71–80 of 196 posts
“Don’t ever take ‘can’t’ as the answer unless you’ve verified that it is against the law or against the powers of physics,” Kevin wrote in his memoir. What a human. Such a great balance of a healthy brain and the confidence to trust it.
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Is it really possible no one instructed them to wear life jackets? Or is it more likely he typically wanted to prove everyone wrong? Obedience is taught to instill discipline. Sounds like Kevin already had plenty of discipline, yet apparently self-taught himself to never listen to anyone. Sounds like a combination of both Daedalus and Icarus.
I'm guessing its like bike helmets. I never see kids wearing bike helmets. It's not cool.
I think that’s a good part of why helmets took over skiing in Colorado but not California. In Colorado, the extreme skiers wore them, and the rest followed.
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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 interes…
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 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…
Poor kid, the family are basically gimping his start in life by a decade... it's outright abuse
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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
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It was mine. Do we cancel each other out? I’ve found I don’t typically use my experience specifically on school because it just can’t have been the norm.
The experience of schooling varies so incredibly much depending on where you lived and when you attended that all of these conversations are kind of... pointless to have with anonymous people (probably) far away.
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So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram a sentence is more important than understanding tax law?
> So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram a sentence is more important than understanding tax law? What's being described isn't the ability to diagram a sentence, but to write above a certain minimum standard. That skill is certainly more important for the average person than understanding tax law as most jobs that would require you to know tax law have good writing skills as a pre-requisite.…
I mean, do we believe any of this? An 8 year old isn’t running a business and selling to restaurants in a different state. No business would purchase from an 8 year, no business would ship goods from an 8 year old, no bank gives a loan to a 9 year old. The list goes on and on. Incredibly sad that a child has died, but this reads as pure fantasy.
My brother was stealing property (boats, go-karts, ATVs) and selling it to (mostly) legitimate businesses (run by adults) by the time he was 12. By the time he was 15ish he had a landscaping business with residential and commercial customers. Things are different when it’s real rural. Sure you can’t get a bank loan without an adult involved, but cash is cash. And if you need something for your business and a kid brin…
We also traded them for equipment like ATVs, guns, or whatever we needed.
OP has never left the city and so just assumes his life is all life.
Even his statement 'do we' just assumes we all believe as he does.
Cole also probably did what many young business owners do and put it in his parent's names.
Much of this is common place for country folk coming up, this kid just took it to extremes in all the best ways.
Finding lawyer's liens and trading work for property was brilliant- had OP paid attention he'd have had the answers to his doubts.
I know others said it was inspiration porn but I was just incredibly sad we lost such a bright star.
Edit- He-> Cole for clarity
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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…
This doesn’t make much sense because people inherit their parents’ wealth and businesses all the time.
People also inherit their country’s political leadership e.g. political families and monarchs.
To suggest that it requires a special breed of people to get these positions without proof is rather silly