[HN Gopher] America's most remarkable kid died in Newcastle, Utah
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America's most remarkable kid died in Newcastle, Utah
Author : xenophon
Score : 120 points
Date : 2022-09-18 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.deseret.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.deseret.com)
| jessaustin wrote:
| Parents, teach your kids to swim. If you know children whose
| parents can't do this, insist on doing it for them.
| blacksqr wrote:
| Not only couldn't swim, wasn't wearing a life jacket.
| etempleton wrote:
| Swimming is perhaps one of the most important skills anyone can
| learn regardless of where you live. At some point in your life
| you will probably fall into water too deep to stand. Don't let
| yourself be at the mercy of someone saving you or sheer dumb
| luck.
|
| Also, if you can't swim, don't be embarrassed! A lot of people
| can't and honestly no one is judging you because you can't
| swim. Go to your local pool and see if they offer adult classes
| and if not see if there is someone willing to teach you.
| contingencies wrote:
| Cool kid. Imagine what he could have done with supportive
| teachers if not burdened by poverty.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I imagine he'd be cookie like all the other cookies; as in cut
| by a cookie cutter that limits the majority of all the other
| minds cranked out of the formal K - 12 mill.
| bequanna wrote:
| Did you read the article? His parents were immensely
| supportive.
|
| I can't imagine any other situation where a parent would
| essentially dedicate their life to support their child's
| development.
| contingencies wrote:
| I read the article. In my reading it implied the whole family
| were disabled, the parents housebound, and that for half of
| his life the kid was effectively permanently engaged in self-
| directed business-linked study outside of the house.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > Outside, the sky over Escalante Valley, Utah, is blinding blue
| and cloudless,
|
| I don't enjoy articles that preamble about the lack of clouds in
| the sky.
|
| Here's the meat:
|
| > Kevin drowned in a kayaking accident at a friend's birthday
| party. At 14, he had just published his autobiography. He was
| making plans to expand his 350-acre farm to buy up surrounding
| farms to convert to regenerative agriculture. He was saving money
| to build a house for his parents and another for his autistic
| older brother. He was polishing a movie script and a series of
| children's books teaching business literacy for kids. He was
| looking for a celebrity to endorse his line of luxury toiletries
| made from the milk of his goat herd. He was breeding heritage
| turkeys. He was writing guest essays for notable bloggers higher
| up the political food chain. And, in his spare time, he had the
| task of grading the road to his farm using the John Deere tractor
| he bought new for himself for his 11th birthday.
|
| and
|
| > A friend once remarked, "You guys aren't even raising him;
| you're just kind of the audience watching him raise himself."
| lkrubner wrote:
| This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented)
| but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the
| people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their
| 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the
| world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on
| a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes
| physical risk (whether in travel or informal athletics), and so,
| "at the margins" as an economist would say, a certain percentage
| of them are dead before they reach the age of 30. So, for every
| generation, a few of the most brilliant lights are missing by the
| time the generation reaches its 40s and 50s. The people who do
| become leaders are, to an extent, the ones who simply got lucky
| -- many of them have some stories to tell about times they took a
| risk and were surprised to live. For obvious reasons, we don't
| hear the stories from the folks who took a risk and did not
| survive.
|
| (One of my favorite anecdotes on this subject: One of the best
| entrepreneurs I know went down to Mexico and hitchhiked all over
| when she was 18 years old. And every family that picked her up
| told her that what she was doing was very dangerous and that she
| was very lucky to be picked up by that family, instead of someone
| more dangerous. But at the time she was very innocent. 20 years
| later I ran into her and I was like "You know what you did was
| crazy?" and she was like "Now that I think about it, I'm amazed
| that I survived.")
| bombcar wrote:
| 20 years ago Mexico was much different than it is now; 30 years
| even more so.
| soared wrote:
| This isn't really true except for random edge cases. The people
| leading countries go to school and get law degrees. People
| leading business got college degrees or worked in business for
| decades.
|
| You can pull edge cases like Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard, but
| even then he spend a lot of time in his 20s running his
| business.
| soared wrote:
| I mean, do we believe any of this? An 8 year old isn't running a
| business and selling to restaurants in a different state. No
| business would purchase from an 8 year, no business would ship
| goods from an 8 year old, no bank gives a loan to a 9 year old.
| The list goes on and on. Incredibly sad that a child has died,
| but this reads as pure fantasy.
| klyrs wrote:
| This is some real inspiration porn. The kid sounds amazing, and
| it's tragic that he died so young. I have family that practices
| unschooling, and in their case, that means fundamentalist
| indoctrination, no math, no history, near illiteracy, no saleable
| skills or motivation to get a job or do anything independently.
| And I just know that they're going to send this to my mom as
| evidence that they're doing the right thing.
| xani_ wrote:
| Poor kid, the family are basically gimping his start in life by
| a decade... it's outright abuse
| klyrs wrote:
| What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this
| specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree
| I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and
| below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured
| education.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids
| is a pretty good compromise... The standardized tests are
| ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch
| kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic
| wyager wrote:
| The preponderance of evidence suggests that schooling has
| essentially zero impact on adult outcomes until around
| middle/high school.
|
| Most public schools are clearly more abusive than simply not
| subjecting your children to the standard industrial schooling
| regimen.
| orwin wrote:
| The US school system seems different than mine, and
| although we have issues, if only for the socialization,
| being in school is better than not.
|
| Especially, what my father explained to me (he directed
| projects and extracurricular 'homework help' (+ free food)
| for kids in the poor neighborhood of my city at the time)
| was that the most important for success in school was
| parental implication, and that if you compared kids in
| 'regular' school with present and interested parents (often
| children of teachers, or children with one stay at home
| parent and few siblings) to kids in 'special school'
| (Montessori at the time i think), there was no practical
| difference on their success later. He told us his job was
| to try his best to have his street educators bridge the gap
| between parents and school, and if it wasn't possible, to
| offer a more collective and affirmative way of
| learning/doing in his extracurricular center.
|
| (weird translation, sorry if it isn't understandable, there
| is a lot of specific vocabulary i tried to simplify then
| translate).
|
| It was only his impression, but I've worked with children
| from my 14th birthday to my 25th, and my personal
| experience (i taught science through experiment with an
| association both at public schools and at summer camps)
| tends to confirm that what's really matter in engagement
| from the parents.
| fock wrote:
| > that means fundamentalist indoctrination, no math, no
| history, near illiteracy,
|
| it looks like it was the same here. He essentially practiced
| the life of a middle age peasant. I guess many had their farm
| going by the age of 12 ... and probably didn't have some weird
| capitalistic, and nationalist inspiration porn ideologist in
| the background (because writing a pseudonymous book and then
| dying to young sounds like that... also the wondrous
| mentors...)
|
| see for example: https://greatbasingreen.com/about-us-2/ (who
| is we? - would anyone write like that about themselves with
| those achievements ) https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Tell-Cant-
| Ambitious-Homeschooler...
| teekert wrote:
| "Don't ever take 'can't' as the answer unless you've verified
| that it is against the law or against the powers of physics,"
| Kevin wrote in his memoir.
|
| What a human. Such a great balance of a healthy brain and the
| confidence to trust it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Kid sounded like an ultra capitalistic incarnation of Von
| Neumann. I suppose growing up dirt poor does that to a person.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| The people celebrating this story seem weird to me because this
| looks more like a nightmare. It's having your entire childhood
| traded away in order to function in a system that's responsible
| for making your entire family poor.
|
| I know some people look at it as the whole 'self-made
| capitalist can do anything' sort of ideal but to me I see the
| failures of multiple systems.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I often find nebulous discussions around "systems" tiresome,
| not because there aren't better or worse systems, not because
| we can't make improvements, but because very often it results
| in a waste of time and energy spent on grievance and
| kvetching and wanting the stars to align perfectly instead of
| making the best of your situation.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Countries rise and fall by systems. If the US adopts an
| unschooling strategy that minimizes math learning, then it
| will certainly take the country in a direction. It's a
| topic that powerful people are clearly taking sides on. I
| think it's valid to discuss what the implications would be.
|
| In general, I don't really understand the dismissal of the
| use of systems language for social topics. Other domains on
| this site are debated in very analytical terms looking at
| historical factors and second order effects.
|
| What makes social issues different where it's uncouth to
| perform the same type of analyses?
| gammarator wrote:
| Counterpoint: https://vimeo.com/44807536
|
| https://www.metafilter.com/117357/Lawsuit-waiting-to-
| happen#...
| comology wrote:
| joshenders wrote:
| You're not wrong but both things can be true at once.
| comology wrote:
| epolanski wrote:
| He has nothing to do with Von Neumann, a sophisticated
| intelllectual and the last polymath who was all about vanity
| and avoiding physical work.
| moffkalast wrote:
| And was born to a very rich noble family as almost a polar
| opposite, which likely led him to pursue more abstract things
| and forget about the material.
|
| I would imagine this kid was on a similar level of genius,
| but seemingly more interested in making as much money as
| humanly possible instead.
| synergy20 wrote:
| A truly sad story.
| bagels wrote:
| Article did mention?
|
| "But on a hot day last June, at nearby Newcastle Reservoir,
| Kevin drowned in a kayaking accident at a friend's birthday
| party."
|
| Article is worth reading. I think the title is pretty accurate,
| assuming the details are true.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| It's believable but then again had a distinct too good to be
| true fairytale feel. I hate to sound jaded but I keep waiting
| for a shoe to drop about it's accuracy or even validity.
| fock wrote:
| So, as a European I read: mormon paper (Deseret...) hails parents
| who made their child work their farm. Because reading things
| like:
|
| > His spelling and grammar lagged behind grade level. He
| consistently misspelled the word "business," and stumbled over
| the pronunciation of simple words.
|
| doesn't really spell hidden genius of the 21st century but
| probably describes millions of peasants in Europe during the
| middle-ages. Family died of the plague, so son got a businessman
| at age 9. It happened a lot, but they were just some other serf
| and didn't have ideologists (recall the NYT-author who resigned
| because "woke") who celebrate going fullspeed back to the middle
| ages.
| julianeon wrote:
| They don't call him a genius though, they call him America's
| most remarkable kid, with emphasis on his business acumen. It
| seems unfair to say something like "he's not going to
| revolutionize science" when they never implied he would.
| bequanna wrote:
| So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram
| a sentence is more important than understanding tax law?
| fock wrote:
| Well, to understand tax law, you need to understand language
| quite well (see another post these days on the frontpage...)
| - which usually comes with some skills in applying it. It
| smells a bit fishy, if you claim a person can do the first,
| but not the latter.
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