[HN Gopher] Smart kids should skip high school (2015)
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Smart kids should skip high school (2015)
Author : exolymph
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-09-13 21:10 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sonyaellenmann.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sonyaellenmann.com)
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| I knew a few kids who went to college very early. To say that it
| messed up their life is an understatement. Schools should figure
| out how to teach smart kids useful stuff while they get to learn
| how to be social with kids their own age.
| eynsham wrote:
| Lots of people start doing olympiads (often there are
| relatively big correspondence programmes and similar to train
| people before selecting teams for the international ones). I
| was never intelligent enough to do well in them, alas.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This woman dropped out of high school and illegally became an
| underage prostitute because she was struggling with depression. I
| don't mean to minimize her experience or suggest there is
| anything intrinsically wrong with that, but I don't think you can
| just project whatever terrible school experiences led her to that
| and think everyone has that bad of an experience in high school.
|
| This reminds me a bit of Scott Alexander's extreme bias against
| school, due to all of the extreme bullying he faced.
|
| It might make more sense to say kids who are having a truly awful
| experience in high school should skip high school, rather than
| just "smart kids should skip high school." I think I was a pretty
| smart person, perfect SAT score even, and I certainly could have
| learned everything I learned in high school must faster with less
| wasted time if I studied on my own, but I don't think the
| experience was worthless. It's the last time I had real, truly
| close friends. It was the last time I competed hard in real
| sports leagues. Theoretically, I could have tried to find other
| ways to do those things, but there's some benefit to just being
| around the same people all the time and doing things together if
| you don't hate each other and make each other's lives awful.
|
| I don't know what else I would have done. I may have been
| academically ready for college a lot earlier, but I wasn't
| socially ready. I wasn't socially ready even at 18 and probably
| should have waited even longer. You can't just actually go to
| work even if you're able to because of child labor laws.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I skipped 5th grade and I can't for the life of me really
| pinpoint what possible negative impact it has had on my life.
| And, even if you suggest that there really wasn't any positive,
| either, just as a sheer function of entering the labor force one
| year earlier, the lifetime income impact is quite significant. I
| certainly don't want to dismiss that I had one less year of fun
| elementary school times with friends, but it's fairly clear to me
| that the way we've organized schooling isn't really rooted in
| anything that really promotes the success of an individual, but
| more what is socially most efficient/easiest.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| I generally think advice from .001% fringe elites is less than
| useless, it's actively harmful. People like you are completely
| detached from reality and most of you have nothing but active
| disdain for people of lesser intelligence like me - hell, you
| probably would support euthanizing people with IQs like mine.
| thegypsyking wrote:
| Congrats, you're the cringiest person on the entire website.
| You should really go to a psychiatrist or something based on
| your post history.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| You can't attack another user like this, no matter how bad
| their posts are or you feel they are. Posting like this is a
| bannable offence on HN.
|
| I'm not going to ban you because we haven't warned you
| before, but please read
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules from now on.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| Friend, I remember your posts from the past several months. I
| honestly think you need to go through some therapy. You have
| been through a lot of bad experiences because of your parents
| and because of unrealistic expectations put on you. It's not
| your fault.
|
| But being angry like this is really toxic for yourself. Life
| should be happier than this for you. Please find a way to talk
| to a therapist because you need to release your anger, get past
| your trauma, and find happiness.
| rejectedandsad wrote:
| My parents don't understand why I believe this actually,
| they're pretty smart and went to selective institutions. I,
| on the other hand, am an example of generational decline with
| nothing to live for because people like GP think state
| schoolers that didn't skip multiple grades are subhuman.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There's no reason to think GP believes that, or that the
| typical person "like GP" thinks that.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| You need to learn to be happy being who you are, not who
| you "should" be. If your parents are toxic, then take a
| break from them. Surround yourself with people that make
| you happy and forget about your past. You should really see
| a therapist because this anger and resentment is not the
| way to live your life. You're still young and you can have
| an incredibly happy life. Please consider it strongly.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for repeatedly abusing HN. Attacking
| other users like this is totally not cool.
|
| We can all empathize with the difficult experiences you've been
| through, but translating that into hundreds of off-topic HN
| comments is not a good use of energy. You've been doing this
| for a long time, with multiple accounts, and we've asked you to
| stop many times. Many other HN users have had difficult
| experiences too, and they're not behaving this way. It's time
| to stop doing this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28517375.
| [deleted]
| sulam wrote:
| I realize this advice may be appropriate for some people, but
| speaking personally as a parent who is both lucky enough and
| financially fortunate enough to send both of my girls to a
| private school, I think it's misguided for them. The school they
| go through is K-12, diverse, and the high school portion of it is
| pretty amazing. I'm personal friends with several of the teachers
| and I can say with all honesty that the classes they teach are
| easily the equal of the most interesting college courses I took
| at a very well regarded university. Obviously I haven't sampled
| every single class, and I'm sure there are some duds, but I've
| sampled enough to feel like I have a pretty good feel for it. It
| would be a huge mistake for my kids to forego the opportunity to
| learn more about the world with those teachers.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| What would happen if that kind of education was available to
| everyone?
|
| What would happen if world-lead expert personal tuition was
| available to everyone? (Obviously impractical, but let's
| pretend, as a thought experiment.)
|
| To what extent are we standing our own feet as a species by
| prioritising hierarchy and economic discrimination over free
| access to the best possible education for everyone?
|
| Especially for those who want it and can benefit from it?
| memco wrote:
| > the classes they teach are easily the equal of the most
| interesting college courses I took at a very well regarded
| university
|
| If they can handle this, then they could take college level
| classes and get high school credit and college credit at the
| same time.
|
| I went to an alternative high school that met on a community
| college campus and had 50% of the requirements for HS
| graduation for junior and senior year served by taking college
| courses. I was only able to get about half a year of college
| credit this way, but I was able to get half a year head start
| on college. In hindsight, I would have liked to start that
| process a year earlier and skipped as much HS as I could. I
| don't think that path is for everyone, but if you're capable
| and motivated I recommend exploring alternative pathways for
| reducing the traditional HS experience in favor of more
| profitable uses of time & talent.
| subsubzero wrote:
| My Wife left high school after sophomore year, she didn't like
| the bullying etc. and got into "middle college" a program with
| college level classes at the local community college taught by
| professors. She got into NYU and a few others once she graduated
| so there is a path outside of high school for some. I do feel
| like there is a valuable lesson to be learned from high school
| besides education and that is socialization. Going straight to
| college after middle school seems unrealistic for 99% of folks
| anyway so what will be filled with that 4 years before college
| starts?
| Avicebron wrote:
| My friend did this in hs (well, he "dropped out sophomore year")
| to go to college, he got his degree in math and is doing quite
| well. But I will say there is something to be said for having a
| traditional social experience of hs which i thoroughly enjoyed
| munificent wrote:
| I'm naturally suspicious of anyone's "shoulds" about education
| unless they base them on research in sociology, psychology,
| and/or pedagogy. Otherwise, they are usually based on the
| person's own personal history and our interpretation of our
| history is always suspect and biased.
|
| (The author's disclaimer means my point doesn't apply to the
| linked article.)
|
| It may be the case that the author's high school experience
| wasn't worth the time, but that's a _retroactive observation._ It
| 's probably true that for some people high school is a net good
| and for some it isn't. But unless you have an effective way to
| distinguish one from the other _before_ they go to high school,
| it 's hard to draw actionable advice from that fact.
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| Fun way to make this argument is to use College/University
| instead of highschool and then, if people more or less agree on
| that, also suggest Highschool. You can keep moving down the
| stack. At some point, people start to be concerned about
| socialization, which is a very fair concern. I did not learn
| anything in highschool (or college) but I made friends that I
| have to this day and learned how to be a human in a world of
| other humans. Hard to untangle things after the fact but I went
| straight into the working world after highschool and I am really,
| really glad that I ended up eventually going to college solely
| because of the people I met there and the ways they challenged me
| to grow and become a better person.
|
| edit: there are obviously ways to get this socialization without
| being in a traditional, horrible, highschool environment. I do
| not know if I would homeschool my kids or not!
| bernulli wrote:
| It's worth to emphasize your edit: the alternative to high-
| school is not restricted to solitary confinement.
| thegypsyking wrote:
| I'm wondering if there is a way to create some sort of less
| structured alternative to the government education system. I
| think socializing with people of different classes, beliefs and
| abilities is necessary, and I would probably not send my kind
| to some kind of system where he would only meet other high IQ
| peers, but the gov education is >95% wasted time. Perhaps a
| combination of homeschooling + mandatory sports team
| participation + some artsy stuff?
| antasvara wrote:
| There's pros and cons to any style of teaching, but the
| Montessori method has some of what you're looking for.
| Specifically, it allows students to move as fast or slow as
| they want in any particular subject area.
|
| I went to a Montessori school for a year in middle school,
| and I remember being in a class with 5th graders doing math
| at the 9th grade level. I also remember a few kids in 5th
| grade doing math at a 4th grade level. The key was that the
| teachers could teach their subject at all of those levels.
|
| I feel like some of this could be implemented in a less
| structured educational system. Being able to move at varying
| different paces while still socializing with peers of the
| same age is a good combination. I would add a little more
| structure than Montessori schools though, to make sure that
| students are moving at least at a baseline pace. It also
| takes some scheduling work to make sure that teachers aren't
| teaching an hour lesson to one student at a time.
| thegypsyking wrote:
| Interesting, I'm from Eastern Europe so never heard about
| this system. Sounds like a good alternative to public
| schools or boarding schools for sure.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > I did not learn anything in highschool (or college)
|
| Is this really the case or do you just not remember specific
| things you learned or even abstract concepts around learning
| itself that are hard to quantify?
| ElFitz wrote:
| Not the parent, but I really couldn't say.
|
| I personally spent most high school classes either sleeping
| or playing on my laptop, and often literally learning about
| what we had been seeing in class when reading the exam's
| title. Often doing things like completing the math exams
| based on recollections from middle school. And yet got by,
| year after year, as well as anyone else.
|
| I then spent over a decade having a hard time figuring out
| how to actually take and keep any kind of notes, study and
| how to learn things that didn't just "come to me" on their
| own.
|
| Quite a weird experience.
|
| Looking back, I can only wish it had been different. But
| that's pointless.
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| I don't know, how would I?
| SECProto wrote:
| If you don't know whether you learned anything, you
| shouldn't state definitively "I did not learn anything in
| highschool (or college)"
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Do you know math? Did you rediscover it, learn it from
| materials or individuals outside of school, or learn it in
| school?
|
| Repeat that exercise with other areas of knowledge.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Smart Kids Should Skip High School_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509374 - April 2016 (65
| comments)
| exolymph wrote:
| Ha, I didn't even remember, I thought this was first time
| round!
| cosmotic wrote:
| At the very least, please be aware of AP classes that you can get
| college credit for instead of having to essentially retake the
| same courses later.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| >> enduring the sociocultural hell of high school
|
| It's an important part of life and becoming an adult in so many
| ways and skipping it deprives the child of the opportunity for
| the good and bad experiences that humans need to experience to
| become balanced adults.
|
| Life has bad bits for everyone. Chopping out high school
| preemptively is not only not a solution but is actively
| detrimental.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Nothing about high school is relevant to the real world. At no
| other point in your life are you in forced proximity with
| random people within your age cohort, who have no
| responsibilities outside of school work and maximizing their
| social status. This is an unnatural environment and nothing
| about it is necessary to becoming a functioning adult. The
| benefits that high school does bring to social development is
| not exclusive to high school. But it brings so many detrimental
| experiences as to be a net negative in many cases.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I'd be interested in what you describe as detrimental
| experiences and why they potentially weren't net positive in
| ways that you might not immediately recognize
| qsort wrote:
| Anything can 'potentially be net positive in ways you might
| not immediately recognize'. There is literally no event
| that description does not apply to.
|
| In many cases the 'negative experiences' are daily abuse.
|
| I myself had a horrible and painful time in high school,
| but listening to people of various backgrounds I concluded
| it's pretty much hit or miss. I can't generalize from my
| negative experience, but you can't generalize from your
| positive one either.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Getting slammed into lockers, having people steal your
| notebooks, having half your friends spontaneously turn on
| you...
|
| I'm reading into your comment a little bit and projecting
| my own thoughts of "these things might have been character-
| building." That might be true, but for some they could also
| end up causing PTSD/similar things, difficultly trusting
| people, severe low-self-confidence, etc.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Specifically the forced proximity with people who may bully
| you, or encourage damaging or anti-social behavior, as well
| as the environment where social status, and the avenues
| available to gain it as a high school student, is the end-
| all of your existence.
|
| How many bad habits are learned in high school, from catty
| behavior, to acting out for attention, to being physically
| dominant, to spending money on flashy gear, to gain status?
| How many environments outside of high school do these
| behaviors result in meaningful, lasting status gains? Not
| many, at least none that can be considered healthy
| environments. If the goal of high school is to prepare kids
| for adulthood, they don't do a good job of it.
|
| Granted, not every school is like this and not everyone has
| these experiences. But putting teens in a social pressure-
| cooker among their age cohort will result in some very
| unnatural local optimums for behavior.
| Avicebron wrote:
| While I am not and won't dismiss your personal
| experiences with high school, but I think there is value
| in that pressure cooker environment, even if unpleasant.
| College and the workforce/academia is rife with similar
| bad habits that I can see myself not being prepared for
| if I hadn't had a dose of the petty viciousness (albeit
| with somewhat less consequence in the long term). It's
| one thing to be emotionally abused by some catty behavior
| in a setting that is less likely to screw your life over
| or at least gives you a chance of redemption post hs.
| Than to find out that even worse cattiness exists within
| your PhD program and now you're royally screwed over with
| it becoming harder and harder to get a fresh start.
| dleslie wrote:
| > who have no responsibilities outside of school work and
| maximizing their social status.
|
| I suppose this might be true in middle-class, suburban areas;
| but where I grew up, and I imagine in similar places
| elsewhere, there were plenty of working teenagers who held
| responsibility for their family's well-being. They worked in
| the family corner store/restaurant/shop/farm during the
| weekends and evenings. Others provided primary care for
| family members; their younger siblings or infirm adults.
| majormajor wrote:
| Let's certainly not make it more like the internet, where you
| can set things up so you only see those who agree with you
| already and disdain everyone else without risk of
| confrontation.
| antasvara wrote:
| >Nothing about high school is relevant to the real world.
|
| I wouldn't say "nothing." Going to school 5 days a week
| mimics a workweek, even if the timing is off. Being with
| random people of your age group in close proximity is a
| little extreme, but it has some similarities to working in an
| office with a random assortment of personalities. Having
| tasks assigned to you that you then have to complete isn't
| exactly how workplaces function, but having a baseline
| ability to complete work that isn't your favorite is a
| valuable skill.
|
| Now, all of these things are taken to the extreme in high
| school and that should be adjusted. However, saying that none
| of high school is relevant is a stretch.
| rossnordby wrote:
| Removing high school doesn't necessarily deprive a child of
| formative experiences, it just changes them.
|
| It's possible for the change to be bad (e.g. parents in a cult
| pulling their kids out of school to move to The Compound), but
| I'd wager that if you took a kid who felt like high school was
| a terrible experience and gave them other constructive options
| and the resources to pursue them, it'd almost always be a net
| win.
|
| The value of the 'high school experience' is contextual, not
| everyone will experience the same balance of good and bad. For
| some people, the bad is so overwhelming that it goes beyond the
| point of constructive and well into destructive. Those
| situations aren't hard to detect.
| afiori wrote:
| people have many different experiences of school,
|
| a nice discussion on the topic can be found here
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-cult-o...
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Americans who go to public schools get enough of the "bad bits"
| in grade through middle school to prepare us for life.
|
| I used to get knots in my stomach on the first day of school. I
| just knew there would be an after school fight, and I would be
| involved even though I tried to remain invisible.
|
| I should have gone to a community college instead of high
| school, but didn't even know it was an option at the time.
|
| (I wasen't a big kid, but taught by my Irish father to never
| back down from a male on male confrontations. That might
| explain some of my problems with bullies? By the time I hit
| high school, I was so beyond fighting, and any form of bullying
| --to any of my classmates. I really didn't like high school,
| with the exception of a few girlfriends. Everything I should
| have learned in high school, I made up for at a community
| college in a semester. I remember sitting in a chem class with
| 35 year old nursing students, and I was in heaven. I loved
| college so much, I didn't want it to end.)
| codingwageslave wrote:
| Being chained to a desk memorizing facts isn't an important
| part of life
| elboru wrote:
| I constantly hear about how hellish is high school in the US.
| Do other countries experience the same? I enjoyed the high
| school equivalent of my country, met some of my best friends
| there. My peers don't seem to ever mention bad experiences
| during that period. Is it really as bad as in the movies?
| Stereotypical bullies, popular guys vs nerds and all that?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I left my school at sixteen in the UK. Five years of barely
| sleeping, dreading the next day, crying for fifteen minutes
| before going in and experiencing endless torment and violence
| including being knocked unconscious on several occasions,
| having my glasses shattered on multiple occasions, bullying
| by members of staff, and on one occasion having someone punch
| the bridge of my glasses quite literally inside of my nose,
| and yes, there's still a scar to this day, and yes, it
| knocked me out cold. To say that I was genuinely suicidal at
| several points is putting it lightly, and that's without
| going into the problems outside of school. "Fag" or "faggot"
| is a word I never want to hear again in my life.
|
| I wanted to transfer. I wanted to be home schooled. I wanted
| to do absolutely anything but be there. I had a plan though:
| start my own business whilst I was still at school so that I
| would have goals at sixteen, and it wouldn't be like I was
| bumming about doing nothing when I left. So I did that.
|
| Fast-forward to me now twenty-eight and I'm very happy,
| working on my own terms with my own biz. Life is good.
| Partner of six years, wonderful family. Never went to
| university.
|
| Did it build character? Yes. Would I go through it again? I
| can only say that I'm glad I will never have to. However, it
| gave me insight to knowing what schools of the time were
| willing to overlook and tolerate, and will definitely inform
| my style of parenting when it comes to problems at school.
| handrous wrote:
| Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common with
| high school. Neither does college. The only times any of that
| looks even a little like high school is when something's gone
| very wrong.
|
| From about 6th or 7th grade through graduation, school is a
| weird environment all its own.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Adult work & social life has practically nothing in common
| with high school.
|
| Some might say it is similar to being in prison though...
|
| At least for part of high school that's what it felt like at
| times for me. The biggest issue being the forced labour -
| sorry, I mean "homework" - of which the burden was
| substantial and the benefits not at all clear.
|
| At the time I remember being very depressed that even when I
| was at home and away from the school that I often didn't
| enjoy, instead of indulging in my hobbies (which,
| coincidentally, is how I learnt practically all of the
| specialised skills that I used to kick off my techology
| career) I was forced to complete endless hours of dull and
| unsurprising homework. I understand the benefits in
| moderation but the sheer amount assigned to me was actively
| detrimental to the point of robbing me of a big chunk of my
| free time as a teenager.
|
| I desperately wanted to continue teaching myself programming
| (this was in the early 90's) but instead I had to complete
| some mindless essay about sedimentary fucking rocks.
|
| Not to mention that I had undiagnosed ADHD so the homework
| took me forever and created considerable stress.
|
| Having said that, it was so bad (and felt so pointless) that
| even though I was academically pretty strong and had wanted
| to go to University from quite a young age, I instead quit
| school at 16, immediately got a job in a business consultancy
| (using my self-taught programming/design skills) and was
| running small software projects for huge multi-national
| businesses within a year. By the time most of my peer group
| graduated University, I had about 5 years of a software
| development career under my belt and had already started my
| first business.
|
| In retrospect I don't think I would have done anything
| different, apart from putting about 500% less effort into the
| sedimentary rock essays.
| handrous wrote:
| Damn, you're me except I did finish high school. In
| hindsight I very much wish I'd gotten my GED at 15 or 16
| and snagged an associate's degree by age 18. Turns out non-
| elite college gen-ed classes are _easier_ and have way
| lower time requirements than the high school I went to
| (which was just, like, a totally normal high school,
| nothing special), so it 'd have been a breeze. I had no
| clue about that, and just (reasonably, I think?) assumed it
| was even harder than what I was already doing. Could have
| put more time in at my tech job, which _was_ hugely
| valuable to my future, too.
| convolvatron wrote:
| worse - when 'adult' situations go sideways, you can often
| take a sideways look - and damn if they aren't all acting
| like they are still in high school.
| thegypsyking wrote:
| Jail is 100% like high school, from the experiences of the
| people I know who spent time in the can at least.
| eynsham wrote:
| I found school academically useful for two reasons. First, I am
| very lazy, but I also don't want to look it, so I actually took
| notes, did problem sheets, &c.--and in lessons, since I had
| nothing better to do, I paid attention and talked about the
| material. This assumes of course that the school is able to
| impart something useful, which may not be the case.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The structure really helped me. So I did quite well, could have
| done better, but that really wouldn't have mattered in the end.
| The less structured University went less well. But lot of it
| was also good teachers in good school.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Broadly, I think the mistake is thinking that "what is taught in
| school" is somehow _objectively_ good or necessary.
|
| I've come to think of it more in terms of "School helps people
| navigate a world in which you are generally expected to go to
| school."
|
| Some people will get a great deal of value from it, and really
| need it, whatever "it" is -- it could be what's in the books or
| it could be what's in the people around you.
|
| Some people may not need it much at all.
|
| Furthermore, of course what makes this especially complex is the
| variance in "schools."
| invokestatic wrote:
| Towards the end of high school, I started a fairly profitable
| startup, and went on to do that for a few more years after in
| lieu of college. At the time, I really struggled with my parents
| desire to keep me in school and my own desire to drop out and get
| a GED. They won out. And actually, I'm glad they did. Even though
| my grades were very poor and I never did homework, I really do
| think I came out of high school better than I would have been
| with only a GED.
|
| Now, 6 years out of high school, I attend a community college
| part-time to work on a bachelors degree. Funny how I completely
| discounted higher education just a few years ago.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fascinating story. How did the startup go?
| invokestatic wrote:
| My partner and I grew apart and we shut it down in 2018.
| Funded everything since then.
| errantspark wrote:
| I'm a highschool dropout, but I did a decent job of attending
| most of the way through anyway cause all my friends weren't
| fuckups. I have a hard time imagining what sort of person I'd be
| if I didn't have that growth with a cohort of friends.
|
| In terms of my success as a human who is part of society I don't
| think anything has been as helpful as the social skills that I
| learned in high school. I don't think it's the only way to learn
| these skills, but I certainly feel like my social-learning
| velocity was by far the highest in high school.
|
| Ultimately how other people perceive me influences my quality of
| life more than any other thing. I don't think as a "smart kid"
| skipping high school would have helped me, I think it would have
| hurt me a lot. I feel like my life opened up immensely when I
| accepted that being smart and correct and having a deep
| understanding of the problem at hand matters so much less than
| being able to get along with people.
| huachimingo wrote:
| Instead of skipping, why not show them advanced material? Like
| bachilleratos or 1st Uni semester...
| sodality2 wrote:
| The International Baccalaureate high school program is
| international and offers exactly that, my experience with it
| has been incredible so far and I know that it's helped me
| prepare for college in uncountable ways. Our capstone essay is
| 4000 words on a class of our choice, so whatever the student is
| passionate about, they can write their essay on. This is a
| perfect solution to students who may be intelligent but
| unmotivated outside of their interest area. For example, mine
| is about peer-to-peer networking; I spend most of my nights
| doing research for the paper and it certainly is preparing me
| for college.
|
| It's not available everywhere I believe, but if it's available,
| there's another option compared to AP classes or regular
| classes (or other magnet/governor schools).
| asdff wrote:
| A lot of public schools these days let students take these sort
| of classes at a local community college and these credits can
| even transfer into your undergrad. Probably not available in
| more rural parts that don't have these colleges though.
| quantumsequoia wrote:
| In order to make a convincing argument, the author needs to
| elaborate more on how the time should be spent instead
|
| While I can agree with him high school is a lot of tedium and
| busy work, I'm skeptical sitting around at home doing whatever
| you want will result in a more enriching use of time
|
| There will be the natural tendency to avoid learning about things
| you don't like, which can result in a biased worldview. There is
| the natural tendency to procrastinate. There is the need to
| interact with people with different perspectives who will
| challenge your ideas. I don't see this will be an environment
| that helps budding minds flourish.
|
| I might have been more inclined to agree with him pre-pandemic,
| but the experience has taught me I (and probably most other
| people too) actually suck at using time well when there is no
| structure
| ghaff wrote:
| Effectively the argument would seem to be for homeschooling,
| probably in a minimally structured way.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think high school education was very good for me. Then again we
| had proper educational system here. Much more so than university,
| which I think had much less effect.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| I read somewhere that kids with IQ 140 waste about half their
| time in school. Kids with IQ of 170 waste all their time at
| school. It's no wonder that kids with IQ 145 or greater are
| mostly home schooled, because there's no real school that can
| handle them and the issues that come with those kids. Skipping
| high school definitely sounds like a better path, especially
| given the social problems with being with kids so much older than
| you.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Source?
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| I didn't know but I simply googled it. It's from Leta
| Hollingworth, a researcher on gifted children from the
| mid-20th century, her book "Children Above 180 IQ".
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| What percentage of people have a 145 IQ? That sounds really
| high.
| jeffbee wrote:
| 145 is ~ the top tenth of 1 percent. In a large high school
| there might be one such person.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Unless you went to HS with one of biggest gifted programs
| in a major city, where that level was common. I would say
| with some certainty they were fine with college aged social
| activities.
| tofof wrote:
| I feel the need to be pedantic here, because your post
| makes a couple simplifications in the same direction that
| skew the results by roughly an order of magnitude.
|
| 145 is the top _three_ tenths of 1 percent, not the top
| tenth. The average high school size in the US is 854
| students [1]. In an average school, you would expect there
| to be 2.5 students with 145+ IQ. The largest school in each
| state is about 5-10x the average size school for that
| state. Let 's call a large school 3x average, then. In a
| large school, you would expect to find 7.5 students with
| 145+ IQ, or roughly 2 per graduating year.
|
| "About 8" and "Maybe 1" are almost an order of magnitude
| apart.
|
| 1: 2011 Dept of Ed statistics https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/
| pesschools09/tables/table_05.as...
| [deleted]
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| Every 15 IQ points from 100 is one standard deviation away,
| where 100 is the average. So 145 is 3 standard deviations
| away from average or 99.7%.
| lkbm wrote:
| I think it's 99.7% _within_ three standard deviations
| (e.g., in either direction) so presumably half as many are
| three standard deviations _above_ the mean--99.85% (top
| 0.15%).
|
| Tiny % either way.
| chrisaycock wrote:
| It sounds like the author just went to a lousy high school. I was
| fortunate enough to go to a private school (my tuition was waived
| because my mother was a teacher there) where I took a ton of APs
| in small classes. Compare that to the large gen-ed courses at
| college where the pace was glacial and the tests were multiple
| choice.
| brighton36 wrote:
| What percentage of students go to lousy high schools...
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Disclaimer: I'm smart (ask my mom!), skipped a grade, went to
| college at 16, F*ed around and found out, made it out alive on
| the other side, would not recommend.
|
| Premature optimization is the root of all evil ...
|
| "Some" smart kids should skip "some" high school ... maybe.
|
| But more importantly, a ton of hand-waving here about how
| unnecessary high school was as a crucible of learning and self-
| improvement - hint: passing the GED is not the same as high
| school.
|
| Also pretty optimistic (again, from experience) to expect a
| smart, lazy kid (the target audience for high school skipping) to
| "macro-plan" a 4 year "unschooling" experiment for their ages
| 14-18.
| brighton36 wrote:
| I dropped out of high school in the late nineties, and went
| straight to work at a dot com. My life (best I can tell) was
| never impacted negatively, and I far surpassed my friends in most
| measures (certainly financially) as a result. My only regret is
| having not dropped out sooner.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If you can't figure out how to benefit from high school then
| sure, it's a big waste of time. It is also a unique setting in
| American life. In no other setting is such a broad range of
| activities, athletics, and arts available to a person. You aren't
| very likely to find opportunities to participate in competitive
| sports and athletics, amateur bands and orchestras after high
| school. I, personally, just ignored the academic parts of it
| after I'd piled up enough AP tests and whatnot for admission to
| selective colleges. Hell, in my senior year I barely had any real
| classes at all. I filled up my schedule with three different
| music subjects, newspaper/yearbook/photography, sports, and
| pointless electives like drafting, which was, by the way, a lot
| of fun. High school is also, how to put this politely, a rather
| unique atmosphere of sexual experimentation. Skipping that and
| attending a college where everyone is much older than you is not
| going to replace that.
|
| College, on the other hand, was an abject waste of four years.
| akoluthic wrote:
| If you have a plan and motivation, go for it. Assuming you need
| to make money, you can either be self employed, in a partnership,
| or employed by someone else. The first requires you be a good
| business person, which is not a common innate trait but can be
| learned to some extent. The second is often a great option if you
| have equally motivated partners with complementary strengths. The
| third usually requires some sort of signalling to get employers
| to hire you. Having a degree is part of that signalling. This is,
| of course, completely ignoring that some professions _require_ a
| degree, like being a doctor, which is rewarding work. As a
| teenager, you often have no idea what you will find meaningful
| and rewarding later in life, making this type of decision quite
| risky.
| avalys wrote:
| I skipped 7th grade. I was also young for my grade as it was,
| with a summer birthday that meant I was in the youngest cohort
| just past the cutoff. This had absolutely zero effect on me in
| high school and I got great grades and did some notable stuff and
| got into MIT. But the result was that I entered MIT nearly two
| years younger than most of my peers.
|
| I turned out fine - but in retrospect I had a lot of growing up
| yet to do, and I think I would have made better use of my college
| experience if I had been able to do that growing up before
| college as opposed to during freshman and sophomore year, where
| you make a lot of decisions that will influence your life for a
| while. I missed many opportunities at MIT because I didn't really
| understand how the academic and professional world worked and
| what would be important to focus on for my career - let alone
| more personal matters. Looking back now I wish I had actually
| taken a year off before college, as opposed to skipping a grade
| in a hurry to get there, and I encourage every high school
| student and parent I know to think in these terms.
|
| This will of course be very situational. Yes, if you are in a bad
| high school with bad teachers and bad students, you might be
| better off skipping it in favor of some alternative. But in
| general, a lot of growing up is just getting experience and doing
| things, and high school is how you get a lot of that experience
| before you go to college and have to do bigger and more
| consequential things. Don't be (or don't let your kids be) in a
| hurry to get ahead of that curve.
| toast0 wrote:
| I skipped the last year of High School; I took (and passed) the
| California High School Profeciency exam as soon as a I could,
| but was convinced to stay one more year and they made the
| credits work to get me a degree. Then I did two years of
| Community College and got an AS before transferring to an out
| of state 4-year engineering college (where it took me three
| more years to get a BS, because the curriculum weren't
| aligned). Community College felt a lot nicer than high school,
| and the two years of college experience made it easier to
| manage living in the dorms and later with my not-yet spouse.
| Having almost all of my humanities already taken care of was
| nice too. Having a gap in hard Math classes wasn't great
| though; having swapped that information out, it was hard to
| page it back in.
| [deleted]
| CrimpCity wrote:
| So if you could go back in time would you take a gap year?
|
| In general I think freshmen / sophomores don't take enough
| advantages & don't understand the professional implications of
| their time in college.
| avalys wrote:
| Yes - actually I had just finished editing my post to say
| that. For me at least I think it would have made a major
| difference. You are absolutely correct - I still sometimes
| kick myself over stupid decisions I made as a freshman and
| sophomore.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I still sometimes kick myself over stupid decisions I made
| as a freshman and sophomore.
|
| You and every other single human on the planet ;-)
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. It's not like being 18 rather than 16 transforms
| you into this somber mature freshman.
| dvirsky wrote:
| I skipped a year in elementary school and had a gap year
| (because I was in Israel I couldn't start university because
| I was supposed to do mandatory military service, and had a
| year to wait). Man oh man, did this year suck. I had no
| skills to manage myself with no routine, all my friends were
| a year older than me and started their military service. I
| worked for a few months, but then I just did nothing for what
| seemed like an eternity: I slept during the day, I was alone
| most of the time, internet was a couple years away so I
| didn't even have that, I honestly can't remember what I did
| but it was terrible.
| senkora wrote:
| This was how 2020 was for me. It was awful, and I never
| want to feel that way again.
|
| I did have a plan for how to spend that time in a way that
| was meaningful, but COVID trashed it and I was left with
| nothing.
| david_allison wrote:
| > Looking back now I wish I had actually taken a year off
| before college, as opposed to skipping a grade in a hurry to
| get there, and I encourage every high school student and parent
| I know to think in these terms.
|
| 100% agreed. I took a year out to work in software before
| University. Despite being completely disregarded by employers,
| it changed my perspective on independence, time management, and
| the risk of not making the most of opportunities. It's one of
| the best life decisions that I've made.
| elijaht wrote:
| I would agree with you in general about a gap year before
| college- but mostly from the perspective of it's a great time
| in life to be responsibility-free and do something meaningful
|
| I think everyone is immature/makes poor decisions/could have
| chosen better paths their first couple of years in college
| regardless of age of matriculation. The first time you live
| with little supervision, have to start thinking about a career,
| etc. is going to be rough regardless of whether you are 17 or
| 20 because it is all such a new experience
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If it helps, you probably would fuck up your freshman and/or
| sophmore year anyway. Growing like that is an important part of
| the college experience.
| jrm4 wrote:
| And if you don't do one before college, ABSOLUTELY do one after
| if you're doing grad school, no matter what anyone tells you.
|
| I'm going to guess that many (probably not most, but many) of
| us here come from a tradition where education is paramount and
| deviating from that without a clear plan is like deadly
| frightening to the parents et al.
| ghaff wrote:
| Heh. I skipped eighth grade, was young for my class anyway with
| a late year birthday, and also went to MIT.
|
| Yes, I was young for college but it's not like college students
| as a whole are these mature individuals. Was probably for the
| best overall.
|
| Honestly, MIT is probably a better place than most for
| individuals who are maybe a bit atypical relative to other
| places.
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