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I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence why they won't be attending. Most of the schools I attended growing up were complet

• Xeoncross 11y ago
  It's not that you have to leave education. But anything would be better than 12 years just to learn the basics so they can re-learn them again in college. Public schools waste way, way too much time. Get kids into college sooner so they can actually learn things. I was that kid. I went to the "best" high school in all the surrounding cities. It was a mess, sub-pair on every academic, legal, and social level. Teachers taking bribes, drugs, fights, teachers that didn't know their subjects well enough (I helped teach one class). I dropped out and went to college.
  • esaym 11y ago
    Indeed, the pace of public education is horribly slow. Kids are bored, they need something to do.
    • ryandrake 11y ago
      This is partially because public schools have to also accommodate kids with disabilities, English learners, and those who simply will never keep up. For these kids, public education is horribly accelerated and they're being left behind.
      • jessaustin 11y ago
        Yes it's terrible for both sets of students. You don't mean to suggest that equal-opportunity educational failure is in some sense better than only failing one group, do you?
    • paulryanrogers 11y ago
      My guess is this depends on the child and the institution.
• cmurf 11y ago
  And what if they don't want to do web dev work, ever?
  • joshvm 11y ago
    I agree with not forcing vocations on kids, but I don't think many kids that age really want to do a paper round (or any of the other typical jobs that kids do) either. I certainly didn't want to get a job in a retail store, but it paid me a small amount of disposable money. Web work pays substantially more and could entail graphic design, copy-writing, backend programming, marketing or all sorts of useful skills. I think we have this idea of the OP forcing his kids to write code in a basement and it doesn't need to be that at all.
    • cr1895 11y ago
      >I "expect" they will like what I show them. Also written by OP, which does suggest they might not have a lot of other options
  • mrlatinos 11y ago
    Yeah, this comment is ridiculous. "Public schools suck so I'll force my kids to do what I never had the chance to." Great logic. My dad was athletic and supported me in being a nerdy band kid programmer. I will do the same for mine. I will make sure that the school they go to is good, but I won't force them to be passionate about something by bribing them with $60/hr.
    • vectorjohn 11y ago
      That brings up another good thing about sending your kids to school. You owe it to them to expose them to more than just their overbearing parents like. Maybe they end up liking something different than you and that's good!
  • esaym 11y ago
    I "expect" they will like what I show them. If nothing else, they will have a skill they can use down the road. You know all those math classes your kids will take in public school? What if they don't want to be a mathematician? Same logic. I've worked plenty of other jobs, from clerk, to auto mechanic, to IT, they'll be getting a dose of it all. This is what you do as a parent, you show your kids where you've been, what you've done, and the wrongs you've done.
• mattmanser 11y ago
  You want your children to become programmers like you? Not one of the thousands of other jobs? You want to force them to be mini-esayms without their own minds? You don't want them to make friends, socialize, network with their peers? To explore their own wants and desires in the safety of a school without your constant disapproval? You want them to spend their 20s in counselling complaining about their bizarre dad who schooled them at home and forced them to work instead of grow? 2 sides to every coin.
  • awakeasleep 11y ago
    You're imagining a world where people go to college and find high paying jobs after following their dream without their parents holding them back. That is actually a marketing story, dangerous and unrealistic to believe. Esaym is talking about teaching his kids a real skill they can use. It certainly won't override their ability to learn and persue things- it'll actually make that possible. It'll enable them to make decisions in life without having to pray they can find a way to make money, and they'll have a fundamental skill that'll help them whichever way they decide to go. People don't generally get good jobs by their own elbow grease. They get them because of their network and connections. Your family is a huge part of that network, and passing on a skill like a trade is one of the surest ways you can ensure your children actually have a future.
    • mattmanser 11y ago
      Wake-up call, we're a community of programmers and contrary to our echo-chamber, programming is 1 skill of the thousands which make money. I know a range of different people, none of them are programmers. Do you think only programmers make money? I am actually shocked and disgusted by his idea of parenting. He wants to isolate them from other children and teach them one skill instead of letting them learn a range and choose. Re-read what he said, he wants to exclude them from school and get them to work on his business from the age of 13. I don't expect the public school system to teach my children anything. Hence why they won't be attending. I fully expect to start "outsourcing" my web dev work to my children when they are 13.
• mikeyouse 11y ago
  Many public schools are just fine, if not excellent.. Something like 90% of my 300-student graduating class ended up in college, several dozen at Ivys or "near-Ivy" schools. We had intensive programming classes and maybe 15 or 20 AP options. This was just a random upper middle class district in the Midwest, we were rarely on the list of the 100-best schools in the state.
  • tamana 11y ago
    That doesn't pass the smell test all. Your school sent 10% of its students to elite colleges, that's clearly not common.
    • mdorazio 11y ago
      It doesn't have to be common. You can move to whatever school district you want to (if you have the money for housing there) and get that same level of education. No one's forcing you to send your kids to sub-par public schools.
      • je_bailey 11y ago
        Well yes, if you're only option is to send them to a sub-par public school then the government is going to force you to send them to that school. If you don't have the means to move to a better neighborhood, if you don't have the means to pay for private school you have to deal with what you get.
      • runamok 11y ago
        That is a pretty big if.
      • acjohnson55 11y ago
        Surely you don't believe the average American can just up and move to places with great public schools? I was privileged enough to grow up someplace that allowed me to go to a great public school. It's a great city by many measures, but poor in public transport, affordable housing, and working-class jobs.
• epicureanideal 11y ago
  I have a similar plan. I'd like to hear more about yours. My email is in my profile temporarily. Please get in touch.
• s_m_t 11y ago
  Adopt me and I'll undercut your children for $50/hr.
  • zemvpferreira 11y ago
    I'm overseas and happy to do it for only $40/hour if I can be adopted remotely.
• tryitnow 11y ago
  Why don't you just move to a nicer neighborhood that has nicer schools? And have you managed 13 year olds? I'm sure they will be well-incentivized at $60/hr., the question is whether you will have an incentive to put up with them.
• chejazi 11y ago
  Public schools aren't the greatest when it comes to accelerating social mobility - a lot of my graduating class is still in my hometown. If you can afford it, a private school will put you on a more focused track to success. Still, plenty of people make it through and go on to achieve great things. Plus, they are grounded in the realities of what is commonly referred to as the 99%
  • restalis 11y ago
    "Public schools aren't the greatest when it comes to accelerating social mobility - a lot of my graduating class is still in my hometown." <sarcasm>"Social mobility" doesn't necessarily mean moving upwards only. Public schools therefore may indeed contribute to public mobility and even be an accelerating factor to it!</sarcasm> The fact that the graduates of your class are still in your hometown does not really say much about social mobility, it does only about mobility.
    • chejazi 11y ago
      Good point, I need to provide better context. In my hometown, there aren't a lot of opportunities, and a significant portion of what's there is service / labor. So by staying in my hometown, I'm implying that a lot of them are working unskilled jobs.
• tcdent 11y ago
  As a publicly educated kid who started working when he was 15-1/2 (the legal minimum age in CA for a work permit at the time), I'd encourage you to rethink the importance of child-like innocence. Not that I regret my choices, but that 13 is just a little too young to be career-oriented, and 16 is probably the bare minimum. I was into computers at that age, but if my decisions were based on profitability or professional viability they would have been very different. Don't underestimate the role of a crappy jobs and bad bosses, either. Hard to say you'd want anyone to experience that intentionally, but a wide perspective is priceless and can't be taught by explanation alone.
  • pjmorris 11y ago
    Great perspective. I didn't start work until I was 16, and the dishwashing jobs (with both good and bad bosses) I had really set me up to appreciate what a great gig programming can be.
  • PakG1 11y ago
    A hundred times this. I don't think perspective can be taught by explanation alone. You know else comes with perspective? Often humility, empathy, and emotional stability.
  • bpp 11y ago
    I once had a "lifeguarding" job that was 20% making sure people didn't drown, 60% janitorial work and pool equipment maintenance with toxic chemicals, and 20% listening to snotty members of the country club say incredibly tone-deaf things. I cried more than once. The life lessons were invaluable.
  • go2college 11y ago
    I agree completely. The summer in college I spent working on an assembly line screwing the same four screws in for 8 hours a day for $8/hour taught me nothing about building software. However, it gave me a great perspective then and now on how lucky I am to get paid (well) to do something I actually love doing (write software).
  • notahacker 11y ago
• megablast 11y ago
  So you are just going to teach them what you think is important? Home schooling has to be one of the most ridiculous ideas ever.
  • amorphid 11y ago
    Doesn't state approved home schooling (in the USA) usually include aptitude testing at a local school? My impression was that the curriculum was set by the school, and the teaching was done by the parent.
    • adbachman 11y ago
      Not universally, but laws vary widely by state so there may be somewhere that that's true. In our case we have a once a year peer review session to go over what we did but we choose all the material ourselves and aren't given any particular material or requirements from the local schools. There's an expectation that we are providing an education, but until our kids want to enter the system in one way or another, they won't be tested against its requirements.
  • PKop 11y ago
    Whose judgement do you trust enough that you're willing to outsource this decision to? Would you let esaym teach your children what he thinks is important? What if he was your child's teacher? At the end of the day you're placing your trust in someone. They are just going to teach your kids what they think is important. Are you not willing to have an opinion on whether they are choosing the right things to teach?
    • vectorjohn 11y ago
      No, wrong. They are going to teach what a large association of actual experts in education think they should teach. Of course you should trust the people that put as much or more effort into education as you did in becoming an expert in your field. I think I heard something about how people that get a lot of expertise in one area like doctors, lawyers, programmers, tend to far overestimate their skills in unrelated things. Sounds like you and the OP fall into this logical trap.
• doctorstupid 11y ago
  Great. After they're done working for you, they can work for my children, who'll be taught some social skills.
  • gedy 11y ago
    Home schooling does not mean no social life.
  • restalis 11y ago
    If you're able to teach your children your skills for spotting opportunity like you do here, then you're my roll model parent!
• polymeris 11y ago
  That's depressing... poor kids.
  • esaym 11y ago
    How so? As a parent I shouldn't teach my kids what I know? (oh and btw, I know plenty more than just 'web dev' stuff) What's depressing is "parents" that think complete strangers are responsible for the upbringing of their children.
  • CamperBob2 11y ago
    Not for long, at $60/hr
    • polymeris 11y ago
      That's what they'll spend on therapy after having Python inflicted on them!
      • esaym 11y ago
        I'm actually a Perl dev (for now)... I was being nice...
• econnors 11y ago
  The responses to this comment seem like everyone took this seriously, but I read it as complete sarcasm.
• Swizec 11y ago
  As a publicly educated kid from Eastern Europe. We had programming classes as on-school extracurriculars in Pascal when I was 12. In the late 90's. We started with Logo at 9. In 1996. Do public schools in other countries not do this kind of stuff?
  • alxndr 11y ago
    Programming classes are uncommon in American high schools: > "There currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States. But only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011" http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics http://www.exploringcs.org/resources/cs-statistics edit: Wish I could find the numbers for public high schools, but I'd wager that they're much lower than 5%, with public middle schools smaller still.
    • learc83 11y ago
      Just because a school doesn't offer a college level computer science course doesn't mean they don't offer programming classes. Most of the schools in my area have offered some kind of technology class in middle school or high school that has basic programming modules, but only a few offer AP CS. I remember programming a robotic arm in middle school almost 20 years ago.
• dpatru 11y ago
  I think that teaching your children how to make money while they are still young is one of the most valuable things you can do for them. This, along with the ability to learn independently, will allow them to avoid a lot of misery for the rest of their lives. There are many people who are doomed to stressful lives living paycheck to paycheck because early in life they didn't learn a lucrative trade and they didn't learn how to learn. Once you are out of school and have a job and maybe a family, just the day-to-day demands of living can drain most of your energy and time.
  • restalis 11y ago
    There are a lot of things one should learn for a content life. As parents, we are tempted to ignore in our teachings many things that we've already mastered and not struggling with, but which are very important nevertheless. I'd be cautious to tag something specific as "the most valuable thing" only for this reason. There's always a balance, trade-offs all in between. For your example, you can teach your children how to be very successful at making money and achieve an accomplished financial situation, then they still may get abused somehow through some weakness you left them out with in your parental education.
• pasquinelli 11y ago
  i'm curious to know if your kids are hypothetical.
• nfd 11y ago
  Look, I was homeschooled, and it's possible to do it right. Don't get me wrong. The way I was homeschooled, however, wreaked total havoc on my long-term mental health (though you better believe I ran the equivalent of "lock your child in a basement with an Apple II and a book of documentation on Applesoft Basic" on myself and learned what a sweet hack looks like). I ran headfirst into college with poor social skills and no practice working under actual pressure. It's taken a nasty toll on my body and I'm still struggling to keep my weight from dipping even more. I learned a lot of lessons really, really quickly. I'm a natural extrovert. It was a special hell. I'm not saying you're wrong. Sounds like a pretty good idea, even. _Please be damn sure you know what you're doing._ And I'm here if you've got questions.
  • ktRolster 11y ago
    Wow, what happened?
    • nfd 11y ago
      I didn't get regular social interaction for a really long time. Think on the order of 10 years. Turns out that people really need it. I spent most of about 5 years mostly holed up in my room teaching myself about programming, crypto, bits of math, reading, playing games, and breaking and fixing my pet Linux install. I don't regret teaching myself that much for an instant, but I do realize that my entire life probably would've been much better much earlier if I'd gone to school. I could've just skipped all the depression and loneliness I felt between the ages of 8 and 15.
      • goblin89 11y ago
        I did go to school, and while I wouldn’t prefer having been homeschooled by my parents, I however think the school did harm my mental health (from bullying, for one example) and I would’ve benefitted from. Note: not in US, but from what I can glimpse US schools are similar or worse in relevant regards. I’ve come to think that going or not going to school is unlikely to be the deciding factor, and it’s rather up to parents and the overall environment. Homeschooling or sending your kid to school—neither seems ‘easier’ by itself, they just pose somewhat different sets of challenges to parents. The answer probably depends on given school system, the specific school, parents’ and kid’s personalities, etc. In other words, one can go to school—and be bullied w/o the skill to handle it and w/o parental notice due to neglect, or grow up dysfunctional/struggling due to whatever else unhealthy family circumstance such as NPD of a parent due to them being an object of childhood abuse, etc.; and one can also be homeschooled—and be adequately prepared by parents, lose less time doing boring things, and have the necessary social interaction with siblings and friends. Now switch that around and there are indeed a lot of things that can go wrong with homeschooling, and an attentive parent can be able to help their kid deal with school just as well.
• JabavuAdams 11y ago
  Please don't fall into the "math is useless, why do we have to learn this?" camp. The math taught in high-school is pretty simple stuff and if we frowned upon innumeracy as much as we do illiteracy, people would just learn it. Reading is hard but we spend the time and make the students do it anyway. We don't give them the "who needs this reading crap" script. Math skills are life skills for a thinking citizen of a democracy. Every term I have game development students who struggle with basic arithmetic (fractions, exponents), but somehow want to make a game.
  • esaym 11y ago
    Sadly I'm not that good a math either. I'm trying to figure out ways to make it fun for my kids. The only thing I can think of would involve programming or electrical engineering.I think making a game would be one way. Or doing the math to build a charge pump circuit so you can charge capacitors and zap your friends might be another.
• marincounty 11y ago
  I think getting them into a community college is brilliant. Make sure they stick with it though. While I didn't have to worry about gangs, or really even drugs in high school; for myself, and my little sister--we learned absolutely nothing in high school. Actually, I had a good biology teacher, but that's about it. My sister only achievement in high school was being voted best looking. She was there so little, I'm suprised the students noticed her. That said, I made up everything I missed in high school, and a lot more, in two semesters at a community college. (Complete honesty. It was two semesters. I actually enjoyed school again.) I think I'm older than a lot of you, but going to high school was a waste of time, and even left emotional scars on my own psyche? I hated high school. I hated the different groups. I hated the after school fights. I hated showing up to class tired, my skin inflamed, hormones seemingly off the charts; all to a teacher who obviously didn't care to be there. I recall going to the school counselor, and asking to drop out. He looked at me for a few awkward seconds, and said, "------, I know it's a joke. Just finish. Get that diploma. College will be different. I give you my word. Just finish. Just show up." Well I finished, and I'm glad I did. If I was able to do it over again, I would definetly have gone to a community college as as soon as possible though. Community college has it's downfalls, but for myself I really enjoyed my two years there, actually 2.5 years. If you are young, and reading this, I think going to a community college is a great idea. While in that community college, your main goal should be trying to transfer into a four year college. Yea, I know. College is a lot of bs, but this rediculious society still judges people on wether they went to college. I see that changing though. If you are interested in computer programming; I honestly don't see the need for college, but I'm nobody. Actually, I take that back. You need a diverse backround. Some of you have parents that can point you to the right books, but I didn't. Again, I loved going to a community college. I saved a fortune, and learned a lot.
• jacquesm 11y ago
  > Think they'll teach them Python or Swift? Those will not be a career path for much longer. > Conversely, I fully expect to start "outsourcing" my web dev work to my children when they are 13. Child labor got outlawed long ago, which is one of the reasons a lot of countries have mandatory education. High school is about much more than learning programming language or marketable skills, that's what you have secondary education for. Social interaction and other related skills are one of the big take-aways from regular school that are hard to replicate, also, that big bad world will still be out there when your children reach adult age and they then won't be prepared to interface with that. Maybe consider moving to a place where schools are not useless, filthy, full of drugs and gangs if you really wish to solve this. And if the high schools are full of filth, drugs and gangs today what guarantees do you have that the community college won't be the same? (And if the community college can keep it's grounds clean today, why can't the highschools?)
  • tn13 11y ago
    I don't think parents making their children work for an incentive is child labor.
    • jacquesm 11y ago
      That depends on the degree.
    • pc86 11y ago
      > children > work Yes, child labor.
      • tn13 11y ago
        Yeah children working on home work is child labor I guess.
  • agumonkey 11y ago
    Python made a nice nest in many places what makes you say it won't last ?
• spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  So why do you think only listening to your parents is a "good" thing - thats not going to produce a well rounded Adult at the end is it?
• emptyfile 11y ago
  What the hell? "My kids are gonna be web devs by 13 and they're gonna like it!" Is this considered normal with you stylish, American, Silicon Valley types? Do you think children are like Pokemons or Sims or RPG characters who you control from a 3rd person perspective?
  • hasenj 11y ago
    Do you think 13 year olds should be treated like 5 year olds who are not suitable to do anything except having people laugh at their reactions?
    • aninhumer 11y ago
      The criticism is not of having them work, it is of having them do a specific job, apparently whether they like it or not.
    • lagadu 11y ago
      13 year olds should be treated like 13 years olds: they go to school and after they leave they get to go hang out with their boy/girlfriends, do sports, ride their bikes around or play videogames with their friends.
      • ekianjo 11y ago
        Mozart at 13 was not hanging out with his friends partying around.
        • SuddsMcDuff 11y ago
          Newflash: Not all kids are like Mozart
        • restalis 11y ago
          I remember my musical teacher mentioning me about Mozart being over-solicited in his childhood and that that affected his adult life. He died young, after years of health issues.
• logn 11y ago
  This is satire right?
• rantanplan 11y ago
  I'm glad that in my country there are laws that prohibit homeschooling to replace regular education. Also I see what problem they solve, to prevent people like you ruining a child's mental health. The public school system is more about socializing than gaining knowledge. But how could a person like you understand that, when you think that: "I think having them make $60 an hour while their friends make nothing will be a large deciding factor" is a deciding factor. Also, I've never heard or seen any kid that listens more to their teachers than their parents. That says more about the parents than it says about the teachers or the school system. You are truly a dangerous person.
  • Wingman4l7 11y ago
    The public school system is not without its flaws. For many, it can be battling constant abuse by their "peers" -- people neither their social nor mental equals, the like of whom they'll never interact with as adults -- under the guise of "learning social skills". Additionally, it's full of outdated, half-false, and irrelevant curriculum & busywork, pandering to the lowest common denominator and increasingly focused towards passing standardized tests.
    • rantanplan 11y ago
      All of the things you mentioned are true and still homeschooling is worse. You know why? Our society is not without its flaws either. So unless you can provide a full alternative reality experience to your children, I'd say stand back. And by the way, who's preventing you to teach your children to identify(and thus ignore) the flaws of this system? What you're suggesting is the nuclear option and I don't see any reason for that.
      • chiph 11y ago
        It's a big country, and there's room for both approaches. Ideally, the parents will choose the method that lets their child learn most effectively. In reality, some of them will make bad choices and stunt their children's education. Which sucks, but life is not fair.
      • 11y ago
• SixSigma 11y ago
  I am glad I am not your child.
• EliRivers 11y ago
  "I even listened to some of my teachers more than I did my own parents (indoctrination)" Why is being indoctrinated by parents any better?
  • pitt1980 11y ago
    for one, parents have a different incentive structure than teachers do while parents aren't perfectly incentivized, they have a larger stake in you growing into a happy and healthy adult than teachers do
    • EliRivers 11y ago
      I believe that this (for want of a better phrase) perfect economist picture of parents is so swamped by culture and superstition and politics and all the rest of it that it's effectively invalid. Many parents do want their children to be happy and healthy, but I believe the number who do this because they assess what their stake in "Project Children" is and conclude that their expectation value is higher with happy healthy children is vanishingly small.
• krylon 11y ago
  I think it is part of school education to not only learn stuff you'll need in work per se. Stuff like, say, history, or getting to know at least a few major works of literature. A rough understanding of the foundations of modern science does not hurt, either. I learnt those things, and while I really did not want to learn most of it back then, I am glad now that I did. "Non scholae, sed vitae", as they used to say back at my school. And even if you restrict the use of a school education to "preparing you for work", I for one did not know what I wanted to do until I was roughly 17-18. And then, I was spectacularly wrong about it and took a few years to find my calling in computers at about 22. On the other hand, school is - let's face it - where kids learn a huge percentage of their social skills and make friends. That is not to be underestimated.
• scient 11y ago
  Wow. I honestly feel bad for your kids.
• womplord 11y ago
  Please don't reproduce
• kamaal 11y ago
  Have you heard of the term 'Premature optimization is the root of all evil'. You seem to prematurely optimizing your kid's lives. It can backfire very bad. Programming or any profession in general is way lower in priority before learning Math and other stuff. Career returns are always non linear, getting to greedy at the start can cost a lot in the long term.
• dockd 11y ago
  My observation of kids with good jobs in high school was they would give up school for the money. (See also: college.) Why would your child want to be in boring old school when they can make $60/hour?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]