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I’m not a parent and this article may be 20/20 hind sight so parents please correct me if I’m completely off base. Allowing your child to drop out of high schoo

by jareds 13y ago

I’m not a parent and this article may be 20/20 hind sight so parents please correct me if I’m completely off base. Allowing your child to drop out of high school is a poor choice assuming they are capable of finishing it. I could maybe see this if you started the site when you were 11 and were looking at VC funding when you were 15 but based on the article Tubmlr wasn’t even started when he dropped out. There was no guarantee that David would have founded Tumblr and you were basically taking a lottery ticket on something like this. I’m glad it worked out for him but this isn’t a path any 15 year old with decent tech skills should follow.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
I guess the assumption is that high school is not just a waste of time cultural formality? One could do a lot with the 4 years they would otherwise spend in high school if they don't really need it.
- jbooth 13y ago
  Yeah, like learn how to write, calculus, some history and a smattering of the sciences.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Yes! I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, I guess it depends if you went to a good high school that actually taught those things or not. From my own experience, high school was super easy and I was shocked when I got to college in that I hadn't learn very much at all (there were exception of course).
    - yardie 13y ago
      Karp went to Bronx HS of Science. This is the 2nd most competitive school, after Stuysvesant, in NYC. I would be impressed if they didn't cover any of those subjects. By graduation, 100% of their students are college ready.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        That makes sense, but he still might have been bored. I don't think its unreasonable to take control of your destiny, even if you are a kid. It obviously worked out well for him.
hkmurakami 13y ago
I am thinking that those who drop out in this manner are the ones who (cognitively) could have done well in school and needed school the least, so to speak. When a follower herd forms, bad things could potentially happen.
wilfra 13y ago
A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. You learn a little bit about a lot of different things and hopefully by the end have some sense of what you want to pursue further. He had already figured that out by 14.
- kamaal 13y ago
  >>A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Frankly speaking, looking back what I was when I was 14. I am very glad I didn't make that 'what to do with the rest of my life' decisions back then. I'm sure 100% I would have made a very big mess of my life. 14 years is way to younger to make such decisions.
  - nthj 13y ago
    It depends a lot on the person, and maybe quite a bit on how they've invested/been raised those first 14 years. No need to extrapolate from one anecdote.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  A lot of people think they've figured out what they want to do with their lives when they're 14. But we never hear about the 99% of those people who end up unsuccessful after pursuing their dreams. We only hear about guys like this one.
kamaal 13y ago
Of course your are now going to read(at least for the next couple of weeks) how some one did a lot of things against common wisdom and yet made a lot of money. These stories are like those drawing books given to kids, where an outline is already present and they just have fill up the blank with a pencil and then fill color using crayons. Look at how these articles go. They take dropping out as pointA and then becoming a billionaire as pointB. Then they just draw a straight line connecting them both. And now the end inference which is tried to press upon is "Dropping out will make you a billionaire". Co relation of one in a million almost certainly doesn't imply causation. And now, for the true facts. For every billion $ company founded by a dropout there are likely several hundreds of thousand of examples, where some one ended in McDonalds, or working repairing cars in some body's garage, or a cab driver somewhere. And if you drop out of school, you are likely(heck, almost certain) to meet this fate. This reminds of a question I read in Times Of India(A leading news daily here in India). A guy once asked how to test if a stone is a diamond? Can one be sure by trying to smash with a hammer and then see if it doesn't break. The editor gave a pretty good reply which explains the situation. Yes you can be sure that the stone is a diamond if it doesn't get smashed on hitting with a hammer, But if it gets smashed it doesn't mean it wasn't a diamond.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  >Look at how these articles go. They take dropping out as pointA and then becoming a billionaire as pointB. Then they just draw a straight line connecting them both. And now the end inference which is tried to press upon is "Dropping out will make you a billionaire". Co relation of one in a million almost certainly doesn't imply causation. The stories also don't consider in depth what the person has done before they dropped out and how special they were already. Even the oft-told Bill Gates stories often gloss over his unique position of having ample computing time in his youth and how capable he was prior to dropping out.

by jareds 13y ago

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

I guess the assumption is that high school is not just a waste of time cultural formality? One could do a lot with the 4 years they would otherwise spend in high school if they don't really need it.

jbooth 13y ago
Yeah, like learn how to write, calculus, some history and a smattering of the sciences.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Yes! I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, I guess it depends if you went to a good high school that actually taught those things or not. From my own experience, high school was super easy and I was shocked when I got to college in that I hadn't learn very much at all (there were exception of course).
  - yardie 13y ago
    Karp went to Bronx HS of Science. This is the 2nd most competitive school, after Stuysvesant, in NYC. I would be impressed if they didn't cover any of those subjects. By graduation, 100% of their students are college ready.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      That makes sense, but he still might have been bored. I don't think its unreasonable to take control of your destiny, even if you are a kid. It obviously worked out well for him.

hkmurakami 13y ago

I am thinking that those who drop out in this manner are the ones who (cognitively) could have done well in school and needed school the least, so to speak. When a follower herd forms, bad things could potentially happen.

wilfra 13y ago

A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. You learn a little bit about a lot of different things and hopefully by the end have some sense of what you want to pursue further. He had already figured that out by 14.

kamaal 13y ago
>>A big part of high school and even college is figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Frankly speaking, looking back what I was when I was 14. I am very glad I didn't make that 'what to do with the rest of my life' decisions back then. I'm sure 100% I would have made a very big mess of my life. 14 years is way to younger to make such decisions.
- nthj 13y ago
  It depends a lot on the person, and maybe quite a bit on how they've invested/been raised those first 14 years. No need to extrapolate from one anecdote.
w1ntermute 13y ago
A lot of people think they've figured out what they want to do with their lives when they're 14. But we never hear about the 99% of those people who end up unsuccessful after pursuing their dreams. We only hear about guys like this one.

kamaal 13y ago

Of course your are now going to read(at least for the next couple of weeks) how some one did a lot of things against common wisdom and yet made a lot of money. These stories are like those drawing books given to kids, where an outline is already present and they just have fill up the blank with a pencil and then fill color using crayons. Look at how these articles go. They take dropping out as pointA and then becoming a billionaire as pointB. Then they just draw a straight line connecting them both. And now the end inference which is tried to press upon is "Dropping out will make you a billionaire". Co relation of one in a million almost certainly doesn't imply causation. And now, for the true facts. For every billion $ company founded by a dropout there are likely several hundreds of thousand of examples, where some one ended in McDonalds, or working repairing cars in some body's garage, or a cab driver somewhere. And if you drop out of school, you are likely(heck, almost certain) to meet this fate. This reminds of a question I read in Times Of India(A leading news daily here in India). A guy once asked how to test if a stone is a diamond? Can one be sure by trying to smash with a hammer and then see if it doesn't break. The editor gave a pretty good reply which explains the situation. Yes you can be sure that the stone is a diamond if it doesn't get smashed on hitting with a hammer, But if it gets smashed it doesn't mean it wasn't a diamond.

hkmurakami 13y ago
>Look at how these articles go. They take dropping out as pointA and then becoming a billionaire as pointB. Then they just draw a straight line connecting them both. And now the end inference which is tried to press upon is "Dropping out will make you a billionaire". Co relation of one in a million almost certainly doesn't imply causation. The stories also don't consider in depth what the person has done before they dropped out and how special they were already. Even the oft-told Bill Gates stories often gloss over his unique position of having ample computing time in his youth and how capable he was prior to dropping out.