I am not a parent, and I do not advocate sending "parents to jail", of course. I realize now that I should have been more careful with the words I chose or, at

I am not a parent, and I do not advocate sending "parents to jail", of course. I realize now that I should have been more careful with the words I chose or, at least, indicate more clearly what I meant as a joke, and what I meant seriously. My mistake. Having said that, I would like to add that I went to high-school in Europe, so I don't know how bad or soul-crushing the default American high-school is. If it's like in the movies, then a cram school might not seem that bad an idea, after all. I read the NYTimes article, and it seems to me they're trying to "copy" a kind of school usually found in Asia. A friend of mine taught English in Japan for a few years, and his opinion on cram schools is very, very low. In particular, he witnessed that many students would simply burn out too young and lose any sort of curiosity and creativity they might have once had. I hope Hunter High School is not THAT kind of cram school. In the article, they mentioned that 11 year olds were skipping meals and drinking coffee to keep up with the demands, and I find that disturbing. First-generation immigrants would certainly find it useful to learn English vocabulary and the like, but what about the old-fashioned approach: here's a book, here's a dictionary. Read one, and check the words you don't know in the other. It worked for me. But then, many parents probably work long hours and simply lack the time to educate their children in a more old-fashioned way. Certainly, not all kids would be able to stay focused growing up and being educated in a rather unstructured environment as I did, but maybe there are other ways of creating learning opportunities for kids. A "hacker school" where kids would learn some programming, electronics and build some LEGO Mindstorms could be a great idea. Kids could chose projects they're genuinely interested in, and work with each other, thus developing social skills along the way. A sort of NYC Resistor version of Hunter HS. Would that be too irrealistic?