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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

This is some real inspiration porn. The kid sounds amazing, and it's tragic that he died so young. I have family that practices unschooling, and in their case, that means fundamentalist indoctrination, no math, no history, near illiteracy, no saleable skills or motivation to get a job or do anything independently. And I just know that they're going to send this to my mom as evidence that they're doing the right thing.

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Like the "small schools" movement, it turns out that all systems are fundamentally affected by the quality of their participants. There are some colleges that feel more like "un-schools", and go-getters who attend these can go really far, while ordinary students flounder and founder.

For the truly remarkable (and the subject here seems to fit that), sticking them in any factory-like school setting is a waste. Un-schooling the majority of children would be an interesting social experiment that I'd rather see in a different country first.

The brightest candles burn out the fastest, wasn't that they saying, roughly?

Poor kid, the family are basically gimping his start in life by a decade... it's outright abuse

What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

At least in Oregon this is already a thing

https://www.oregon.gov/ode/learning-options/HomeSchool/Pages...

Except that even what you're testing them on may not be really the most useful or applicable stuff. Any such testing would need to take into account what they actually have been doing and learning. Since the point of much learning is to be able to do, looking at accomplishment is super important. And a productive evaluation of people like the subject here might be challenging to system educators with a vested interest in our factory schooling.

The normal requirements we expect in an industrialized society are the basics of reading and writing, and some math. Unschooling sure has its benefits, but the child will have to navigate an adult world where that is table stakes. We don’t want to consign students to a life of poverty because of a lack of literacy. https://archive.ph/1xaHW

Better have some science and civics too.

I think the challenge is less about the mechanics (reading, writing) and more about the content expressed via these, as there has to be some element of common content as well.

At least in NYS, not only are the test criteria released, but there are actually previous years’ tests published for the purposes of practicing. https://www.nysedregents.org/elementary-intermediate.html

Their criteria is pretty basic “you need to be able to comprehend a 800-word news article”, and we are often failing to meet those standards with alternative education (which isn’t even just homeschooling, parochial systems have issues here too.)

At the end of the day, a service worker needs to be able to read the prices being wrung up on the cash register, and a factory worker should be able to read an instruction manual and safety rules. Not meeting those basic standards basically relegates you to a very small amount of jobs.

We don’t even universally require our schools to do standardized testing, so good luck getting traction.

Pennsylvania does this in 3rd, 5th, and 8th grades.

Taking standardized tests in my youth was always a nice break - massively easier than the actual schoolwork I was doing.

They just got rid of some of these tests in CA public schools…

AFAICT, the closest thing to this that actually happened was adopting a shorter version of certain tests starting this past Spring.

I've heard there's evidence that delaying literacy and numeracy has meaningful and potentially desirable effects on brain development. If a child and parents want to test that out, why not allow them to do so?

Children cannot provide informed consent, for one

Yes if you mean starting to teach them read and write at 7 instead of at 5.

No if you mean cutting away majority of curriculum and teaching the rest by having kid doing sheets alone on kitchen table until isolated bored kid slows or gives up.

Yeah, the former.

I believe @xani_ is saying "poor kid" about the child(ren) in your family, not about the child in the article.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that schooling has essentially zero impact on adult outcomes until around middle/high school.

Most public schools are clearly more abusive than simply not subjecting your children to the standard industrial schooling regimen.

The US school system seems different than mine, and although we have issues, if only for the socialization, being in school is better than not.

Especially, what my father explained to me (he directed projects and extracurricular 'homework help' (+ free food) for kids in the poor neighborhood of my city at the time) was that the most important for success in school was parental implication, and that if you compared kids in 'regular' school with present and interested parents (often children of teachers, or children with one stay at home parent and few siblings) to kids in 'special school' (Montessori at the time i think), there was no practical difference on their success later. He told us his job was to try his best to have his street educators bridge the gap between parents and school, and if it wasn't possible, to offer a more collective and affirmative way of learning/doing in his extracurricular center.

(weird translation, sorry if it isn't understandable, there is a lot of specific vocabulary i tried to simplify then translate).

It was only his impression, but I've worked with children from my 14th birthday to my 25th, and my personal experience (i taught science through experiment with an association both at public schools and at summer camps) tends to confirm that what's really matter in engagement from the parents.

“ Most public schools are clearly more abusive than simply not subjecting your children to the standard industrial schooling regimen.”

This has not been my experience at all.

It was mine. Do we cancel each other out?

I’ve found I don’t typically use my experience specifically on school because it just can’t have been the norm.

The experience of schooling varies so incredibly much depending on where you lived and when you attended that all of these conversations are kind of... pointless to have with anonymous people (probably) far away.

Not where you lived, but what you lived, i.e. what class status you were.

Both, but yes - we agree generally.

Tell that to the ones who never learn to read. I know a few, in rural Utah, no less.

A life of working for the man?

Abuse by whom? His disabled parents?

Yes. And those who promote their behavior.

People with disabilities are capable of doing wrong, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

I feel like abuse is a stretch of a word. His parents's hands were tied and he stepped up. If you asked him, he was running the family and doing it well. His success in strife should be celebrated even if it wasn't an ideal growing environment.

> that means fundamentalist indoctrination, no math, no history, near illiteracy,

it looks like it was the same here. He essentially practiced the life of a middle age peasant. I guess many had their farm going by the age of 12 ... and probably didn't have some weird capitalistic, and nationalist inspiration porn ideologist in the background (because writing a pseudonymous book and then dying to young sounds like that... also the wondrous mentors...)

see for example: https://greatbasingreen.com/about-us-2/ (who is we? - would anyone write like that about themselves with those achievements ) https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Tell-Cant-Ambitious-Homeschooler...

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