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Comment by pomian | Hacker News Reader

Brilliant comment. We had a principal in our little community school who had exactly that attitude. He encouraged 'playing", and was often criticized for his efforts, by parents who didn't understand. Overall, however, the kids from that school were all eager learners, curious as to the world around them, socially very well integrated, and easily adapted to the rigors in high school and later. Play, is under valued.

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The parents have every reason for concern, not because there's something wrong with the principal but because there's something wrong with the society their children are entering.

The parents realize that their children will be screwed if they don't get into a good college, and the poorer parents need scholarships too! The principal's philosophical musings won't pay the bills.

My parents drove me to burnout, dropping out of college, and becoming an anxious traumatized wreck, by only providing support in response to achievements, and destroying my self-worth whenever I strayed from their chosen path of maximizing academic accomplishments to get into the most prestigious and stressful college possible. I don't plan to have kids, because I'm not doing well enough to provide an environment of psychological safety where they learn that they have worth as individuals and not just for their achievements, and I cannot give them a world where they will be safe from homelessness and starvation even if they do not find a high-paying college degree.

Kids don't need a college degree to avoid homelessness or starvation. They do need valuable skills, but that could be HVAC, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, any number of things that don't take anything more than some community/vocational college or just working your way up from entry-level to get into.

People who are homeless or starving are mainly mentally ill, or simply have no skills to offer any employer and no desire to do any better.

yeah the AI is coming for your highfalutin desk job, but the carpenters will be making decent money for a while yet.

basic woodworking skills are things that they can start picking up in HS shop classes; I spent summers working in a furniture factory framing chairs as a kid.

got a neighbour who does asphalt paving -- just driveways. Dude is booked solid through the Fall and into December, and does alright. Not Palo Alto FAANG money but he's got a nice truck and a fishing boat and a nice garden that we bonded over / share tips about. point is: plenty of options for doing alright; the rest of the world ain't SF or NYC

Yeah I know a guy who started as an entry-level drywaller in high school (truly one of the shittiest jobs in construction) and he now owns one of the larger drywall contractors in the area, he makes way more money than I do in software. Has more hassles than I do though, drywall company employees tend to come with a lot of headaches.

Yeah everyone can just be a business owner. That'll work out just great.

I think you're making a connection between "if you're focusing on open-ended stuff at school you aren't learning X, Y, Z." I can empathize and to an extent I agree that this is a concern with "fitting into the real world."

As someone who never ever even remotely had the grades to get into an engineering program and has spent his entire career as a robotics engineer, experiencing a lot of terrible engineers with advanced degrees (among a ton of incredibly brilliant ones!), I'm just not sold on it being that big a deal. I think the larger harm is a parent applying that kind of pressure.

All that being said, everything in moderation. I don't think it means, "hey let your kid do whatever." But it also doesn't mean, "force your child to study the violin and load them up with an entire childhood of structured programs until they hate you."

I'm not sure that's true. Young kids need to play as part of their education. It seems reasonable to me that play makes you better trained to achieve those things you describe as important.

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