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Comment by allendoerfer | Hacker News Reader

As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting.

You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.

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The thing to remember is that we're all unique, and there probably are a tiny minority of people for whom this is an ideal path, so it's best not to judge until/unless we know the child & family personally. The fat part of the curve absolutely benefit from a varied and diverse childhood & adolescence ... although I'd argue we've [in the US] slowed formal education too far and there's ample room for a) faster academic education and b) a dedicated vocational trades track.

I'm not even sure it matters how broad his education was, if (as you said) he has been happy with his life, but also as long as he is adaptable enough to switch directions if he becomes unhappy with his direction later in life.

Many of us old folk change direction over the years. The key to a happy life in the long run is not to know everything when you are young, or to have picked the right direction from the start, but to recognize when your direction is no longer fulfilling, and to know when and how to change when you are old.

I think a basic understanding of history, culture and how our society works is absolutely required. I think it is our responsibility to prevent at least the worst mistakes we did in the past and preserve at least the best achievements.

We have turned in circles in the past and will do it again if we do not get that we turned in circles.

Not a truism for everyone. The history, culture, and society I learned in school was too Eurocentric / Western and was completely irrelevant to my personal development and sense of identity as a minority in this society.

You have to realize the fact that humans have some really annoying bugs.

a) The first one is the fact that we want (mostly) to help each other and make each other happy. This looks benign, but combined with b) can be really irritating

b) Humans are bad at empathy. You might enjoy humanistic education or sports and so you automatically think that everyone else does too.

This probably worked fine for our ancestors (getting torn apart by a cave lion is something no-one would like) but kind of breaks in modern society.

Different people like different things, keep that in mind.

You missed one critical bug:

c) Most humans just won't "do it". As a child, student, teacher, and parent I've realized that most tasks really aren't that hard, and by far the greatest hindrance to expedient success is an irrational unwillingness to "just do it".

I think a bit different about humanism. I think a basic humanistic education is more like a drivers license for society. Know nothing about WW2? Well, you should not be allowed to vote, because it could turn out really bad for all of us. Democracy can be really dangerous without proper education.

What does all technical excellence mean as long as the Middle East is a clusterfuck? Most really big problems have little to do with technology.

The reality is that most people that vote do not know all that much about anything materially helpful from a geopolitical standpoint (many politicians themselves included I'll assert) and are basically low-information, single-issue voters that get pandered to in elections, unfortunately. While some arbitrary criteria is needed to keep people voting on issues that they have no information about (although I argue many 15 year olds are better informed than many 51 year olds, the average 15 year old is definitely not while we have some debate on the 51 year olds), establishing some "knowledge test" or something similar for voting is how we lose the basic foundations of democracy.

What really needs to be done particularly in the US is increased voter motivation because low turn-outs are not helping anything at all here. People don't want to talk politics out of "politeness" or something other passive policy and the country continues to have trouble talking about hard issues without leading to emotionally charged methods of "argument" that have led us to the current state of things with low voter engagement and politics devolving into a minstrel show of democracy.

Are you truly proposing a limit on voting rights based on educational achievements? I think that is a road that will lead to an elite class in our society, limiting political power to those who grew up in poverty or had other struggles.

We already have enough problems with an elite class within our economic power. Lets not extend that elitism into governmental processes as well.

I did not. I just wanted to say, that we should try to educate children, because they will be allowed to vote as adults.

Thank you for clarifying. I must have been thrown off by your exact words of, "Well, you should not be allowed to vote"

Why is exclusively technical education bad? Who cares if he doesn't know much about politics, art, or geography? All that matters is that he loves what he's doing.

Because we live in a democracy and I want to be sure that people how have actual power over me know some basic facts about politics, art, geography and history.

As it already is, for the most part, they don't.

Questioning the sacred cow of universal suffrage might be a better allocation of mental resources than picking on a single kid's parents.

Ah yes, good point. Coming from a fledgling democracy, I'm not used to thinking about these kinds of things. I don't see art being useful for decision-making though.

> Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?

Completely agree with you. He has the rest of his life to get better at those areas

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