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> All the kids were required to take every Advanced Placement class there was. This was probably a different time and place, but that'd be physically impossibl

> All the kids were required to take every Advanced Placement class there was. This was probably a different time and place, but that'd be physically impossible at my school, not to mention seriously stressful and probably useless in the end. > If children would come home and say that a teacher hated them or was not fair, our response was that you need to find a way to get along. I hope this is simply a simplification or exaggeration, as it makes me a little sad. Complaining isn't just demanding rectification, but also a request to be heard and understood. If a kid complains and is immediately told to deal with it because that's how the world works, that's gonna provide a not great lesson on their problems being heard. > Remember, for 15 years, she was either pregnant or just had a baby. I'm in no place to judge how many kids one should have. But damn, that's intense. There's this interesting contrast (I hesitate to use the world hypocrisy) between the emphasis on self actualization and responsibility and the strict rules. Like if you're raising a kid to be intellectually driven and curious, why not let them choose the AP courses? Or why force them to study for 2 hours every day if you're giving the whole "make mistakes and learn from it" spiel? How about they fail a test or two and then learn to study? This ethos of gung-ho strict parenting isn't necessarily bad, but I want to ask these parents: "what if it didn't turn out alright?" What if one of the kids got addicted to drugs? What if they became depressed? Would they have stayed the course? Sure, it didn't happen, but I don't think that's because the parents made sure kids played sports and forced them to change their own oil. And I don't think that families where shit did happen were necessarily doing something wrong. While one can certainly credit the parents for their children's outcomes, there's an undeniable amount of luck involved.

xvector 7y ago
> This was probably a different time and place, but that'd be physically impossible at my school, not to mention seriously stressful and probably useless in the end. Can confirm. Took almost 20 AP classes in highschool, alongside some college classes once I had exhausted the entire highschool AP curriculum. All of my own accord - which I only mention because it would probably really get this author going. No one asked me, or even suggested it. I even had to go break through some bureaucratic tape to make it happen. When I went to college, I realized it did not make me smarter, or more capable, or even have a better work ethic than my peers that took 2-4 AP classes throughout their whole highschool curriculum. In fact, I found my work ethic was a bit worse - my work ethic was optimized for passing AP exam after exam rather than absorbing the information in-depth. I had become a master of heuristics/intuition, but class itself very much became an "in through one ear, out the other" affair, where I'd retain the minimum necessary key points and forget these shortly after the semester concluded. > What if one of the kids got addicted to drugs? What if they became depressed? Would they have stayed the course? Apparently, they would have: > "We let them suffer consequences and would not try to mitigate the consequences because we saw them suffering. We would cry and be sad, but would not do anything to reduce the consequences of their actions."

xvector 7y ago

> This was probably a different time and place, but that'd be physically impossible at my school, not to mention seriously stressful and probably useless in the end. Can confirm. Took almost 20 AP classes in highschool, alongside some college classes once I had exhausted the entire highschool AP curriculum. All of my own accord - which I only mention because it would probably really get this author going. No one asked me, or even suggested it. I even had to go break through some bureaucratic tape to make it happen. When I went to college, I realized it did not make me smarter, or more capable, or even have a better work ethic than my peers that took 2-4 AP classes throughout their whole highschool curriculum. In fact, I found my work ethic was a bit worse - my work ethic was optimized for passing AP exam after exam rather than absorbing the information in-depth. I had become a master of heuristics/intuition, but class itself very much became an "in through one ear, out the other" affair, where I'd retain the minimum necessary key points and forget these shortly after the semester concluded. > What if one of the kids got addicted to drugs? What if they became depressed? Would they have stayed the course? Apparently, they would have: > "We let them suffer consequences and would not try to mitigate the consequences because we saw them suffering. We would cry and be sad, but would not do anything to reduce the consequences of their actions."