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A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

deseret.com

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Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#41

Post by quantified »

klyrs wrote: post #3

This is some real inspiration porn. The kid sounds amazing, and it's tragic that he died so young. I have family that practices unschooling, and in their case, that means fundamentalist indoctrination, no math, no history, near illiteracy, no saleable skills or motivation to get a job or do anything independently. And I just know that they're going to send this to my mom as evidence that they're doing the right thing…

Like the "small schools" movement, it turns out that all systems are fundamentally affected by the quality of their participants. There are some colleges that feel more like "un-schools", and go-getters who attend these can go really far, while ordinary students flounder and founder.

For the truly remarkable (and the subject here seems to fit that), sticking them in any factory-like school setting is a waste. Un-schooling the majority of children would be an interesting social experiment that I'd rather see in a different country first.

The brightest candles burn out the fastest, wasn't that they saying, roughly?

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#42

Post by asperous »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #34
klyrs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

At least in Oregon this is already a thing

https://www.oregon.gov/ode/learning-options/HomeSchool/Pages...

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#43

Post by quantified »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #34
klyrs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

Except that even what you're testing them on may not be really the most useful or applicable stuff. Any such testing would need to take into account what they actually have been doing and learning. Since the point of much learning is to be able to do, looking at accomplishment is super important. And a productive evaluation of people like the subject here might be challenging to system educators with a vested interest in our factory schooling.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#44

Post by bequanna »

contingencies wrote: post #26
bequanna wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? His parents were immensely supportive. I can’t imagine any other situation where a parent would essentially dedicate their life to support their child’s development.

I read the article. In my reading it implied the whole family were disabled, the parents housebound, and that for half of his life the kid was effectively permanently engaged in self-directed business-linked study outside of the house.

Was there any indication that this kid would have been happier or “better off” in any other situation?

It sounds like he thrived in the specific set of conditions that he was raised in. Would that be true if he had grown up middle class and went to a traditional public school and force-fed common core nonsense?

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#45

Post by germinalphrase »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #34
klyrs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

We don’t even universally require our schools to do standardized testing, so good luck getting traction.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#46

Post by fock »

julianeon wrote: post #32
fock wrote: post #15

So, as a European I read: mormon paper (Deseret...) hails parents who made their child work their farm. Because reading things like: > His spelling and grammar lagged behind grade level. He consistently misspelled the word “business,” and stumbled over the pronunciation of simple words. doesn't really spell hidden genius of the 21st century but probably describes millions of peasants in Europe during the middle-ages.…

They don't call him a genius though, they call him America's most remarkable kid, with emphasis on his business acumen. It seems unfair to say something like "he's not going to revolutionize science" when they never implied he would.

> They don't call him a genius though

no, but about half the other posts here do - so I put down what my perception of the case is.

> with emphasis on his business acumen

To me, the business acumen of his parents seems a lot higher. On their twitter they start publishing his future books already :). Also there is a lot of financing (for example his John Deere) going on and while I can't see the full picture, I doubt that he signed those contracts...

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#47

Post by bequanna »

fock wrote: post #25
bequanna wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram a sentence is more important than understanding tax law?

Well, to understand tax law, you need to understand language quite well (see another post these days on the frontpage...) - which usually comes with some skills in applying it. It smells a bit fishy, if you claim a person can do the first, but not the latter.

Wait, you’re claiming that someone needs to be able to diagram a sentence or spell perfectly to understand tax law?

That’s ridiculous.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#48

Post by fock »

bequanna wrote: post #47
fock wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to understand tax law, you need to understand language quite well (see another post these days on the frontpage...) - which usually comes with some skills in applying it. It smells a bit fishy, if you claim a person can do the first, but not the latter.

Wait, you’re claiming that someone needs to be able to diagram a sentence or spell perfectly to understand tax law? That’s ridiculous.

I don't know, but I guess that the intricacies of tax law are written down. And to study that (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/112b here?) you need to be able to be quite proficient at reading. And usually proficiency at efficient reading of laws translates to an ok command over speaking/writing as well (which apparently is not the case here)... if you read weird words a 100 times, I expect a moderately intelligent person to remember how to spell them...

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#49

Post by germinalphrase »

wyager wrote: post #22
xani_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor kid, the family are basically gimping his start in life by a decade... it's outright abuse

The preponderance of evidence suggests that schooling has essentially zero impact on adult outcomes until around middle/high school. Most public schools are clearly more abusive than simply not subjecting your children to the standard industrial schooling regimen.

“ Most public schools are clearly more abusive than simply not subjecting your children to the standard industrial schooling regimen.”

This has not been my experience at all.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#50

Post by solveit »

soared wrote: post #38
lkrubner wrote: post #2

This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…

This isn’t really true except for random edge cases. The people leading countries go to school and get law degrees. People leading business got college degrees or worked in business for decades. You can pull edge cases like Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, but even then he spent a lot of time in his 20s running his business.

If you define 'leading countries' narrowly enough, everyone in that category becomes a random edge case.

Less flippantly, you should expect people running high-variance strategies to be overrepresented at the top. The people leading countries may go to school and get law degrees, but if they stay the path of doing what everyone else does but better, they end up an unremarkable partner at a law firm or something, not POTUS or Bezos or Musk. They don't have to literally do life-threateningly dangerous things (although I'm sure the propensity correlates and that's what the previous poster was talking about), but they do have to be willing to risk the comfortable life that was all but guaranteed for them.

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