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Comment by psbp | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how early my 2-month-old niece will be able to achieve a high school education. Not that the resources weren't always available, but it's just so accessible now through efforts like Khan (mostly Khan). We could easily have kids work their way through a high school curriculum in half the time, or maybe give them more time for socialization and interesting projects during the traditional school day.

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I really want this to be a reality. When a kid learns how to find out information themselves and be a self-guided learner, I can easily see an average school day taking only a few hours, not 7 or 8. That leaves more time for extra curriculars, a job/internship, or even learning more about topics that interest the student. What I remember most from public school is how much time I wasted, and how little I actually learned. (I am from the US, if that helps).

I'm not trying to derail the comment thread here, so if you want to talk more about this, my email address is in my profile, but...

This is basically what my experience was like as a home-schooled student. A lot of self-guided learning, school days significantly less than 7 or 8 hours, and lots of extra-curricular activities.

This was the most infuriating thing for me with my daughter. She was tested in kindergarten to read at a 3rd grade level. She also was beginning to learn multiplication, fractions, etc.

I went to her school and asked her about special programs for her, potentially skipping grades, etc. Their response was essentially that in a couple years time the other kids would catch up. Well, of course the other kids will catch up, you're going to tie a big anchor to my daughter that she has to drag through a bunch of boring curriculum she already knows.

I was in the same boat as your daughter, and the only reason I was able to skip grades is because my elementary school was awful (so I looked smarter), and my mother is excellent at dealing with bureaucracy. I know very bright people who would have very easily been able to skip grades; much of the material students learn is repeated about 3 times over the course of 12 years.

Here in Israel, we have a growing phenomenon of high school students studying for a B.Sc degree, especially in CS, during their last few years of high-school. Not only do they save a couple of years of their career trajectory, they also get a shot at significantly better placement during their army service. Israel's a small place, so most places have a pretty good university one or two bus rides away.

One could argue that high school is a bit unnecessary, and a good move would be to simply skip it.

You can kind of achieve this in the U.S., at least in my school district, through AP classes or taking equivalent classes at the local junior college to satisfy high school credits. The structure of the school day was still exactly the same, but it allowed you to knock out two years of undergrad in high school.

I've never heard of a anyone completing 2 years of undergrad in high school. Maybe a course or two in the 2nd year level, but certainly not the entire curriculum.

I do have a friend from Israel who got his Bachelor's degree at 18 at the same time he finished high school. I can't see that happening in the U.S. system.

The US has a few "early acceptance" colleges like Bard College (https://simons-rock.edu/) where you can get a HS equivalency and Bachelors whenever you're deemed ready. I had a friend who went to Simons Rock after his Freshman Year of HS - he got his BA right before his 20th birthday.

I was officially a junior after my first quarter (three quarters to the school year) of undergrad. I stayed much later than that, but that's because I took additional classes, not because I needed the time to earn credits.

The first two years of undergrad at UC, by design, are for the general education requirements. You're not even supposed to take classes in your major until year 3. It shouldn't be hard to skip much of that.

I started at UCLA with around 96 (quarter) credits from a mix of college-level courses taken at the local junior college and AP classes. It was (very marginally) helpful to start out as a "junior" on paper, because I got a slight amount of priority when registering for classes.

I didn't know at the time that they kick you out after a certain number of credits (around 240?), and this actually affected my choice of double major. I took a watered-down "linguistics and computer science" BA as my double instead of the full "linguistics" BA, partly because the unit cap was bearing down on me.

Edit: it was "watered-down" because it required a ton of CS classes that I had already taken.

Further, finishing most of the physical sciences requirements in high school meant that I wasn't exposed to some awesome professors in college. I imagine that some students who might have a deep interest in chemistry but a disinterested high school teacher never bother to explore the subject in college if they pass the Chem AP test.

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