford)

Is the density of high schools _that_ low and availability of transport _that_ bad? Not from the US, but I had a choice of 3 local public + one local private and like 5 or 6 that I'd considered on the train line and a few more that were further away by bus.

It varies by population density. Where i grew up, a small town surrounded by many rural and semi-rural areas, the nearest high school to mine was about 20mi away, and most attendees did not live in reasonable walking distance to any high school. So you had to drive, be driven, or take the school bus.

Where I live now, a very rural area, there are only two high schools in a 100 mile radius.

The trend in the US is against tracking students based on performance, as that is considered racially biased in most scenarios.

Most places in the US have very limited occupational training. Which is nuts.. my employer pays entry programmers and IT people less than a mason.

I think it depends on the school. I've personally had a very positive high school experience in the U.S.

Some schools but definitely not all.

My high school was really toned-down and chill. Everyone sort of got along (or at least it seemed like it to me, I could've been blind to some of it), we weren't all friends but there wasn't any fighting / violence. There was drama, sports, relationships, there were the jocks / nerds / weird kids, but nothing like the movies. This was in the early 2010s, and my town was suburban not rich and not poor.

After my terrible high school experience I was surprised to meet people in college who said their school was like you describe. "Everyone basically got along".

I wondered though that maybe if your aren't being the bully or the bullied, you might just not notice the hell that some of the kids are going through.

I went to a "bad" inner-city high school (ie, poverty and the the things that go along with that, gang activity, kids being regularly sent to jail), the type where well-to-do parents in the city would pay to put their kids in private school or move to the suburbs, but the school had thousands of students. It wasn't too difficult to find a group or two to fit into. Everyone definitely did not get along, but you didn't need to get along with everyone...

I was generally popular and got along with most everyone and still found high school to be absolute hell, though really no more than middle or even elementary school.

The issue, I think, comes from a lack of agency, you are told where to be and what to do all day every day. Every minute is scheduled and that wears on people and leads to stress and abnormal social interactions where kids pick at each other.

I do think school plays an important role in social development and learning to interact and get along with others, but I think the environment sucks and isn’t even a great parallel to the real world in most cases. It is more like prison than anything. If you find yourself in a work place and think, “jeez, this place is like high school,” you should probably run.

My high school was super chill. There were standard groups such as jocks/nerds/etc. but lots of people would also move from one group to the other. There were even semi regular out-of-school events that involved people from all groups.

I'm sure there was some bullying going on, but based upon my observations it didn't seem widespread. Of course I was a teenager and probably not the most observant person and may have had a skewed view of the average person's experience there.

they are not at all... mine was great (Halifax County High, VA). It is rated 5.5/10, so average school I guess and it was diverse.

I attended it as an exchange student, (From Albania), from my senior year. I took mostly AP classes, and they were pretty good, as the average student was very/well motivated. They were smart and most went to good colleges after it. I got the chance to advance many of my skills, computer wise, and even took programming, which was great as it cemented my desire to pursue CS. (Pascal was the language being taught in 99). Things like AP physics and biology/chemistry were way behind my Albanian education. I can't image what Gen Ed physics would look like. (probably comparable to middle school level in former commie Europe). AP Calc, was challenging and on par with former communist country education (but very few people take those classes).

Gen. Ed classes, (the ones where average people take) were a mixed bag, as they had plenty of students that clearly didn't want to be there, and just wanted a pass grade and move on.

I also got to join the soccer team and I loved it. Made lots of friends, never got into a fight (perhaps because I was the only foreign student, and people were super friendly), went to the prom, and all that. Became friends with the popular/'in' group of girls, had a gf., etc... It was something like out of the movies.

For me it was a great experience, and it really really depends on how you use it. If you take mostly AP classes, or participate in sports, it is a great thing. If you take the gen. ed classes, you will end up in classes that are designed more to just teach the bare minimum, as most students there don't have any interest in being there to begin with.

The trend of reducing AP classes in the name of 'equity' is very troubling, as it remove the chances of smart students to have a stimulating environment, and let them learn at their faster pace.

My experience is that most Americans love students and coworkers from other countries. I remember specifically there was an exchange student from Germany who spent his senior year at my high school and it seemed like he dated a different girl every month, the whole school was enamored with him. He was interesting, told good stories.

We had one of those, manny the German. Entertaining person, bit aggressive.... who isn’t sometimes.

Our high school was brand new my frsshman year, and they only started with 9th and 10th, in a socio-economically affluent area. They also had multiple magnet programs and mandated racial demographic requirements (which forced the system to bus kids in from less affluent areas). These policies negatively impacted the social climate fairly significantly....

so I am really excited there are so many ways to skin the h.s. cat now. Your positive stories are reassuring me about my reluctance to engage my children as they get to school age in that same system.

> The trend of reducing AP classes in the name of 'equity' is very troubling, as it remove the chances of smart students to have a stimulating environment, and let them learn at their faster pace.

The arguments have shifted away from improving outcomes for troubled students to closing gaps. It’s easier to do that by fucking over AP kids than solving the unsolvable.

Even inside the same city the variation between schools is huge, let alone across the entire country. So I think there's not much useful that can be be generalized about "american schools".

This is also true in Europe: the schools in the poorer city districs in my very high HDI European country are probably quite shocking to upper middle class American suburbians. (Firearms are rare, but kids armed with knives are not uncommon.)

They apparently were much worse in the 1970s and 1980s. For most people I know it was significantly better by the mid 90s. And by all reports, it’s much better now.

But yeah, the movie tropes were really a thing.

A lot of it is contingent on school size. If you're going to a rural high school with a student body of < 300-500 people, you're experiencing middle school again with older teens. Predictably, this has a high probability of sucking if you aren't high up in the social hierarchy. My high school had almost 5,000 students and many middle schools from around the area fed into that high school. This created a college-like environment where freshmen didn't know 80-90% of the other students on day 1. The size and novelty gave people the freedom to be themselves and find friends easily.

> The size and novelty gave people the freedom to be themselves and find friends easily.

This is precisely why most people are happier at university than high school, imo

Yes they're that shitty. Example: I got jumped by a group of ~30 kids in 8th grade for, IIRC, they didn't tell me why they just felt like it?? A teacher witnessed the end of it, off duty but saw what happened. She was nice enough to drive me home then never spoke of it again. It was just... normal that there was violence? Not an unusual school that had a reputation, no big stories of extreme incidents or measures taken, adjacent to (and eventually enveloped by) new affluent schools. Just... people being hideous to each other and nothing being done about it.

I went to 8 different schools in 6 different states by the time I graduated 12th grade, and I did not even so much as see someone get punched much less “jumped”. I am a minority and I never hung out with people who caused problems, but getting jumped by 30 kids sounds like an exceptionally bad environment.

There is a broad range of American public schools. Very nice to very bad with everything in between.

I had a buddy that too the GED at 16 then went and got accepted to University when he was 17. He was home schooled and one smart cookie but he turned out alright.

> but he turned out alright.

Why the ‘but’? Wouldn’t you expect a smart home schooled person to turn out ok?

homeschooling

I did 2 years in high school then did an GED program through my community college. I had 2 years of college done by the time my peers were graduating high school.

I hated school too, and I sympathise with your quest to "save" your kids from it.

At the risk of presumption, I'd advise to be wary of overprojecting though. Different people have very different experiences, and your kids' may not be the same as your experience. Observe and react.

My high school experience is specifically one of the reasons I didn’t have kids. I wasn’t going to subject anyone to the shit I experienced in high school.

You probably should talk to someone if it affected you that strongly.

I'm in the same boat, and at almost 50 years of age I never even slightly regret not having children. Now, who should I talk to?

No one. You made a personal reproductive choice, that should rightly be enough, shouldn't it?

That’s a personal choice that is yours to make.

To me, the notion that school was so horrible that having children if off the table says that was a traumatic experience that hurts to this day. Not healthy to carry that.

I say that as someone who was bullied in elementary school to the point that I was afraid to go outside or have my picture taken. People who cared intervened and helped me overcome that, and anyone in that situation deserves the same.

To me, actually wanting to have kids is something people should seek therapy for. :-P

I did a dual-enrollment program that was a normal ish 9th grade, and took college courses for 10-12th grade. Could see if there are similar programs in your area. More generally, magnet or charter programs kinda select for people who are interested in the program (and in some cases people forced in by their parents), which could provide a better environment

State program? What state?

Kinda? It was in South Florida, but it was a test-lab school kinda program.

My brother did an alternative where he could take some credits at the local CC, but it was still part of the standard high school experience. Seems a little closer to your experience in your other comment

There was definitely more camaraderie among the students in the program I did, mainly because of being all stuck together in 9th grade and how Everyone ended up taking classes at the uni (oftentimes together, since there's a lot of overlap in undergrad programs).

Yea, camaraderie would have been nice. Only 2 kids from my high school participated in the program. For financial reasons, I had to fully commit to college and couldn't do part time. Anyway, cool, I really liked the program and think it is a good option for some kids.

A submission not so long ago made it sound pretty straightforward:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26653788

Lots of states have programs where you can go to college and earn highschool credit (duel credit). Alternatively, drop out, get a GED and go to college. This hard commits you to finishing college but I have a few friends that did it. I did the dual credit thing and avoided paying for a few years of college (state covered books and tuition). Be careful though, lots of kids aren't really ready to leave all their friends they have known for 10+ years. If you go to college at 16 you miss onboarding and the "college experience". In many ways you are alone. It fit me but not everyone.

> Lots of states have programs where you can go to college and earn highschool credit (duel credit).

“Dual credit”. Duel credit might be available in New Jersey, though (everything is legal in New Jersey.)

Thats what you get on a phone :P

My older daughter was 95% home schooled. She just graduated from university, top student. She did decide to take a few specific courses in high school when she was 16 but that was her choice, she never went full time to school. So you can totally do it, it can go great. Try and find a local community to be a part of.

I should note that technically she has always been a distant learner which is a distinction made locally (British Columbia, Canada). She was enrolled in basically what is a school for home learners which counts a school but just acts as a support mechanism for home learners, you can do whatever you want.

I have a younger daughter who was also mostly home schooled but is now attending high school full time by her choice. So she is taking a somewhat different path and she is a top student as well despite basically having never studied the previous curriculum. Our style of home schooling has been study whatever you're interested in, not following any specific curriculum.

What's your experience with homeschool curricula? Have you found any that you really like?

Like I said we didn't really. We generally let the kids explore. Lots of reading, just everything. My older daughter spent some time studying how to perform magic tricks. She did a lot of art, jewelry, painting, sculptures. There is a local community that organized some activities like science fairs, various day trips etc.

I got out of my junior and senior years by taking the GED and going straight to college. I think that benefitted me a lot more than just graduating college a couple years early.

The environment was radically different and freeing. Teachers weren't babysitters. They wanted us to do well, but they weren't going to coddle us. I noticed that immediately, and it really changed how I approached my classes. I didn't have to be there if I didn't want to, so I really invested myself in a way that I don't think would be possible if I were being forced.

In Oregon at least, colleges must consider a GED score over 600 equivalent to a high school diploma. I went to the local college (SOU) for one year to get a solid transcript, then used that to transfer to a state college (U of O). I'm really glad that I did

How were you able to take the GED exam at 16? I looked into doing this while I was in high school, and found that I wouldn't be able to take the exam until I was 19, defeating the point.

Perhaps it varies by state? If so, I applaud Oregon for not forcing students into a daycare program for any longer than necessary. If I were a policymaker, I would even be comfortable with lowering the minimum age to 14 or lower.

California at least has the CHSPE[0] which is 16+

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High_School_Profi...

I did it in 1999 when I was 15, immediately started working two different 4 hour jobs and stacked dosh.

I'm not sure what the minimum age here is, but it never came up for me. The one thing I know was somewhat unique to Oregon at the time was making all public universities accept the GED

Had similar problem some years ago in VA.. went to take the ged at 15 - signed up, then was told 16 was min age. Went back a year later, signed up, got told the state law was changed to 17 that year - and it went into effect on my bday. Went back year later, they changed it to 18 I was then told.

Guess it helps the schools get money by enrolling people that can't test out, I dunno. I wanted college bad at 15 and 16. By 18 I started seeing many things differently - still took it at 18 and passed just to do it. By then I'd seen many go to college and come out worse off than they went in, and was no longer enamoured with the whole college degree equates to success thing.

I believe people should be able to test out and test up - and for many people that would mean skipping more of what is sold as high school and become vocational training or what have you.

Kids of the future deserve more flexibility than what we've had / have.

From the perspective of the U.K. I can’t imagine it being a very good idea going to university early. One reason for university to be better than high school is that you get to feel like you are learning a lot about your chosen subject, and you get a lot more freedom in how you do it. This is probably still mostly the case if you are under 18. The other purpose of university is socialising people into acting like “well-rounded” middle class adults, and in many ways this is an improvement from high school (for one thing, the students are willing and if they don’t like a situation, they can just leave). I would worry that socialising wouldn’t be the same for someone under 18. Obviously a lot of socialising revolves around alcohol but not drinking needn’t be a problem—the bigger issue is that a lot of socialising may revolve around places where alcohol may be served from which a 16 or 17 year old might be excluded. I also don’t know the laws about living alone at those ages either—if one were not allowed to live like the other students it would not be good, I think. It’s surely different in the US where lots of things are cut off from anyone under 21.

I suspect the argument against would be that the social aspects don’t matter, but I just don’t buy it.

I went to the University of Minnesota my sr. year of high school. I remember a sophomore in my physics class being less enthusiastic about hanging out when I gave her a heads-up that I was (1) under 18 and (2) likely moving to Massachusetts or Michigan the next year. Otherwise, I found socialization easier than in high school.

I think the argument against it is that social aspects matter to some degree but the drinking scene in college is literally and figuratively toxic.

I’m talking about the U.K. and while there is certainly the option of binge drinking culture, it was definitely not required. But my time in university was full of events where alcohol was served and I don’t know how such things would work for someone who mightn’t be allowed in due to that—if you’re 18 you can turn up and refuse the drinks and no one will care much, but if you’re 17 you maybe can’t turn up, even if you would refuse drinks.

with the states being 21 and up - I think the pressure is not the same.

In the cities I've been to, many nightclubs/bars/pubs after dark will only let in 18+ but you'd get Xs on your hands or something and only 21 and over can drink.

I believe many have gotten use to this system and the expectations that you don't need to turn up alcohol to be cool - in fact it could get you in trouble.

I also know there are plenty that find ways around the drinking 20 and under prohibition - sure - but sneaking a drink in a dark corner or whatever is not the same as being expected to be doing body shots on the bar.. so there is less pressure in many ways I believe, compared to UK I suppose.

Also - alcohol and weed for many youngsters I think is not a big deal to get or leave alone, a lot of people shrug at those things and seek out X Y or Z, and those things are not generally done in large groups at parties - from what I gather - surely it's not 100% across the board like that - but most kids have access to all the drugs and alcohol they could want by 9th grade in most places I am pretty sure -

the legal alcohol and weed is legal in many places now - seems like a thing that 'old people do' cuz it's legal - and it's not the main thing on their 'coolness radar' - at least that's the vibe I've been getting from the HS/college crowd of late.

my very little experience is of course a very small data point and certainly not indicative of the country as a whole, and I am guessing the small towns around the country are a bit different than the cities in those regards.

It depends on where you live, but kids are not forced to attend in places where homeschooling is allowed.

A homeschooling option where I live is you attend classes at a local community college. Once you have completed enough credits you get a GED diploma and an associates degree.

It depends how it goes.

If they start wasting their time there I'll take them out, they can work or go to Polytech.

If they are using their time wisely they can stay.

It really doesn't make much sense to go an alternative route unless you need to.

If they're at risk of dropping out and doing more harm than good, get them out of there.

> …they can work or go to Polytech

Sincere question: can they work? Does anywhere hire high-school aged kids for work that isn’t non-trivial/grunt work?

If the goal is to not waste their time I can’t imagine working a casual job is more stimulating than being in a classroom. Maybe a year working casually would inspire them back to school the next year?

At that age , work is hardly a waste of time.

You learn real world skills, the value of a dollar, work ethic, business processes, and get to build relationships and network with people of varied ages, unlike school.

Plus, you learn the importance of the customer.

Not really about wasting their time, its about wasting their time at school and the likely drugs theyll take up if it continues long enough.

I saw a lot of kids go on to higher education only to mostly waste it. They were there because their parents made them, not because they wanted to be there.

I worked for a year before going to uni, after that, I really wanted to be there. Working sucked. I wanted a better job. When I hit uni, I was extremely motivated to learn.

My high school offered a post secondary program. A student could go to a local university (Kent State in Ohio in our case) and take many of the general education classes you needed anyways. I wish I took advantage, it would have saved me some time in college! I think it was only for Juniors and seniors however.

They still have something like this in Ohio, it’s called College Credit Plus:

http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Ohio-Education-Options/Coll...

It’s available through quite a few schools now i believe. My oldest only had half days her senior year in high school and entered college with enough credits to be a sophomore. It’s not particularly revolutionary but a nice option.

I was homeschooled up until college.

I had finished standard high school course work by around sixteen, so my parents had me start taking CLEP tests.

At seventeen, in what would have been my senior year of high school, I took a few classes at our local community college.

Basically, even in the strictest states (I grew up in one of them), homeschooling is a good mechanism for opting out of the stupid parts of high school.

I’ve always been fascinated by Homeschooling and it’s outcomes

How did you feel it affected your ability to learn social skills and have a friend group?

Did your parents teach you or was there some kind of group of place you went to be homeschooled?

It’s not just homeschooled students who never figure out social skills or gain a stable friend group until college.

Sure but there’s a correlation. I don’t know if it’s causative though. The socially awkward kids getting bullied at public school are those that are most likely to get pulled out and homeschooled.

Is there a correlation? The homeschooled kids I knew of weren't pulled out for bullies or any other issues.

Not necessarily bullies but who is a parent likely to pull out of school (ignoring the parents doing it for selfish reasons like religious extremism)? The kid who hates school and has no friends and sulks when it’s time to go or the kid who can’t wait to go and has tons of friends and is involved in school activities?

If someone is doing so badly is school (they get expelled or they cannot handle school, or have special needs and the parents cannot find/ be bothered to send them to a school further away), they may get home-schooled.

Yes, so there might be this cause and effect, but this is not a correlation, i.e. we haven't seen data, they may well be more well rounded individuals being home-schooled because there are more parents who decided home schooling as a way to enhance education.

The kids I knew weren't pulled out of school. They were homeschooled the whole time. It seemed to me that the reasons where mostly quality of education in the public school was poor and cost of private school was too high, as well as a little religious benefit maybe.

Also homeschooling isn't mainstream and is largely populated by parents with extremist religious beliefs that harm their children's development and who choose to homeschool because they are afraid of their child escaping into non coercive social relationships.

These are feelings, not facts.

Homeschooling is not largely populated by people with "extremist" beliefs. Such people are too low in number to be largely populating anything.

5 million parents in the US were officially homeschooling their kids as of the latest Pulse survey (done during COVID pandemic to see changes in families). [1]

There are about 56 million students attending school in the US right now [2]

So about 10% of kids are homeschooled. That's not mainstream but it's not such a small minority to be discounted, nor is it small enough to be largely populated by extremists.

1 https://hslda.org/post/census-data-shows-phenomenal-homescho...

2 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

This isn't true, and it hasn't been true in a long time. I've been involved in the homeschool community in Colorado for a decade, and we are, as far as I can tell, representative of the larger population with regard to religion, politics, and lifestyle, and even race to a good extent. In terms of politics, I'd actually say most of us skew liberal. The past few years we've seen an influx of queer kids, who are either obviously not gender- or sexually conformant, or questioning along those lines. Turns out, homeschool communities can offer an ideal refuge for queer kids, compared to the sheer unrelenting brutality of conventional school.

Depends on the particular community of course, but ours is good for that.

It did for me. Substantially. I had a rough childhood and homeschooling was one component so I don't know how much can be pinned to that one thing. It can be done well but has to be handled with care since isolation is dangerous. If your home situation is bad it will be very bad.

My parents did most of the teaching, with private music lessons and weekly co-op meetings (get-togethers with other homeschool families to socialize and swap educational expertise - a parent who's a working chemist might run a chem class one semester, while another parent might do a painting class).

By the time I was in high school, I was mostly teaching myself, going to my parents for help only when I was really stumped by something. For example, I did the equivalent of failing algebra twice, but there was no stigma or "can't math" track - my dad just started sitting down with me in the evenings when he got home from work to teach me, and I got it well enough after that.

Socially, I was a shy, untrusting kid, in retrospect, largely because one of my family's main social circles imploded when I was in about third grade.

That wasn't due to homeschooling per se, though, it was due to relationship dynamics and values conflicts between my parents and others.

We found new circles and I always had friends growing up.

I think I would have had a much tougher time socially and intellectually in a standard school environment. The way my psychology works and the experiences I've heard described by friends who went to public school have long made me grateful for my education.

I also got to have much closer relationships with my parents and siblings than I think most US citizens get to have. Others have commented in this discussion about US school being all-day childcare so both parents can work, but our family spent tons of time together, which I'm also very grateful for.

My wife and I are homeschooling our kids, for what it's worth. Our experiences definitely weren't perfect but we see a lot of value in investing in our kids this way.

I got all my messed up social interaction from public (elementary) school, and homeschooling is how I met the people who helped me heal a little bit. Find other homeschoolers near you.

How do you get started doing effective homeschooling (though in my case, the UK)? It sounds hard to get a good structure or find other parents willing to do lessons as well. It seems like the network isn't very good? (I don't use Facebook)

> As the author, I don’t think that it should be banned, but I agree that kids should not be forced to attend.

Here is the problem: high school is mostly not meant for those of us who wound up on HN.

My father taught English for almost 4 decades in a US rural school district. His comments were:

"I'm not really here for the good students. They'll do fine no matter what I do, so my job for them is to keep them engaged and moving forward. All I have to do is not kill their motivation."

"I'm not really here for the worst students. I can't fix simply not doing the work or reveling in being stupid. I can't do much to fix a student's terrible home life other than providing a sympathetic ear and space for a little while."

"I'm mostly here for the average students. They don't want to be here, would rather be doing anything else and will do as little as possible to skate through. If I can push a few of those to care just a little more and have just a bit of internal motivation, I've done a good job. For the rest, I set the average bar to the point that they have to learn what I want them to to get the grade they need to."

"And I'm really here for a few of the below-average students. This is probably the last chance before they slide into being useless. Most of them have a bit of smarts, or they'd have slipped into the worst category long ago. They probably hang out with the wrong people. They get harassed if they accomplish something. Their home life is deteriorating. If I can reverse any of these, I've done a really good thing."

"In the meantime, I teach English."

Here’s an anecdata: Many of my high school teachers put me squarely in the “too far gone to help” camp, others put me in the “lazy and unmotivated” camp ... but if I liked your class, if I respected you as a person, if you seemed like you knew what you were doing, then I became the “hot damn get out of their way this kid is a steamroller” kind.

My English professor (2nd language) used to grade my essays with a dictionary because my vocabulary was so big, my coding professor said he can’t help but is happy to give me time and space to work on my opensource projects (for credit), my Slovenian professor (1st language) said it’s a shame I’m going to study CS because my essays are a joy to read and he always learns something new.

But my chemistry professor? Straight F. German? D-

It took me 5 years to finish high school and I had summer school every year except last. Because summer school senior year impacts when you can apply for college and I didn’t wanna risk that. And my grades at matura (kinda like the SAT) were higher than my high school GPA.

Most of the time I was too busy coding all day and night to care about grades and I was definitely too cool for school.

> But my chemistry professor? Straight F. German? D-

Too many people like to wear this as a badge.

No. It's not. It's just a sign that you were a dumb kid like so many others. The teacher suffered no consequences, and you only hurt yourself.

The smart kids put in the bare minimum effort to get through the shit teachers and leave them behind so they could go do what they wanted.

The really smart kids managed to make the teacher suffer actual consequences for being a shit. But you have to be really, really good at human politics to pull it off and lucky enough to have them give you the opportunity to punish them for it.

>for me a lot of the stress came from the hostility and bullying that the kids who did not want to be there

In Australia students are allowed to drop out of school in year 10 (age 15-16) if they have work lined up. When all these people left my grade got much better.

This was also available for people who were going into apprenticeships

The problem is the one's with rich parents don't leave. They're going nowhere in life, but they're at least vaguely aware of how much their life will radically decay if they stop giving the impression of progress to the purse-strings.

> I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help my kids skip high school, but I don’t quite know how to do it.

I’ve enjoyed reading Bryan Caplan occasionally describe how he home schooled his children through middle school and high school[1]. It started off with middle school on the basis that no one cares at all about middle school grades or achievements, with them doing an AP exam a year. On trying out high school once they were off an age they decided to keep on homeschooling and just ramped up the pace on the APs, while ensuring there was daily Math learning and eventually independent research. Most of the posts discussing it are here[2].

[1] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/09/why_im_homescho.htm... [2] https://search.econlib.org/search/#njDqBtLLytoDH9kCdAfS2ZJRl...

What if your kids want to date? Practically speaking, how are they going to meet people outside a high school environment? Might seem trivial but it's a formative set of years for learning courtship rituals. High school imparts a lot of non academic experience that are, I think, pretty important.

A couple of years ago I got an honourable mention in an essay competition on school shootings and in it I discussed how schools are the one place in most people's lives that they have no power to escape. [0]

You can quit a crappy job. You can transfer to a different university. You can ghost your friends. In nearly every social system after high school, there is some measure of self selection. But you have no power to extract yourself from that environment unless your parents are willing to send you to private school or move.

I am not sure there is a need to abolish high school, but rather just provide additional resolutions for those for whom it is a very poor fit and better clamp down on those who want to harm others in the ecosystem. Schools handle edge cases very poorly and they do an even worse job of managing those who wish to do harm.

[0] http://www.psychological-observations.com/918-jmh-internatio...

I imagine this varies significantly from place to place but when I was in high school you could pretty easily switch to other public high schools in the area and there were several charter schools and alternative schools available for students not well served by the public schools. Since this was a fairly rural area in a fairly average state, I have always thought that this type of school choice was fairly common but I could be wrong.

I don't believe that is common, especially in more urban areas where there is only one public school option. Often there are huge waitlists to change public schools, if they have any availability at all.

It probably depends a lot on funding and student classification. I know that I had access to a lot of options as a student coded "gifted" but if I went public, then there would be a need for a special exemption (as the property taxes were registered to the Catholic board), but one of my cousins was stuck in a crappy school as there was nothing special about him.

I've lived in the 'burbs of two major cities and both let you apply to attend a school outside your "boundary." One will approve your request automatically as long as there is space at the school. The other requires a darn good reason to let you switch, and "vicious bullying" was apparently not a good enough reason for my friend to be approved.

I had a choice of over 20 high schools in my area, some within 5 minutes from my home, some 45 minutes. This upper limit was imposed by my parents, who weren't comfortable having me travelling for longer at that age. I had a shortlist of four, and was able to pre-attend classes at three of them. I ended up choosing one at 35 minutes from my home. I think the classmate with the highest commute time had to travel a little over an hour.

Most years, I think our class had one or two additions that did their previous year (or the same year) at a different school, and I remember two or three classmates changing to another school. I'm not sure how universal your observation is, but then again, I've never lived in the US.

I am Canadian and at least how it seemed to work here is that you have a designated school and then special provisions could make you eligible for a different school, like taking APs or being coded gifted, or having a learning disability might get you somewhere else. If you didn't have something like that, anecdotally people were stuck.

> But you have no power to extract yourself from that environment unless your parents are willing to send you to private school or move.

Most states in the US allow students to drop out of high school without parental consent at the age of 16.

It's also not uncommon for parents to home school their children through high school.

The alternatives exist. People do choose the alternatives. They're just not as glamorous as they sound once you consider the consequences. I recall the home schooled kids I knew to be deeply unhappy about being separated from the structure and social circles that the rest of us enjoyed.

I've wondered about how well something like this would work:

1. Schools open early and accept students as early as they do now, but classes start around noon and extend to 4-6 PM. Students are not required to arrive early; the school opens early to provide a safe place and schedule flexibility for parents and buses.

2. Breakfast and lunch are offered to ensure food security.

3. Every student has 5+ hours of 1:1 or small group tutoring weekly. This is where the bulk of educator funding would likely end up.

4. Open format "study hall" periods with staff available to assist.

5. No homework; personal exercises are handled in study hall.

6. For any lecture format material, provide high quality centrally produced media. On premise educators focus most of their time on interaction and adapting to where the students are.

7. Much less age stratification; progress through class content would be heavily individualized by the 1:1 and small group interaction.

8. Unprison the experience- you can go to the bathroom or eat a snack, or even leave.

This reuses of all existing infrastructure, reorganizes educator hours into what is (as far as I know) a more effective structure, reduces required student time, and seems like this should fit in the current budgets (which are around the $12000/year/pupil averaged over the US).

And, critically, this doesn't force teenagers with delayed circadian rhythms to wake up at 5:45 AM to catch the bus. I'm pretty sure if you changed nothing else and just had high school run from noon to 4PM, you'd have a transformative improvement in outcomes even though the total number of hours would be significantly reduced.

You vastly underestimate how much money it would take to do (3) alone, let alone anything else on here. Your assumption around the usage of educator hours is incorrect. I suppose it's worth seeing how you believe educator hours are currently used?

I'll admit I haven't put this through an extremely thorough vetting process, and I haven't proposed this in congress or anything yet :P

That said, I roughly assumed a private tutor cost of $50/hour, 5 hours a week, for 36 weeks per year. That alone would come out to $9000, hence the 'small group' suggestion- if each tutor is working with on average 3 students at once, it's a bit more tractable.

I'm not sure what assumption you think I'm making about current educator hours- the proposal is for a radically different usage.

> reorganizes educator hours into what is (as far as I know) a more effective structure,

My point is that you would need a lot more educator hours. There's no way to organize the current amount of hours in which you have "small groups" for 5 hours a day, unless small is 30 students per one teacher, in which case we're already doing that.

It's also not worth comparing tutor hourly wages to teachers as teachers have to deal with other things outside of teaching: calling parents, administrative tasks, behavioral issues, etc.

Also, it's worth mentioning that most of the things you've mentioned have been attempted at one point or another. There are a lot of constraints, interestingly money is not necessarily the main one depending on the issue.

In my proposal, the number of hours a student actually spends directly listening to/interacting with an on-premise educator is much, much lower. The hope is that those would be more efficient hours, to the point of getting better results with >5x less time.

Part of the issue here may be that I found the education system to have net negative impact on my... education. The main value I see in the current system is providing child care, safety, and food security. If there is solid research showing that ~40 hours of the current approach outperforms ~5 hours of a tutoring-style approach in the general population, that would be evidence against my proposal. And that might exist, I just haven't seen it, since this is not exactly a formally vetted idea.

The point of high school as I see it is to provide a semi-intensive educational experience to keep teenagers somewhere during daytime.

It's not designed to optimise for educational effectiveness.

> There's no way to organize the current amount of hours in which you have "small groups" for 5 hours a day, unless small is 30 students per one teacher, in which case we're already doing that.

The proposal was 5 hours a week not 5 hours a day, IIUC. Likely you'd still be looking at rather large small groups and/or a substantial increase in teacher-hours per pupil, though.

> 8. Unprison the experience- you can go to the bathroom or eat a snack, or even leave.

You'll have a hard time finding staff without the promise that you can humiliate younger people /s

Have you tried, or asked? Teachers may do a good job or not, like anyone else. For the most part though, they're decent people who want to do good.

The '/s' at the end is so called sarcasm mark. That means the previous comment wasn't serious.

The /s at the end of my message was to say that it's sarcasm. Most teachers (like most people really) have good intentions and end up being good people, or at least not bad people. On the other hand, there's always a few power-hungry people (be it in teaching, or other things) that are just here to have power over people, because that's their thing.

On the contrary, I think most teachers would be pretty happy if their least-motivated students left and never came back.

In some classes of 20, having the right 2-3 kids out sick can mean you cover 30% more material on a given day, and everyone has a more pleasant time, too.

This probably would work as a one off. It would be very hard to do at school with >1000 students.

Also... beware of first principles, back-of-envelope calculations. They can be useful if you are creating something from the ground up, less so for reform.

Yup- I'm sensitive to the unforeseen consequences of rug-pulling a massive existing social structure. If I actually had skin in the game and was forced to make policy decisions, I'd probably focus on pushing the start time as late as is practical, and then later smaller scale incremental experimentation.

On the other hand, maybe distance from it has mellowed me too much (even though I still think the current design is responsible for a not-small number of dead kids). 17 year old me was pretty upset about the whole thing.

Finland is currently in the process of trying something similar. The main criticism has been that it puts too much pressure on people too early. It works for some people but there are plenty of those who simply won't assign any homework to themselves or do any of the exercises. It's easy to get into the HN bubble and think almost everyone has above-average smarts and would've benefited from more, not less freedom in their formative years. But the fact is that huge swaths of population only go to school and do their school work because they have to.

The approach has also been criticized for exacerbating the already-poor performance of boys in educational results, and I assume the same approach in the US would exacerbate the educational gap between racial groups.

What is this program called? I’d love to read more about it.

I've had to change school a few times due to bullying. Thus my experience was the opposite: the worst bullying I endured was when I was between 9 and 12 years old. High school was mostly fine, and most of the people that I met were fine, although I had to deal with a bit of homophobia.

It's impressive how adults reject the fault of bullying on the victim. I had to not react, to learn to ignore the bullies, as if they were some hurricane and had no control over their own actions.

Compared to this, university was a breath of fresh air. I could mostly choose to not go to class, the site was completely open to the exterior, teachers were ready to help people in need and left alone people that wanted to be left alone.

I've preferred talking to older people most of my life, so I find the idea of the author of multi-generational groups appealing. Maybe don't remove high school, but at least leave the option for people that don't work like most other people that seem to enjoy high school. Also, have zero tolerance for bullying. When the thing you learn in school is that there's no justice and you can't count on people supposed to protect you, it's a bit hard to be mentally healthy after.

yeah, middle school sucks way more. It wasn't that bad for me, but looking back some people were just treated awfully by everyone.

Bullying can really mess with your head at that age, people with self-esteem issues are really badly affected by it, and I've seen those effects last well into high school too.

Talk to some teachers who've been around for a while, and they'll give you an ear-full about how much middle school sucks. Something happens to kids around 6th grade, probably to do with starting to value peer-approval over authority-approval, and they start getting wilder. The work gets harder. Class-switching may start that early, depending on the school. Puberty. Kids from several elementary schools are thrown in with one another, in an abruptly-much-larger class with tons of strangers. A bunch of the kids develop mental health issues. A bunch start hurting themselves or get suicidal, and attempts may be made, some with, uh, "success". Drug use begins to enter the picture. All forms of bullying, including the "mean girl" type, get way worse in a hurry. It is obviously hell for the kids.

There's a consistent and widely-observed school performance dip in about 6-8th grade. I have a feeling our usual structure for schools for those age ranges, in the US at least, is in some way fundamentally and seriously wrong.

Middle school is bad just about everywhere, not just in the US. All the teachers I've talked with (mostly in Europe) also observed the same thing. Keeping kids in school at that age is just a bad idea, and if anything that's what should be abolished completely.

High school in Europe, where there's no extracurricular activities added into the mix, is mostly fine, and kids that have a bad time there are usually just carrying mental scars from middle school.

It really is interesting how bullying as a thing seems much less prominent in College. You still have things like hazing in frats and such but the frats are optional, of course. It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so.

Another thing is that I'm in France. Where I went to college, there were no frats. We had a small association but it was like 50 people out of the thousand in CS that went to their events, and they were pretty tame. On the other hand, the equivalent of frat culture is very present in medical school.

> It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so.

I totally agree. Maybe that's just psychological, but as I mentionned my college was "open", at any point I could just walk away. In high school, and before, there always were big wall between me and the exterior, and every exit had people making sure we didn't go outside. You really feel trapped inside with no escape. Anecdotally, the last high school I went to had a large park with lots of place to "hide", and I was often hanging out with a few friends in some "remote" places.

Hazing is pretty common among student organizations in general in college. During undergrad, my friends in club rugby or marching band got hazed way harder than anyone I knew in any fraternity.

Yeah, I think adults bully too under the right conditions, but we don't often call it that. Instead, we call the same behaviours harassment, abuse, or assault.

Perhaps the worst bullying involves many people ganging up on a victim. You see this in adults too, from the literal witch hunts, to campaigns to make someone socially untouchable (or perhaps get them fired) for expressing views a group of people dislike.

College just seems less conducive to bullying than high school or middle school.

Yeah, it's interesting that the author DIDN'T go to high school, but talks about how bad bullying is in high school.

I was fortunate to not really be bullied much ever, but my anecdata from myself and asking friends is that bullying was MUCH worse in Middle School.

From some Googling, I couldn't find any studies, but everything I saw seemed to say the same.

My only major bullying was by a kid who got bullied a lot - randomly just kicked me down a flight of stairs one day. I'm not sure if that even counts as bullying, and it's hard to blame him too much as a major victim of bullying himself...

But getting kicked down a flight of stairs sucks! I don't recommend it.

Another piece of anecdata here that middle school was far worse for bullying in my life than high school. However, I may be a bit of a special case because I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a single-sex prep high school (male in my case).

Having only boys in my high school meant there were essentially zero cliques, zero drama, and very little reason for bullying. There was no standing with the opposite gender at risk, and thus very little reason to have the standard sort of extreme pecking orders you tend to find in kids of that age. In all the years I was there, there were literally only two fights (in all four years, not just in my class). One amounted to a guy shoving another guy into a trophy case, so it's stretching to even label that a fight.

Single-sex high schools sounds like an antiquated concept, and I was kind of leery of the idea going into it, but my god, I am a huge advocate now. There was an all-girl's school close by, so things like football games still gave you an opportunity for co-ed interactions, but the days themselves were almost entirely distraction free.

By comparison, my mixed-sex middle school was a nightmare. Interestingly, since they were Catholic schools, many of the same kids from my middle school followed me to the high school, so you can't even simply attribute it to there being a different slate of kids. Some of the kids that were nasty bullies in middle school ended up turning into friends of mine by the end of high school.

Middle school sucks. It’s kinda like kindergarten, people are at very different mental and developmental states.

+1 middle school sucks.

I felt like it took me 3 years of high school to trust people again after my horrible middle school experiences. And I know my experiences are mild compared to many others. My high school was great in comparison and I think it was a good transition for me to college. One of the computer science teachers really helped me get interested in the subject too.

I could never be a high school teacher. I know I was insufferable but my teachers showed great patience and understanding. I’m truly grateful to all of them.

Growing up in Minnesota in the late 1990s, we had Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO), where public high school students could go part or fill-time to college or university in-state for their jr. and/or sr. year of high school. As long as the college or university accepted the high school student, the student would get both college and high school credit for the courses. The course balance needed to meet high school requirements (English, History, Math, etc.), and the state wouldn't pay for more than a full-time course load. As I remember, at that time running a high school actually cost more per student than either public or private full-time tuition, so the school district actually saved money.

As I remember, some of my friends went to private institutions (Carlton and University of St. Thomas, IIRC).

I went to the University of Minnesota my sr. year of high school. I wish I also would have gone my jr. year. One of my buddies was also going to a local community college full-time while HS-aged through PSEA, and I remember one day that there was a snow storm and both of us only had 9 a.m. classes. I swung by his school right after my class ended, and we went skiing for the rest of the day while many of our friends were stuck in high school. Schedule flexibility was really nice.

My younger cousin attended a small, alternative, mixed age high school. It seemed quite pleasant. Students interacted with teachers like they would with parents' friends. They'd make themselves a cuppa and chat like regular people during breaks. The social dynamic of mixed age groups was notably unschoolish too. I had hated school, so I was quite impressed.

I'm inclined to think that a lot what we think of as how schools are, socially is a product of age segregation. Narcissism of Small Differences comes to mind.

That said, I don't think there is a single solution for all. The reality is that a lot of kids have a very rough time at schools for a lot of reasons, and we consistently underestimate how bad that can be.

Another point stood out to me here: "High school is often considered a definitive American experience...."

Besides high school, this could be college relationships, marriage, motherhood, sex life, career, etc. Our idealisations often seem to oppress us. When life doesn't live up to 90210, or Hackers and Painters, or Sex in The City... its an unbearable failure.

IDK what the solutions are. Ideals are inspiring as well as oppressive. I think with "psychology" broadly, it isn't always necessary to deal with every problem head on. Healthier relationships, decrease the risk of drug addiction, for example. We need healthier schools, broadly.

> High school is often considered a definitive American experience

Not always in a positive way, it should be emphasized.

Sure, and I actually think the artistic antithesis is quite important. That said, even depictions of high school losers usually still depict an idealisation. Despite being outcast, the protagonist still has their tight knit friendship group, love interest, etc. If that doesn't materialize, there's a profound sense of loss.. grief even.

I think having alternatives to high school is good.

That said, I’ve experienced what happens when high schoolers infiltrate the community colleges - it feels like high school all over again. A bit better, sure. But the level of immaturity and the disruptions are very similar. God help you if you get a group project with 15 year olds.

Ultimately, there are many people at a young age who have no interests in being a part of the type of society that has been around for the last 30-40 years. And they are a sizable portion of youths. Nihilism (in many forms...) is strong at that age and so is the lack of interest in hard work. Ultimately, what do you do for those kids for them to be happy? UBI would really be the only thing... That’s the only way you could get these counter-culture kids who are more focused on disruption out.

Also, most kids who are problematic in school tend to have problematic parents. Trickles down real well that stuff.

Smart, interested 15s sure. The kind of folks you mention, why would they even come? Or not drop after the first test.

> The kind of folks you mention, why would they even come? Or not drop after the first test.

Why would they ever go to high school to begin with? Why not just drop? Same reason they all go - societal pressure.

Besides, being a disruption or a PITA does not mean you fail academically. You can do quite well academically but absolutely be a huge PITA to all your peers.

I think you overestimate the intellect and interest required to succeed in an academic environment. We don't live in some weird society where only the most intellectually gifted (however you define that) and most interested are capable of succeeding in college or academica.

> Why would they ever go to high school to begin with? Why not just drop? Same reason they all go - societal pressure.

Truancy laws aren’t societal pressure. They’re a threat, enforced, that if you don’t send your child to school men with guns will lock you up.

Disruptions and PITA do not want to be in school, for the large majority. For all of them, they do not want to be in that class. If they were free not to go they wouldn’t.

You’re quite right that standards have been dropped enormously since when academia was the pursuit of a small minority but they haven’t slipped to where someone of average intelligence can graduate from a four year university. Standards still exist.

> but they haven’t slipped to where someone of average intelligence can graduate from a four year university.

I don’t know what you think intelligence is but I’m gonna say this is easily disproved by the number of dumb as dumbbells folks I see out there with degrees...

Truancy laws only get enforced in certain regions and vary on rules... I saw plenty of kids dropping out where I grew up.

I strongly suspect you are dealing with a range restriction problem. Dumb and dumb for a university graduate are not the same.

Dumb for a university graduate: can’t do algebra

Dumb for a high school graduate: can’t divide a five digit number by a two digit number with pencil and paper

Dumb for the general population: can’t do arithmetic

This also depends somewhat on area of study, honestly.

Having majored in music (and picked up most of my technical skills just out of a habit for tinkering), my running joke was always that none of my classes required me to count past 32.

I sent two of my kids to community college at 13. The only immaturity problem was that one of the two was a slacker about getting assignments done, but older people at the school also had that issue often enough. The other kid now has a 4.0 GPA on 48 credits, and you'd have never guessed she wasn't an adult.

Congrats? I’m speaking from my own experience in a school that had 25%+ high school children in it (effectively 50% because many adult students were part time). It was high school 2.0.

Your own experience of your children going to school doesn’t reflect the experience of what others had to deal with at that school or in relation to your children... grades be damned.

It really is high school 2.0, as you can tell by the classes offered. There are classes that are below what is traditional for high school, but college credit is given. You can get college credit for the very first introductory algebra class. That's honors 7th grade, or regular 9th grade. About the same applies for English composition and science.

It's not just older people who wish to avoid being in classes with immature young people. The mature young people are also trying to get away from the awfulness.

Mostly agreeing with you:

What is this fantasy that abolishing school will do for these kids? They won’t magically discover themselves, as we are all beholden to the normal distribution. At some point or another, your ass is going to have to wake up at 8am every day and get to a desk and sit for 8 hours (yes, even at your dream job at Google) with people you may or may not like, just so you can have a small afternoon on a Sunday walking the dog or watching a movie. That’s reality.

Childhood is already a massive fantasy. Half the reason why many adults are maladjusted is because they can’t get out of the fantasy of childhood. No, your parents won’t pay your bills. Yeah, you will have a boss. Mmmhmm, it’s going to suck and you are going to have to find a way to get along. Oh, and that competition and bullying you were worried about, multiply that by 100 at any well paying office job. Hi, welcome to the world, hope you have some experience dealing with people because shit just got real.

Learn that at the youngest age(s) possible, because the harsh reality is no one later in life is going to wait around for you to ‘figure it out’. The whole world will pass you by and no one will bat an eye.

The older I get, the more I realise "high school" wasn't really the problem at all. High school, like any other government institution, is ultimately a reflection of the values of the people who run them. And in some places - those values aren't necessarily the best.

When a system relies on "good people" and where "bad people" ruin it, the system itself isn't great, it's broken.

There is no system that can't be co-opted and ruined by bad people.

US Constitution, first thing to come to mind.

US constitution is bad though. Nobody is good enough to make it work.

It works when folks aren’t hysterical.

Slavery (as well as the continued and sustained widespread lack of due process/equal protection) stands as a great proof of asdff's point given your example.

Yes, though slavery was not addressed (on purpose) in the document for a century.

The US constitution has been gutted and reconstructed multiple times. The idea it really constrains is a joke. Every seventy years or so there’s a massive change in how things are actually run. The first change was the Constitution itself, taking over from the Articles of Confederation, the second when the states were rendered subordinate with the War On Idiots Who Wanted to Keep Slavery, the third the New Deal, when the Commerce Clause was rendered a joke, then the sixties with the extraordinary growth of the administrative state. The US Constitution can’t stop politicians from doing what they want. The Constitution doesn’t give the President the power to declare war unilaterally. They took it. Power is not restrained by paper, but by other power.

I grew up in a poor country with a lot of problems, however it gave me an extremely decent education up to the high school. My parents wouldn't have been able to do it alone.

So no, for me and my peers abolishing the high school wouldn't have been an option.

I'm not sure how old you are but I think that the internet has legit made formal education obsolete.

Formal education for certain things; there are a lot of other things that require you to be taught by somebody else, in person. Things that make up the physical infrastructure which we rely on, in particular.

Nevertheless, it's not obsolete until we can reliably teach people how to teach themselves. We are far, far from that point. Access to knowledge is a teeny tiny part of the entire challenge.

Sure, however the problem is that school as it works now is too time consuming and it doesn't feel like it uses my time wisely.

It hasn't. In person learning is still the way to go.

No, as most people will not do it on their own without being forced to. Many others will cheat their way through and claim more than they actually know. We have solved the information access problem, but that was not the only barrier.

Do you think people aren't cheating in school already? Cheating is primarily a symptom of mixed incentives. When the goal is to pass a test, cheating is the obvious, correct solution - you're an idiot if you don't cheat, frankly, if your goal is to get a good grade.

If your goal is to learn, and failure is considered safe and a necessary part of the process, you'll never cheat.

I strongly believe that human beings fundamentally want to learn. In fact, I'd generalize that to most intelligent life - learning provides a feeling of satisfaction.

It is only in this nonsensical system where we conflate learning with grades that we can, through decades of abuse, start to not want to learn.

I have an argument that I want to see what other people think of. Why is cheating bad? You say that they "claim more than they actually know" but that just doesn't hold up. If you try and get a job then you'll get fired, if you try and get into any sort of complex class without knowing anything you'll fail eventually. Cheating won't hold up in the long term. If it does then why does it matter? If you manage to score a CSC job (and hold it) without knowing a thing about it then you are qualified.

I'm sure someone can tell me why I'm wrong but I can't think of it myself

Skill isn't an all or nothing thing. People can pretend to have higher skill than they really do without being so unskilled that they'll immediately be discovered. All you know is that some person had a higher error rate than the person who didn't get the job, except that since he didn't get the job there's no way to know for sure.

I think this combined with the other guys response is the best. I don't think its possible for a totally awful doctor to actually be employed but one with 60% of the skills could be. Thanks for your answer!

> fail eventually.

The problem with a trustless society is the high cost of it.

Sure, people will fail, but far later in the process. So the doctor will fail, but instead of failing at the selection for medical school will fail when he actually must do procedures. So a lot of money was spent to train a useless doctor.

Sure the employee will fail, but after you have paid then 10,000 and they have screwed up a lot of work.

I personally don't think the monetary consequences would be very large. We have absolutely no idea how it would go but for me personally I'd probably just continue to learn normally and I bet a lot of other people would as well! However, having doctors working at 80% efficiency (Enough not to be fired but bad enough to kill some people) wouldn't be the best at all...

From a teachers perspective, the problem with cheating is that it doesn't help me help you. Especially if you are cheating from the get-go, it can take a while before I notice it and by then it might be too late.

Tests are supposed to be assessments, not some sort of trial-by-question or student ranking system. (Whether a particular teacher/school treats them that way is another discussion). If your assessment shows that you know 20% of the material, then I can help you learn (at least some of) the other 80%. However, if you know 20% of the material but cheat your way to an 80% on the assessment, then I will try to help you with the last 20% assuming you know the 60% of the content that you cheated on. At best that will end up with you knowing 40% of the material, but more likely you won't be able to learn much more than the 20% you already knew because I won't have the information to approach the content correctly for you.

And in the next unit, that missing 80% will compound and you'll learn even less. (I teach Computer Science... so imagine trying to learn for-loops if you don't really know how to declare/initialize variables)

So, cheating really only hurts yourself. You will be one of those people that doesn't get the job, or gets fired. But you could have been someone that was successful at the job if you had been honest on the assessments and got the help you needed when you needed it. (Similarly, I think guessing on assessments is a bad idea, because it can hide misunderstandings from the teacher and the student)

Thanks for the thoughtful answer!

First off I really think CSC is the worst when talking about cheating. For some reason my school thinks looking at stackoverflow or talking to other students about the assignment while either of you have your project open is cheating. I love CSC so all the classes I've taken have mostly been below me or about my level. These rules really annoyed me because because watching videos (Cheating according to my school) or looking at stack overflow is one of the best ways to learn. I'm now in the CSC club and I constantly see people asking the dumbest questions (Even just syntax confusion!) because they don't understand how helpful the internet is for learning! They have been told that stackoverflow is unreliable and should never be used. I feel like this really hampers their ability to learn...

> Similarly, I think guessing on assessments is a bad idea, because it can hide misunderstandings from the teacher and the student)

I think your missing something here. Your a CSC teacher so you know that grades are so so important for CSC students. For example, I have to maintain a 3.93 GPA if I want to even be considered to go to my school of choice. This means guessing on assignments is 100% necessary if I don't know the answer. There have been many times on assignments that I have thought of a cool or different way of doing something but have immediately stopped because I don't get more points for doing something slightly more efficiently but get massive points off for getting it less efficient. Not worth the risk! If I don't fight for every single point I am digging my own grave towards a 3.9. I obviously have no idea what kind of teacher you are but my current ones don't seem to understand the gravity of their grades. They throw stuff on tests that isn't relevant or just miss grade assignments (And forget to give me points back after I pointed it out) like it isn't a big deal. These small mistakes are the difference between getting into the collage I want or not! The completely control a big part of my life but don't seem to know!

I duno. I feel like my teachers mostly don't really care about education and mostly about making the test as difficult as they can get away with. Getting a 4.0 is so mentally taxing I feel utterly defeated with the entire system.

Sorry for the long rant!

The internet has made formal education obsolete in the sense that a significant amount of material is now available for free and a little more available behind a paywall.

But a vast majority of highly paid technical fields are highly credentialed, getting hand son experience in certain fields requires access to labs and equipment beyond the means of the average individual, etc.

To the author’s point, formal education is not so much about learning the curriculum, as about socialization. That doesn’t have to happen through school but you’ve got to get a group of people together somehow, and in the US that is through school. And it’s not a healthy environment, which does impact learning for everyone. It’s a little bit lord of the flies, but I don’t think the solution is to put everything online. And I know quite personally that a lot of kids (and adults) just don’t learn that way.

Ok it fails at that then.

Your comment made me immediately wonder if people over some certain age immediately disagree while those younger likely agree.

If so, then the olders thing the assertion is naive and the youngers thing the olders have stale ideas.

And the world keeps spinning, somehow amusingly as before.

I think it's the other way around. Comment reads like an idealistic middle aged person idea to me. I don't know anyone under 30 who wouldn't immediately mock it.

Let's look at what students who have lived under both systems over the course of this pandemic are really saying. For the most part, they feel much more engaged with in person instruction.

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/students-learn-from-anywher...

maybe in computer science only

Definitely not. Sole programming? Yeah, absolutely. But CS is general? Nope.

still way easier than e.g med, I guess

Did you read the article? It’s not about abolishing the education you get in high school, however scant in may be in some cases, it’s about abolishing the strict age segregation with all its toxic social effects.

Article is paywalled, so I'm guessing very few of the commenters will have actually read it.

Is it geofenced? Not paywalled for me.

That must be the case then

I went into high school as a curious kid who loved reading and enjoyed opportunities to be creative. I left high school as a nervous wreck who was terrified to apply myself in any academic situation because I'd been mocked so much - by teachers and students alike - for various failures.

It took me eight years to break out of that mindset, but I'm now doing well. In fact, my job makes heavy use of the subject that I was most afraid of due to my high school experience: mathematics. The process of becoming confident in mathematical problem solving and working through my considerable personal mental hangups was a dreadful experience. Many or even most people do not break out from the hang-ups they learn during high school, especially with mathematics.

EI have nothing but animosity for the high school system and would welcome any change that makes it less prominent in the lives of teens and young adults. I'd say that a college module system like that which the OP describes is a vastly superior alternative. I think that intellectual life and social life should be separated as much as possible, which I believe is for the most part the default setting in most universities.

I don’t agree with everything in the article but I really liked the age segregation point. It’s incredible how much we drill into people’s heads that students need to be the same age. Why? We’ve all known 9th graders more mature, whether academically or personally, than 12th graders. And there’s so many students shunted off to college way before they’re ready out of fear of “falling behind”. I’ve taken two gap years at this point, one after high school and one this past year due to covid. So yes, I’ve “fallen behind” my classmates. I’ve also gotten work experience, significantly improved my mental health and traveled. And oh no, I’m so late for what? Joining the workforce? Who cares? I’m probably gonna be working for 40 years. Two years isn't going to make a difference.

There are definitely other horrible tropes and attitudes at work here as well, such as age discrimination for junior positions at companies that pressures kids to be ready made for employment at 23 but be cast with a skeptical eye at 27. It's ridiculous.

In Norway you get to choose your high school after middle school, all the pupils in a region is ranked solely based on their grades from middle school and for the ones who are sick of books they can go to a more trade-oriented high school (training to become a mechanic, electrician, etc). Obviously it is not perfect and in the district the choices can be quite limited, but it definitely prevents the stereotypical American high school.

Taking my school as an example it was pretty much filled with nerds, many being active in politics, math competitions, etc. I remember very well it being the first time no-one in the class wanted to do football in PE.

Some people criticize it for being worse for the students who don't do well in middle school and end up with very little choices and also separating stronger students. But for the stronger students it so nice with everybody being at least somewhat interested in learning and the teachers being very relaxed.

Japan has something similar. When children finish junior high school at age fifteen, they apply to high schools they want to attend. Some high schools have college-prep curricula, some are vocational, and some are comprehensive. Some schools are very competitive to enter, while others admit nearly anybody.

Teenagers are not required to attend high school and some start working full-time after finishing junior high school. Special day and evening high-school programs are available for them if they want to keep studying while they work.

In areas with high population densities, such as Tokyo or Osaka, there might be dozens of high schools, both public and private, within commuting distance by public transportation. In rural areas and on remote islands, the choice is much more limited; I've known people who moved to a city at age fifteen and lived with relatives or alone in order to attend a college-prep high school.

My two daughters grew up in Tokyo and Yokohama and went through public schools. When they were in junior high school I accompanied them on visits to several local high schools while they were deciding where to apply. The older one ended up attending a comprehensive high school because it gave her an opportunity to study a variety of subjects. The younger one wanted to do computers, so she chose a vocational high school that had a programming track. They both got through their schools unscathed, though neither seemed to have had a particularly inspiring experience.

I myself attended an urban public high school in Southern California in the 1970s. My experience was similar to those of many commenters here: it was largely a waste of time for me, and it could sometimes be very unpleasant. I was happy and relieved when I got out and started college.

Based on my limited experience, I can’t say that the Japanese high-school system is any better than the American. But the Japanese system is very different, and if systemic reform is ever attempted in the U.S. educators and politicians would be wise to study it and other countries’ systems to see if anything positive can be borrowed from them.

I recently found out about Summit Public Schools. By the sounds of it, this model aims to provide students with more autonomy than they would in a normal school. There is an emphasis on self-directed learning and teachers act more as mentors than lecturers. If your metric to measure success is admission to unviersity, it works! They claim 98% of their students are accepted onto 4-year courses and have twice the graduation rate relative to the US average. [1] Even if that isn't your metric for success (there are good reasons why it shouldn't be) it at least demonstrates ability.

Perhaps this is a good bridge between school and homeschooling as we know it. I'm sure you can tell from reading this that I only have surface-level understanding, so I'd be interested to hear from anybody who knows more about these schools or other schools that do similar things. Or indeed anybody who wants to shake up education/has some good ideas!

You can read more here: https://summitps.org/

[1] https://summitps.org/the-summit-model/our-results/

fyi/point of interest, the author, Rebecca Solnit, is essentially the originator of the "mansplaining" concept. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/books/review/recollection...

I have previously read up on that and her original exemplar story and I don't think she was as insightful about herself and her own role in that moment as she was about the guy mansplaining to her, but still, she definitely had her finger on the pulse of a cultural phenomenon.

High school seems like a highly personalized experience. Reading most of these comments, one would expect that high school is a form of punishment. For me, and most people I know however, high school was a deeply positive experience. I don't know how/if schooling needs to be fixed, but one thing that strikes me is the range in experiences.

I guess one part of it is that people who have had an overall good experience (or even a mediocre one) are less likely to talk about it. I wonder what percentage of people truly hated high school.

What could be done to alter the range? It seems like when there’s something like high school that everyone experiences, there’s bound to be good and bad.

Also had a deeply positive experience in high school. For all its faults in America, and there are many, I was enriched intellectually and socially, and I look back on those days fondly.

I've met my current friend group during high school and it's been 15 years...

I have been saying since I was in high school in the late-90s/early-2000s that there’s isn’t enough being said and done about actually figuring out what about modern high school incites so much violence, and not just the deadly kind. All the energy goes into locking kids down more, controlling their lives, and doesn’t actually cure the disease.

In my fifteen years of office work, the worst I have encountered is a single shouting match between a developer and his boss. The developer started it, and ended up finding a new job within the week. Contrast that with my four years of high school where I was physically assaulted at least twice, and encountered fights almost weekly.

I didn’t have the luxury of consensual association with that institution. I couldn’t just leave if things took a turn. I think imposing so much inescapable structure can cause certain types of kids to lash-out like a trapped animal, because in an entirely literal sense they are. I certainly felt very trapped myself in a very real sense.

Having talked with teachers and administrators about this, they can’t seem to fathom what I am saying. I think it comes down to educational work having a self selection for people who thrive in such a structured environment. Many of them having never experienced anything else, going straight from college into teaching.

I went to a school with no letter grades, and skipped a year. Our school used to copy the nyt crossword puzzle, and it was considered ok to work on it in lieu of paying attention. Some teachers would simply tell me not to bother showing up, and I managed to get credit for a number of classes without going by simply convincing my teachers that I'd read the book and understood the material.

For autodidactic people such as the myself and presumably the author, this was great. Many of my classmates required more structured experiences, and I don't think this model works for most people. Abolishing high school is nice for the people who read hacker news, but probably wouldn't work for the vast majority of students

This is a poorly researched article. I won't bother critiquing every part, but I'll get to the meat:

> Abolishing high school could mean many things. It could mean compressing the time teenagers have to sort out their hierarchies and pillory outsiders, by turning schools into minimalist places in which people only study and learn.

This is impossible to begin with. Any institution that has more than a single individual will naturally result in stratification and hierarchies. Any student who doesn't want to go to high school can already do so by opting into home schooling if their parents agree and support that (and can provide resources).

Furthermore, how exactly would you only "study and learn?" the author hardly gives proper examples of any of their ambitious ideas.

> All the elaborate rites of dances and games could take place under other auspices. (Many Europeans and Asians I’ve spoken to went to classes each day and then left school to do other things with other people, forgoing the elaborate excess of extracurricular activities that is found at American schools.)

The article handwaves how exactly you would replace all of the non academic portions of high school by vaguely mentioning anecdotes.

> It could mean schools in which age segregation is not so strict, where a twelve-year-old might mentor a seven-year-old and be mentored by a seventeen-year-old; schools in which internships, apprenticeships, and other programs would let older students transition into the adult world before senior year. (Again, there are plenty of precedents from around the world.)

The author doesn't bother to even explain why this would be beneficial, and what the potential downsides could be. Though I am personally a supporter of mixed-age classrooms, some research has shown it's not good (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465430660033...).

Interestingly many people who have poor social skills wish to avoid people, but in reality that just delays the inevitable poor encounters you will have with others. What's better is to teach people to have good social skills. It's a shame that schools don't explicitly do this. The author also seems to conveniently ignore the extreme differences between people during high school age.

Per the authors own definition high school has already been "abolished" as all of the things they speak of are already possible.

> Any student who doesn't want to go to high school can already do so by opting into home schooling if their parents agree and support that (and can provide resources).

The whole point of public school is to not depend on "if their parents agree and support that (and can provide resources)." because it didn't work.

> The article handwaves how exactly you would replace all of the non academic portions of high school by vaguely mentioning anecdotes.

Which non academic portions of high school? And what they're mentioning is not anecdots, it's how extra curricular activites works in other countries. You don't go to them through high school, they're independant associations focused on a sport, an instrument or something. Where you can also get your social interactions.

> Interestingly many people who have poor social skills wish to avoid people, but in reality that just delays the inevitable poor encounters you will have with others.

You can have good social skills and not enjoy the company of other high schoolers. In that case forcing you to spend time with other high schoolers makes no sense at all. You're also free to walk away from most bad encounters later in your life, while you can't really walk away from bullying.

I also don't see how high school does anything to teach social skills to people that don't have them. There's no courses for it, you can experiment with your classmates but failure can mean humiliation and bullying for the next 4 years. I don't think that's a good environment to develop a skill.

> The whole point of public school is to not depend on "if their parents agree and support that (and can provide resources)." because it didn't work.

By what criteria does it not work?

> Which non academic portions of high school? And what they're mentioning is not anecdots, it's how extra curricular activites works in other countries. You don't go to them through high school, they're independant associations focused on a sport, an instrument or something. Where you can also get your social interactions.

Other countries are setup differently than the USA. They have infrastructure for transporting children for example, infrastructure we do not necessarily have.

> You can have good social skills and not enjoy the company of other high schoolers. In that case forcing you to spend time with other high schoolers makes no sense at all. You're also free to walk away from most bad encounters later in your life, while you can't really walk away from bullying.

This is not true. You can be bullied at work. You could argue that you can switch jobs, but you can also switch schools. You can argue you can tell your manager, but you can also tell your teacher. In the end it's the same thing.

> By what criteria does it not work?

Rates of literacy would be one. To be clear, what I'm saying is that public high school were made because parents couldn't/wouldn't/didn't agree and support and provide resources for their kids to go to school. If you want to build an alternative to public high school, you can't make it depend on parents having the money or will.

> Other countries are setup differently than the USA. They have infrastructure for transporting children for example, infrastructure we do not necessarily have.

Yeah, the lack of public transportation (or if it exists it can be very unsafe) in the USA is a big problem, but for people living in the city everything can be in walking distance.

> This is not true. You can be bullied at work. You could argue that you can switch jobs, but you can also switch schools.

Bullying at work is different than bullying at school. At school, adults tell you to learn to take it and stop reacting. At work, it's called harassment and the bully can be brought to justice. Also, I, as an adult, can switch jobs. I, as a child, had to depend on my parents to switch school. I wasn't the one that made the final decision.

> You can argue you can tell your manager, but you can also tell your teacher. In the end it's the same thing.

I can tell my manager, HR, contact the "anti harassment task force" or a lawyer. Most people are also more sensible about workplace harssment than bullying. Sure, maybe that's because I'm in a good company that has these resources, but considering how big bullying is, it's ridiculous that there isn't more resources at public schools (the first one being a viable alternative).

Why doesn't significant punishment of bullies ever seem to be an option? To the extent that any other possible idea is entertained first?

I personally learned a lot in high school, though I took the harder AP classes.

I can't speak for every (or most, or even some) case of bullying. But keep in mind when someone says "I was bullied and the teachers did nothing" they are saying that from the memory of a 10 - 17 year old with little to no insight of what was happening from the perspective of the adults.

There are a million things that could result in a student bullying other kids. Are their parents drug addicts? Alive? Are they living out of their car? Does the bully go to bed hungry because the only time he gets meals is from school? Is the bully depressed and cutting themselves? Is the bully a drug addict? Is the bully working a night job so he can help his family pay rent?

None of these are things you can (legally) tell the target of their bullying and should be dealt with in ways other than "significant punishment". So from the perspective of the bullied, it looks like nothing is being done. But in the background, there are probably several adults working to remediate the situation.

Also, there probably aren't enough counselors/admins and your bully just isn't high enough on the bully-list to be dealt with (ie, that kid that is hitting people in the face with chairs needs to be dealt with before the kid that calls other kids names... and there are still 10 unfilled positions at the school).

Or the staff doesn't have the right training.

Or maybe the bully is just an a-hole.

Or the bully is a [rich|important|litigious] person's kid.

The freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose. Maybe you have a bad home life, and maybe someone could help with that, but physical and mental assault must stop immediately.

> Wonder what allows a school to at least consider permanent expulsion? The student has to be convicted of:

> murder

> drug dealing

> aggravated assault

> rape

> possession of a deadly weapon

https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/public-sch...

What punishments would you suggest for bullies?

Everything on the table... would start with detention, counseling, move on to extensive public community service, all the way to real jail time for assault, then supervised probation.

Now jail can make things worse because kids can get introduced to exactly the wrong people, so it might need some reform. Not sure how juvenile-hall is handled these days.

I was an undiagnosed autistic growing up and I begged my parents to homeschool me. Thankfully my two best friends were already doing so and we were in a liberal area where we could make this happen and my parents (less so my dad) were reasonably open to it. His main objection, "You'll never get into college" was put to rest when I found data showing that being a homeschooler puts you in a smaller pool than "Random highschool grad" and college admissions people are smart enough to keep an eye out for home schoolers, so in all my chances actually went up. I don't have my GED but I do have a BA which broke German bureaucracy when I went over there to continue studies.

Anyway grade school was tough enough for me and I very much believe that I would have ended up hospitalized or suicidal/dead had I gone through highschool. Giving options to children who are non neurotypical (I don't envy ADHD kids) and suffer from behavioral issues is crucial. A lot of people without these problems have very serious psychological scarring from high school so put a kid suffering more challenges in the mix and it becomes clear what you're dealing with.

I was able to study what I wanted, at the level that was appropriate for me, on my own time. I ended up taking a number of distance learning classes as well as community college classes and got college credits for them. I was really held back in middle school with this. A lot of people ask "weren't you lonely" but I didn't have anything in common with most other kids and the school environment was toxic and overstimulating to me. I hate that people's knee jerk reaction is "You must have been soo lonely" and it really shows you the truth about high school honestly..it's NOT about learning..it's almost some hazing ritual that people are stockholm syndrome'd into.

I don't have the link now but I saw some surveys and it's something like 99% of home schooled students wouldn't take it back for the world.

> I don't have my GED but I do have a BA which broke German bureaucracy when I went over there to continue studies.

Do tell. What problems did that cause? How were they resolved?

Hah, just more of a funny story, I had to do a lot of back and forth when filling out my MS application paperwork and they were thinking that I "didn't fill it out" or something like that. I literally had nothing to give them. They conceded in the end but I guess in the US I've never ran into places pushing it because I have "just" my BA

The author says that high school teaches conformity and alienation, and can "flatten your soul", and then shortly afterwards suggests getting kids into the job market sooner might be a solution for this. Ha ha, good luck with that.

My experience with the american HS has been great. I went in Halifax County High, in rural Virginia, in the late 90s. It is rated 5.5/10, so average school I guess and it was racially diverse.

Gen. Ed classes, (the ones where average people take) were a mixed bag, as they had plenty of students that clearly didn't want to be there, and just wanted a pass grade and move on.

The trend of reducing AP classes in the name of 'equity' is very troubling, as it remove the chances of smart students to have a stimulating environment, and let them learn at their faster pace.

> The trend of reducing AP classes in the name of 'equity' is very troubling, as it remove the chances of smart students to have a stimulating environment, and let them learn at their faster pace.

This is happening at the school I worked at. They're offing the AP courses in the name of dual credit, which is absolutely useless if you want to do anything halfway related to the degree. But parents like how it looks better because "college credit" is always seen as good, even when it doesn't transfer because it's from a local community college that state universities laugh at. I've had students in the past told they wouldn't have to repeat it in college to just have to do just that as it wouldn't count towards their major, whereas a more rigorous AP class would have. It's all because our guidance officer might be the most incompetent person in the world at her job.

In the words of one of the few remaining AP teachers, "Her children aren't accelerated so she's going to make sure nobody is." And it's not far off, with her telling kids to take easier classes and not challenge themselves, etc. It's awful, thank God I'm on a leave of absence this coming school year.

I came here to write up a similar story.

Grew up in the mid west, went to through a pretty average public school system. Participated in sports, AP classes, and generally had an excellent time.

I suspect that like most of the internet there's a strong tendency for people to post their feelings about negative experiences. From polling people in real life, it seems to be somewhat hit or miss, so clearly there's room for improvement, but I don't think that the current system is completely broken.

This is more about growing up gay than about high school, as is clear if you read other writing by the same author. This is a smart, frustrated writer. It's not about picking the students that won't benefit from more education and sending them off to vocational training, then the fields and mines, as was normal until the mid-20th century.

The UK did that explicitly until 1976, with the "Eleven-Plus" exam.[1] Many areas of the US did it, but this varied locally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-plus

Shout out to The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, of which several states have sister schools. https://www.ncssm.edu/

Quick summary, it's a public, boarding school that you apply to that has almost every AP course you can think of plus courses beyond AP. Pre-college essentially.

I was able to skip two years of an engineering degree by attending.

It's not a perfect solution, but it offers a way for students who are ready for college early to transition sooner. It also gives the state an excuse to not offer AP in every county, they can just point to NCSSM as an option.

I dropped out of high school when I was 16, winter of 1986. Happiest day of my life.

From another perspective, I am a current high school student trying to decide on a future path. While I also think high school is a waste of time that I don't learn much from, I'm not sure that the other options are actually better, at least for my personal goal of attending selective colleges after high school.

I will become eligible for a dual-enrollment program at local community colleges soon, where students get a 2-year associate degree and high school diploma at the same time. This includes the option to take classes at the college full-time, effectively never actually attending the high school. However, from what I've seen, choosing this path instead of AP courses reflects negatively on the student when applying to selective colleges. It seems best suited for completing a 4-year degree at an in-state university after high school. While this minimizes the time spent in education, I'm not sure it's the best option if my goal is to get the best possible education (i.e. including post-secondary). It also poses a logistical challenge due to lack of transportation to and from the college.

On the other hand, the practice of staying in high school and taking as many AP classes as possible does little for the social environment at the school. It helps appease college admissions officers, but it's not an ideal solution either.

Well, I agree with the title, and some of the reasoning, but it doesn't go far enough. I think school in general is stupid. It's an extreme view, I know.

I think education is good. But that's not what school is. Everything a kid learns in 13 years could he learned in 5, and then they leave missing very important skills. Many kids that graduate high school then choose to take on 5 to 6 figures in debt as their first financial decision of their lives, out of this weird pressure to know what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing, which they're somehow expected to know after spending 13 of the previous 18 years of their lives having to ask permission to take a shit. In my opinion, school turns people, most of whom have amazing potential, into losers.

The major motivation to have a mandatory school system is to take productive adults who would spend a decade caring for 2 or 3 children and put them to work and outsource the rearing of their children to one professional child raiser per 30 or so kids. Very economical. But it is hell on our kids, and hell on our civics.

5 years. That's all it takes to learn what you need to know in school. Reading, writing, some literature, arithmetic geometry and algebra, basic physics, chemistry and biology, some domestic history and civics and some world history, then toss in a bit about how to handle finances and you're done. 5 years. And that's much more than we are requited to know within the 13 we spend right now.

And we can teach our own kids. And we should. If I can't be trusted to teach my kid what I learned in school, what does that say about the school I went to?

>I think education is good. But that's not what school is. Everything a kid learns in 13 years could he learned in 5

Everything except socializing witht their peers over a period of time they develop psysiologically (kid to puberty to adulthood).

That school can be a hostile environment is part of this too, since even more so can be the rest of life it prepares people for. At least in school you can learn about bad people in a low stakes situation (not being part of the cool gang, getting mocked for your appereance, or not being invited to a party, for example) - in real life not knowing how to deal with such people can cost you your job, money, health, even life.

It's also about what exactly kids will do when they're 10-12 (after those "5 years of condensed school"). Just run around when their parents work?

And where does the optimism that kids can learn "in 5 years" what they are taught in 13? Most kids don't even learn what they are taught in 13 - even in the US where the curriculum and demands are laughable by European standards.

>And we can teach our own kids. And we should.

That would be a nightmare and is rightly forbidden in many parts of the world.

The kid will not be socialized with his peers, will be taught what some (probably biased, abusive, or paranoid) parent wants to teach them, and generally be kept out of society. Forget abusive school environments, home-schooling is an order of magnitude better way to raise a dysfunctional adult.

There are many ammendments that can be made to the greatly ineffictive school system, but "home-schooling" and "condense it to 5 years" are not the ones I'd choose.

Well paid, highly motivated teachers would be a good place to start thou, as they can make all the difference - and old adults will still reminisce about those school teachers that made a difference to their lives or instilled them passion for this or that subject.

People socialized with their peers before widespread mandatory schooling existed. This is the first argument that usually comes up when someone makes the outlandish suggestion that kids don't need school, and if that is the main reason we should keep school then what is school but not a daycare center? Do we really need the government spending billions of dollars to force us to hang out with our friends?

Where you spend day in and day out growing up is not a low stakes situation.

What should kids do when they're teenagers? Whatever they or their parents want. Work with their dad, take up hobbies, spend time with their peers outside of government buildings, get jobs.

The optimism comes from a rather unique experience and perspective. I was taught to read before I ever started school, and I went to a school for a period of my childhood where I learned far more than my peers in my country within a short period of time. We don't give kids enough credit, we slow the pace for the lowest common denominator and stifle high performers. We spend several years looking at pink and green dinosaurs and watching cartoons about stegosaurus and a is for apple and b is for banana. It is honestly ridiculous, and shows my point again, school is designed to keep kids somewhere so their parents can be off doing more important things than raising their children. It is state mandated daycare.

Why do we just assume most parents are abusive? Some are, sure. But the solution to that problem is to round up every kid every day and stick them in a government building? And that solves the problem of abusive parents how exactly? People still exist in society without school, and I'd argue taking a kid to some building every day of their lives takes them out of society. Most kids do most of their socializing and learning about society during summer, when they're not required to be in school. I'd like to see some sources if you have them that home schooled kids are more dysfunctional than public schooled kids.

Teachers are glorified babysitters.

American education is old and dated. So inefficient and does a lot of harm. There are plenty of great TED talks on this very subject as well. Will it change? It doesn't seem anything major can change in the US with the current state of politics, but there are some options open to those parents with $ or a willingness to build their own education via the amazing quality resources online from top schools, creative teachers on YouTube, etc.

I don't think it's anything but myth that it be a any better outside the borders of America.

Now I'm wondering if abolishing high schools will also make work places more tolerable. The complaints I personally have (and hear from others) about work often resemble the complaints about social dynamics in high school.

Basically, you have to do well enough in school/job to keep the teacher/boss happy. If you do too well your classmates/coworkers resent you and start sabotaging you. If you really do too well and make the teacher/boss feel unneeded they start sabotaging you as well to put you in your place.

In my experience the vast majority of people (adults and teenagers) are not introspective enough to recognize or admit when they start behaving in this destructive way. I started seeing this in high school and assumed that people would grow out of it. I now realize most people never grow out of this, and sabotage other people as a way to manage their insecurities. If I hadn't started experiencing this in high school, I might have had a harder time recognizing it in the work place. On the other hand, maybe high school is training people to behave like this.

I went to a technical high school in Mexico. Here's divided as 6 years of grade school, 3 of Middle school and 3 of High school.

After finishing this "bachelor" high school you get a technician degree. Mine was an electronics technician. And well, I met some of my best friends there and equals even when most of them went to different majors in college.

I think is great when you can get specialized subjects in such environment since people with similar interests can interact between them more easily.

Granted, there were bullied people, others that just wouldn't fit, but for the most of us (on classrooms over 40 students) we went along fine.

And certainly I felt it a better environment than middle school (12-15yo). Friends that really didn't like it, weren't that interested in electronics or science, but still we got along.

But well, in the end, Mexico is a place where we care about our relationships. Maybe too much.

I don't think the concept of high school is wrong. On any country contacts are important and usually change your life, and any social hub in life is a chance. It's just that, environment and motivation matters.

Surprised to see this with a discussion of age stratification. It's so ingrained into American culture now that being friends with someone of a different age either carries pedophilic insinuation or assume the younger is above the AOC, some nearly related sexual fetish (MILF,DILF,etc). It's not like especially if someone is very young or very old they can be on the same level maturity wise but at least in my personal life friends who were much older than me have always been enriching probably because they can offer life advice I wouldn't otherwise have. The age stratification in general feels like a piece of a more general trend in America where people in general are closing off from others, in this case, their families in fear of essentially anyone who could be a sexual predator in their minds.

Kind of an aside but back on topic, high school honestly fits into this, a place your kids can go and be safe while you work, which is essentially how it functions.

> a place your kids can go and be safe while you work

The last 18 months have shown us that this is really what parents (and the economy) want out of school.

Education comes after babysitting on the list of priorities.

> By artificially creating social units in which everyone is the same age, the ability of children to help and to learn from each other is greatly reduced

Also, given the huge variation in the ages of puberty and rates at which kids develop, it makes perfect sense that kids would find peers in a variety of age groups.

My daughters are homeschooled, and have thus been free to form their own social groups from scratch, and they both gravitate toward age groups not their own. My eldest (high school) hangs out mostly with girls several years her senior, but in their weekly in-person enrichment program she chooses to spend most of her time with the little kids, as sort of a teachers assistant. She doesn't exactly know why, but it's clear that the both the older peers and the little guys feed her soul.

She has relatively little interaction with kids in her own grade, and if she were forced to it would clearly rob her of something very important.

After looking up the author's background, it appears she accomplished this in California back in the 70s.

I'm not sure if this is still possible because the minimum age to take the GED in CA is now at 18+. The alternative to that is to take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE) which requires a minimum age of 16+.

Past thread related via title (but not article):

Let's Abolish High School - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=756407 - Aug 2009 (113 comments)

This is extra-ordinarily negligent article. TLDR; author was transffered from junion high to "alternative high school" where district dumped insubordinate students. In author's own experience, it was completely dysfunctional environment. He says teenage girls there dated drug dealers. Author was apparently hard working so he survived and went to college nonetheless. I doubt his peers had same fate. But now he proposes that all high schools should be obolished because he turned out all ok.

In the 5 years that I was enrolled in high school I likely attended considerably less than most others do in their 4 years. Instead, I skipped classes and walked around NYC. Sometimes I'd go to the Hudson river and read - sometimes books for school, or sometimes books I'd picked up myself. I'd go to Barnes and Nobles sometimes, the big one in Union Square, and sit and read. I was really into physics back then so I'd grab some pop physics book and dig into it. One class I enjoyed had us read Pere Goriot, which I loved, and kicked off a 'sit on the Hudson with some Balzac' phase.

And of course sometimes I'd play video games or sleep in, or just try to relax. I'm not going to pretend that there wasn't a lot of leisure in there, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all.

When I did go to school I was pretty social. I skipped class, chilled in various places and hung out with people. I went to classes that I thought were fun if I wanted to, but usually that would become too annoying to schedule around the classes I had no interest in, so I'd fall behind in the good ones and kinda throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I never really experienced bullying, and the schools I went to were pretty good about that sort of thing. Still, I did witness it - there's no school I've seen that doesn't have a "weird kid" who people tease.

I found the article's focus on that interesting, because I hadn't considered it. High school added tons of anxiety to my life because being truant is actually not that easy to pull off, and is something where the government at some point gets involved. I was absolutely labeled as lazy and written off by many, which I think anyone who knows me today would laugh at, since I'm a CEO and work constantly.

For those who were actually different enough to be bullied I can't even really imagine what that must have been like. And we tell kids "high school ends eventually", but it's 4 years of your life in misery, critical, developmental years, and instead of asking what the fuck we're doing we just tell them "it'll be over soon" where "soon" is not at all soon.

What high school gave me was a place to meet people my age, to pick up some interesting books and knowledge (I'd sometimes meet with teachers after class to discuss or trade books), and really, primarily, to date and get a lot of social experience. To me, everything else was to the detriment of my life. I greatly resent much of what was imposed on me, I feel more strongly than ever at this stage in my life that high school was an unjustified, gross burden that made learning harder for me than it should have been.

Like the author I still support the idea of giving young people structured places to learn, but we need to seriously re-evaluate the goals. While many of my peers took on tons of debt, I thankfully was not accepted into any private university, instead starting my adult life with some odd jobs here or there before finally attending state school, where I dropped out after 5 semesters and began working as a software engineer.

All of high school for them was gearing up to this great thing, college, which now most of them associate with massive debt - some of them owing hundreds of thousands of dollars to this day.

It shouldn't be hard to point at the system and go "yeah that's fucked up", but of course, I'm nearly 30 now and the pains of high school aren't exactly top of mind.

I always assumed US high schools were meant to make citizens hate tyranny via experiencing tyranny. On that basis they are actually 99% effective...

If I had kids I would certainly not send them to high school. Are we so unimaginative to think that there is not a better way? I think roughly 12/13 is the age we should start giving young people more autonomy in their education; they're old enough to have learned how to take care of themselves as a human being and to start taking initiative and develop leadership skills.

High school is a moratorium for crime. Assault and battery are legal among students.

High school teachers can be toxic people, but that's the only way in which they can deal with even more toxic students.

In many cases it's just a place where parents can drop their kids while they're at work. Nobody is learning anything.

The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on -- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions.

-Noam Chomsky

Daisy Coleman committed suicide last year. Her mother killed herself a few months later. Meanwhile, her rapist is walking free, because daddy is powerful.

Let's not abolish it, but let's provide some alternatives. If you can demonstrate some proficiency across the three Rs, then why does it matter if you go to high school or not?

The article explicitly states that by 'abolish' they mean provide alternatives.

Flipped classroom structure :)

I enjoyed this read. Rant:

My mother was a teacher and she had to deal with a lot of political crap because she taught what was important (phonics) in Kindergarten during a time when schools were banishing phonics and preferred whole language (early to mid 1990s). That was just one of the things that drove my mom to retire from teaching, the BS from the ivory tower. I gained a rebellious streak towards the K-12 education system based on my own experience and seeing what she had to put up with. Her students and parents loved her.

Elementary school was a joke. Middle school was very formative to me. I learned a ton. I was bullied a ton, which didn't help. Then I went to high school... Honors English? We read a few books that I don't even remember, and spent the rest of the time playing... I kid you not... Charades. Things only got worse when the athletic coaches would teach the Honors classes. After a couple of years of this, I became a very mouthy kid frequently talking back to teachers. (Oddly enough, I rarely got in trouble for it.) Point being, they had one view of what a kid should be doing, and the buckets into which kids should fall. They also had no desire to deal with different learning styes. I would have absolutely loved to take advanced statistics, advanced writing or computer science in high school instead of wasting time trying to help the school district boost its standardized testing scores.

One of these teachers really had it out for me (a video production teacher). She told me I would be in prison by 20 because I had no respect for her. Add to that, my counselor convinced me my GPA was shit (3.6) and would be lucky to get into a Cal State (is that a bad thing?). My parents and I had enough. I withdrew and took the rest of my courses via mail and graduated a year early and in the meantime took community college classes. And guess what? I learned to love math. That happens when the instructor actually understands what they are teaching. This caused some problems with the UC system, but we were able to convince them that community college basically replaced my senior year.

And that video teacher? I eventually ran into her again, as she was advertising some high school media program at the community college. She said "What a surprise to see you here!" She had earlier tried to convince me that ITT Tech, Devry, etc. was more my style. I looked her straight in the eyes and said "Go fck yourself, Nancy." It felt so cathartic telling her off. That Fall I started as a Freshman at UCLA.

Based on my experience, I am approving of parents choosing to do one of the following: 1) putting their kids in private school as a form a daycare. Private schools have the funds to offer tons of extracurriculars such as makerspaces for students to play around in. That's important to me. Public schools do not have the resources to do this. And then get a tutor for the important subjects. Travel. Do educational trips. Don't assume your children are learning anything in the classroom. 2) teach your kids that HS is a joke, and just get through it and don't let any of the teachers put you down. Work hard and do the best you can. If it's not working, get out. 3) Do some sort of personalized program (sometimes referred to as "continuation school" where you attend class or tutoring as needed, and the rest of the time is enrichment. Continuation school was always said to be the "troublemakers." In my opinion, it's those that refuse to accept the status quo, and perhaps do have some other issues that the comprehensive high school does not want to deal with, because God forbid these students actually act human. 4) test out, just know that some university systems will then require you to transfer instead of start as a Freshman.

University is totally different. I am proud of my public university education. I could not have asked for any more. I ended up going through to my Ph.D.

Now, as a university instructor, I try my best to not judge students and understand that their performance is but a snapshot of what they accomplished in a short period of time. Who am I to stop students from following their dreams? Who am I to make a judgment of their professional worth? I wish others would think the same way.

> Abolishing high school could mean many things.

Then why not find a different word which does not literally mean "To do away with; put an end to; annul. To destroy completely."

I hate it when a good idea gets derailed by a moronic slogan.

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