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Comment by flappyeagle | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that this point of view ignores reality: motivated parents will just have their children learn calculus in outside classes.

The reality is for these students, "standard" middle and high school math is mind-numbingly boring.

The best outcome would be that the best schools and teachers use the surplus time to teach stuff that's off-curriculum like logic, discrete math, stats, programming, etc.

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Maybe true but that won't get them a calculus credit on their transcript.

> The reality is for these students, "standard" middle and high school math is mind-numbingly boring. >The best outcome would be that the best schools and teachers use the surplus time to teach stuff that's off-curriculum like logic, discrete math, stats, programming, etc.

This is also true I was one of these students. My middle school did almost exactly this. They had a per algebra class that explored all sorts of random topics. We did things like clock math, and observed how these other mathematical systems did or did not observe things like the associative property. It was amazing because it made math more than just doing calculations. This class is still one of my fondest educational memories.

As far as I can tell you don't need an official transcript from an accredited school to get into college. We are homeschooling our kids and what I've read is that homeschoolers write their own transcript, the kids themselves write it, and they describe what they've accomplished and learned during their schooling career and admission depts in colleges tend to favor these kids over traditionally schooled kids.

I'm guessing that a traditionally schooled kid could just do the same. Especially since there's so much that they are probably learning outside of school. It would be a shame to ignore all of those skills and knowledge just because they weren't taught during the hours of 8 and 3, M-F.

I'd be interested to learn more about this. Where can I find data on how admissions depts view homeschooled kids versus other kids?

I’m just now starting to really look into this since our eldest is now twelve years old. We do unschooling if our home, which is a form of self-directed education, so my focus has been on those experiences.

Here’s an research paper about Grown Unschoolers experiences with higher education, page 38 discusses admissions: https://www.othereducation.org/index.php/OE/article/view/105...

And here’s a reddit thread about homeschoolers getting into Purdue (which is the school I went to): https://www.reddit.com/r/Purdue/comments/bszc3i/have_any_hom...

I’m assuming that each school is going to have their own criteria.

AFAIK, accredited online courses get credit on the high school transcript. Take a look at options: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/where-should-I-take-...

> This is also true I was one of these students. My middle school did almost exactly this. They had a per algebra class that explored all sorts of random topics.

What textbook / textbooks did your class use for this?

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