Ask HN: Friend's 15 year old wants to drop out, I've been asked to intervene

HOWEVER, just about universally they highly highly value their own kids getting college degrees. It is one of the most important things they believe they can give their kids. So while they skipped parts of the traditional educational system, their experience after 30 years of life has convinced them that their own kids ought to have it.

Outside of these two, there was no guidance available to me for seeking an education beyond high school. To this day, I believe that this is still the norm in rural America. If it were not for a community of educated friends, it may have been another decade of rough living for me before I went to college. This contributes to one half of my opinion: in some circumstances, the secondary school environment has nothing to offer the student. In this case, it is evidently time to "move on."

The other half of my opinion is nearly directly contradictory. It comes from the part of my life education garnered over the past 13 years of being a parent. If I try to cast my mind into the situation where, two years hence, I will have to face the decision of allowing my first born to set foot out into a world he may not be mature enough to handle, some reservations are immediately apparent. I am counting on having a few more years to teach this person to manage his life (shop for food, keep his person and effects hygenic) and to make good decisions. It would take some significant reassurance and possibly some means of monitoring his well being to provide me with the peace of mind that would result in my ultimate blessing.

In the four years you attend high school, pure academic enrichment is not (or should not be) the only skills you acquire. As a slightly older person attending college, the total lack of life preparedness exhibited by the other inhabitants of my dorm was nothing short of astonishing. I believe that my focus on getting an education allowed me to wade through the "temptations of freedom" that my these kids could not. That focus was due to having spent most of my young life dealing with parents who partied all the time. My son doesn't have that life, and so I don't trust he has that focus, either. Your friend's son may believe he does, but as the parent of a teenager (who used to be a great deal more reasonable than he has been in the past few months)... you'd have a really tough time selling me on that.

Having said all that nonsense, I would start out by making a list of the pros and cons of taking the GED and heading off to college at 15/16 and then systematically plan to address all of the cons. And make sure to roll in some means of adapting when the plans don't work.

My eldest child is pretty smart, she basically tested out of the public high school curriculum at age 12, however most of that was due to a voracious and wide ranging reading habit fed out of a pretty strong curiosity drive. College taught her to discipline her efforts toward a specific goal. Sort of like Luke Skywalker learning that even if the force is strong in you, being unable to apply it effectively makes you weak.

The primary difference between the "we're all here together" college and doing it remotely, is the exposure to other people having similar/different challenges and meeting them around you. Since folks are rarely good at everything having people around who are good at things you aren't good at lets you learn from them, and they from you. People deal with stress, and failure, and challenge in different ways. In a college community you get to see how others do that and decide if its going to work for you. That stuff you can't get remotely and that is unfortunate.

he's solving real world problems in those languages!