The true problem is liability. Since teenagers can’t assume it for themselves until the age of majority, nor sign any binding contracts.
A teenager that messes up in some catastrophic way and turns themselves into a quadriplegic, will need several tens of millions dollars in healthcare over their lifespan, and will likely be awarded it by most courts, especially if they get enough media attention. Even if it happened solely because of their own negligence, unlike how it works with adults.
No teenager can contribute enough valuable work for any organization doing anything remotely risky physically to take on that risk.
This includes even basic things such as woodworking, or milking a cow. Which is why any ‘employment’ of that kind is done on an informal family and friends basis in the U.S.
Even fast food franchisees are getting wary of hiring teenagers because the chances of a huge lawsuit are becoming significant.
In other countries with much lower expectations of liability or healthcare, there is far less ‘stretched adolescence’.
This is what I came here to say :) I am taking a different approach with my kids: homeschool, then get them to graduate college at 18. Thus they have the credentials to be ‘adult’ at the same time as the legal rights of an adult. I think it is very hard to be faster than that, at least in the US.
To the original point, there are often very few rules (it depends on the state or smaller area) about what constitutes ‘school’. If you really want to make a difference you could start a private school, and then make real work 100% of your curriculum. Call it work study, internship, vocational study, practicum, whatever. This lets you choose your students, and then give them a chance to live up to their potential. If it works you can make it a franchise.
What were the principal factors that led to your decision that homeschooling and early graduation was ‘better’ for your kids then a ‘conventional’ schooling approach/timetable?
Clearly entering the workforce earlier leads to financial independence sooner, more years in employment hence greater lifetime wealth accumulation, etc. It’s not clear that these things are that important either to individual well-being and happiness or in terms of one’s place in broader society, so I’m interested in other kinds of reasons.
Full disclosure: I am ‘a priori’ against homeschooling in most cases. My belief is the principal value of schooling is to provide maximal ‘contact time’ with a highly heterogenous group of people, to enable acquisition of the kinds of skills that are important for societal cohesiveness in a heterogenous world. Substituting at least a significant part of this contact time for time at home (or time with a more homogeneous group i.e. other homeschooled children and their parents) reduces the size of the ‘soft skills’ training data set for teenagers at an important time in their lives. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, even if it leads to on-paper ‘adult credentials’ at age 18.
My decision to homeschool was due to my own experiences in public school, and the common thread amongst my similarly public schooled friends. We were all smart, socially outcast, and had a terrible time in school. If you’re smart and weird school holds you back, limits your exploration of your potential, and retards your social growth by forcing you into age based groups instead of intelligence based groups.
For my kids, they get contact with a more heterogenous group than school would allow. They spend time with kids and adults of a wide age range, and a wide social range. Think hippy live in the woods unschoolers to more academic atheist homeschoolers. They also get much, much more time to be kids. School is around 2 to 3 hours per day for each kid, until they go to community college. Plus no bus, no arbitrary schedule, no homework, no forced nap time, and no bullying.
At 14 or so they go into community college, which is again more heterogenous than either public high school or 4 year college. My son’s lab partner was a 50 year old retired fireman from Alaska, and my son learned more than chemistry that semester. Then they go to 4 year college, and learn to be part of their future class of college educated upper middle class folks.
In truth it was about not forcing my kids to endure what I had to endure, what I felt was unjust and cruel. I’ve seen wonderful outcomes so far, and that wasn’t a forgone conclusion. The kids are happy, educated, and ready for the world. I’m happy enough with it to repeat this for the next 4 kids.
The true problem is liability. Since teenagers can’t assume it for themselves until the age of majority, nor sign any binding contracts.
A teenager that messes up in some catastrophic way and turns themselves into a quadriplegic, will need several tens of millions dollars in healthcare over their lifespan, and will likely be awarded it by most courts, especially if they get enough media attention. Even if it happened solely because of their own negligence, unlike how it works with adults.
No teenager can contribute enough valuable work for any organization doing anything remotely risky physically to take on that risk.
This includes even basic things such as woodworking, or milking a cow. Which is why any ‘employment’ of that kind is done on an informal family and friends basis in the U.S.
Even fast food franchisees are getting wary of hiring teenagers because the chances of a huge lawsuit are becoming significant.
In other countries with much lower expectations of liability or healthcare, there is far less ‘stretched adolescence’.
This is what I came here to say :) I am taking a different approach with my kids: homeschool, then get them to graduate college at 18. Thus they have the credentials to be ‘adult’ at the same time as the legal rights of an adult. I think it is very hard to be faster than that, at least in the US.
To the original point, there are often very few rules (it depends on the state or smaller area) about what constitutes ‘school’. If you really want to make a difference you could start a private school, and then make real work 100% of your curriculum. Call it work study, internship, vocational study, practicum, whatever. This lets you choose your students, and then give them a chance to live up to their potential. If it works you can make it a franchise.
You can do that, but you are opening yourself up for one of the students suing you for not paying minimum wage.
What were the principal factors that led to your decision that homeschooling and early graduation was ‘better’ for your kids then a ‘conventional’ schooling approach/timetable?
Clearly entering the workforce earlier leads to financial independence sooner, more years in employment hence greater lifetime wealth accumulation, etc. It’s not clear that these things are that important either to individual well-being and happiness or in terms of one’s place in broader society, so I’m interested in other kinds of reasons.
Full disclosure: I am ‘a priori’ against homeschooling in most cases. My belief is the principal value of schooling is to provide maximal ‘contact time’ with a highly heterogenous group of people, to enable acquisition of the kinds of skills that are important for societal cohesiveness in a heterogenous world. Substituting at least a significant part of this contact time for time at home (or time with a more homogeneous group i.e. other homeschooled children and their parents) reduces the size of the ‘soft skills’ training data set for teenagers at an important time in their lives. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, even if it leads to on-paper ‘adult credentials’ at age 18.
My decision to homeschool was due to my own experiences in public school, and the common thread amongst my similarly public schooled friends. We were all smart, socially outcast, and had a terrible time in school. If you’re smart and weird school holds you back, limits your exploration of your potential, and retards your social growth by forcing you into age based groups instead of intelligence based groups.
For my kids, they get contact with a more heterogenous group than school would allow. They spend time with kids and adults of a wide age range, and a wide social range. Think hippy live in the woods unschoolers to more academic atheist homeschoolers. They also get much, much more time to be kids. School is around 2 to 3 hours per day for each kid, until they go to community college. Plus no bus, no arbitrary schedule, no homework, no forced nap time, and no bullying.
At 14 or so they go into community college, which is again more heterogenous than either public high school or 4 year college. My son’s lab partner was a 50 year old retired fireman from Alaska, and my son learned more than chemistry that semester. Then they go to 4 year college, and learn to be part of their future class of college educated upper middle class folks.
In truth it was about not forcing my kids to endure what I had to endure, what I felt was unjust and cruel. I’ve seen wonderful outcomes so far, and that wasn’t a forgone conclusion. The kids are happy, educated, and ready for the world. I’m happy enough with it to repeat this for the next 4 kids.
This is awesome, I hope I meet your kids sometime.