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Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

There isn't a week when I don't have a day where I feel like a total monster at 7:15am trying like crazy to motivate my frustrated and anxious teenager off to high school and asking her about her homework and the like...

And then promptly waltz upstairs with my coffee, sit in front my computer, read the news and (mostly) happily write program on computers all day, while playing with my border collies and walking through my hobby vineyard in my spare time.

School sucked for me, and I kinda... turned out despite it... but I somehow have to get my kids through it.

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Naive question here: I've wondered about this. Non-parent here (so far), so I'm about to arrogantly over-simplify a lot of things...

The science around teenagers needing more sleep, and doing better in life/school/everything if they start their day later, seems well-established at this point.

Additionally, there's plenty of known-better ways to learn beyond the rote-memorization-and-standardized-test system that's still de rigueur.

Are there no schools out there that put these things together and make an attempt at something better, especially for high-performing kids? What if school started at (say) 10-ish, and it gradually became more and more self-directed as kids headed towards graduation? What if it also mixed in all the latest cutting-edge research about how kids learn math/science/languages/etc? What if it also got creative with the curriculum and mixed in all the topics that people always say should be in schools, like "how to do your taxes" and whatnot?

I remember getting to college and being wildly unprepared for everything. School before then was devastatingly boring and fostered very little independence. Then college came along, and it was both brutally difficult and had almost no guardrails of any kind.

It was quite a transition, and it makes me wonder why there aren't more varieties/experiments around radically different approaches to schooling. At minimum, for high-performing kids, you'd think the modern world would have something.

>I remember getting to college and being wildly unprepared for everything.

You answered your own question here. Most “high performing” kids will lose interest in one of the foundational branches of math and will decide instead to read fantasy or build a potato cannon.

Without the structure stressing the stuff that is truly important despite it not seeming like it at the time, the vast majority will land in college needing to take remedial high school courses in math and science.

I think the main difficulty for middle and high schoolers is adapting to a class/learning schedule which is a slow drip of multiple subjects all at the same time.

I know that my own children don't master subjects that way and it also doesn't mirror adult work.

The high performing kids need less help.

As to the why things are the way they are, people don't wanna do better because it's inconvenient.

Doesn't that depend on what school is for? If the importance of school is overwhelmingly the subject matter or the grades, then I'd agree that high-performing children need less help. To the extent that children need something else from school, high-performing children might need more help than average-performing children. Maybe the average-performing children are more dependent on effective study techniques, while the high-performing children can perform at the expected level with little study. If the subject matter turns out later to be useless, at least the average-performing children have picked up the study techniques they need to learn something useful, but the formerly high-performing children might then face a bigger challenge. Even if school subject matter is useful, that doesn't help those who already know it; they aren't gaining knowledge or productive habits.

Sure, in the ideal world school would be a productive experience for everyone.

In the current US system, it's hard to justify focusing additional resources on students that are already performing well.

Yes, there are alternative schools out there. They are increasingly rare though. I was lucky enough to end up at one and it was fantastic.

As another commenter noted, it's the privileged kids who get opportunities like that. Which is a real shame because it's an environment that lifts those who need more flexibility and personal support.

Part of the function of a school is to free parents time so they are able to go to work. Even high school essentially is in large parts teenage daycare. This function gets diminished when they start later in the day - meaning economically, you diminish the potential output of your population.

Schools that are up to date on this and follow advice exist, but are expensive and rare - which also attract parents who do not need to sit at a desk or stand in front of a CNC machine at 8:30am. Gordonstoun/Schloss Salem comes to mind.

> I remember getting to college and being wildly unprepared for everything. School before then was devastatingly boring and fostered very little independence.

College wise, what I recall was a lot of freshmen who just couldn't be assed to wake up for class or do homework without parents on their case. Especially with the dorm basically being a 24/7 LAN party, and I recall one dude who just watched like, every DVD ever. The coursework itself in freshman year was comparatively breezey.

For school before then, I suppose it depends on your definition of boring and independence. IEPs for gifted kids can put you into advanced classes of all kinds. It's still very much on rails, so I'd liken the independence to a choose your own adventure book. And, sure you can do AP English instead of normal english but you have to read like, Bronte and Hurston, so the boring is only far off.

There's a big push in this area at the moment. I've just recently started a Head of Engineering role where I'm developing supporting tech for school aged children. In our case the programs are currently more on the supplementary side of things rather than replacing core curriculum.

I don't have anything to do with it (yet?) but our sister institution is Alpha School - https://alpha.school

They're trying to change schooling to be more efficient, engaging, and self directed.

My understanding is they're far from alone, and there's a lot of interest in overhauling traditional schooling at the moment.

I mean, there's been interest in overhauling traditional schooling since forever. However, a significant up-tick in (temporary?) home-schooling during the pandemic really got parents thinking about education methodologies.

OP's experience has far less to do with school, and significantly more to do with parenting a teenager.

I feel totally the same! Even though I don't have particularly bad experiences from school I do really prefer my current stage of life, where I work and learn about things that I'm really interested in.

A week training course can get super tedious even on an interesting topic. When the kids are bored at school I get it. Not sure what the solution is, life is geared up this way.

Recess helps. But most people would rather go home an hour sooner instead of spending an hour in the middle of the day at work futzing around.

Passing off your anxieties to your kid sounds like a great plan. Kinda glad now my parents left me to my own devices regarding school after like, 6th grade.

Except legally you can’t simply not take tour kids to school. Doing it in a “non anxious” way is a challenge

I most areas you can homeschool, which is whatever you and your kid want as long as they pass some tests and file some paperwork.

Which gives you way more ability to pass the anxieties. Cause then OP would be doing the teaching and choosing curriculum instead of coding. OP would also do motivating and asking questions still, much more of that actually.

In Europe you mostly can’t homeschool.

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

Apart from a few countries you can.

Hm the data for Greenland is wrong.

Like, apart from the whole Europe.

Europe isn't a monolith. Have you read through the notes for countries with more restrictive regulations, particularly the yellow and blue labels? With reasonable-enough provisions to ensure equivalency to the public school system, it seems like most countries permit homeschooling.

Germany and Sweden are not "the whole Europe"

> School sucked for me, and I kinda... turned out despite it... but I somehow have to get my kids through it.

Why?

We live in a society. I don't get to define the world my children live in. They will have to work and survive in the same world you and I do, with all its broken processes and expectations. It's complicated and full of contradictions.

When she was at home during COVID, her mental health suffered greatly, and remote learning simply did not work for her. Daily structure is important, and so is social interaction. And we cannot provide that for her at home.

My (teen) daughter I referred to is in a specialist arts high school program on a media&visual arts track. It's unique for our whole province, and required an audition (portfolio in her case) to get into. But she does have to maintain a reasonable report card in other subjects to stay in that program or risk getting dumped out into the local 'regular' high school. By and large she's motivated by that, but it is anxiety inducing.

The 7:15am departure time reflects this situation. She has to take a (school board provided) cab all the way across the city for 8:40am bell time. It's a garbage start time for teens, but I don't make the decisions.

She is a very bright and talented artist. Her post-high school situation will be a financial struggle, I'm sure, but likely also quite rewarding and creative. Just need to get there.

Yes, why? My thought exactly.

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