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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

If you are choosing to live in one of these places, there is probably someone in your household not working who is going to mind the kids and help engage in homemaking.

You will also find you have neighbors in similar situations who likely run a small group daycare operation for a bit of extra cash.

Yes, your kid is not going to have as many teachers. They will also have far, far, far fewer peers and smaller classroom sizes. They will get more attention from the teachers.

If your kid wants to do AP or SAT prep, you will find your local school can run the course after hours. You can probably hire one of their teachers.

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Fair, there would be a more informal economy that would compensate for a lot of it.

Am a bit skeptical that a course could easily be created out of the air like that, but maybe smaller places are a lot more flexible.

Absolutely true, I would argue the advantage of having greater attention from knowledgeable adults in a small town far outweigh the benefits from living in a city.

> Yes, your kid is not going to have as many teachers. They will also have far, far, far fewer peers and smaller classroom sizes. They will get more attention from the teachers. If your kid wants to do AP or SAT prep, you will find your local school can run the course after hours. You can probably hire one of their teachers.

This seems a bit disingenuous. More likely, families would need to give up on their child getting a truly rigorous education. Schools in rural US don't have the ability to actually prepare students for top tier college programs. They may be adequately prepared for middling undergraduate education but they won't be anywhere even close to AP/IB students from Austin/SF/Seattle/Boston.

I think you're giving high schools way too much credit in general for the rigor of the education they provide for the best students.

There are a whole bunch of really bad inner city schools - to the point that "inner city school" is synonymous with bad education. Tutoring is expensive, most middle and low income families can't afford them.

If you are wealthy enough to afford a tutor in the city, then great you can bring out a tutor to you or live near a good school.

Indeed, but schools like:

- Westwood in Austin

- Lynbrook in SF

- Thomas Jefferson in Richmond

- IL Math & Science Academy in Chicago

- Clements High School in Houston

Are public, free, and will provide that education without tutors. My wife grew up on a family salary of ~$25,000/year in the 00's and went to one of these schools and through the IB program was incredibly well prepared to get top GPA in a top-5 engineering undergrad.

A huge part of that was being surrounded by other also very smart people, and being constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area, and you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free. If you want free land, you simply have to give up that quality of education.

Access is highly variable though and I'd go so far as to say it's the exception in cities rather than the norm. For example, Cambridge MA has one public high school and it's very much middle of the pack in the state with respect to testing outcomes. Though again it's probably a mistake to assign too much credit/blamr to the school anyway unless it's exceptionally bad.

Binning/exclusivity/stratification is as big or bigger part of that than the quality of the school's education.

What percentage of kids are served by schools of that caliber? 5%? 1%? That's not "access" to better education, it's selection bias.

>constantly challenged by her high school teachers who set rigorous standards. You absolutely will not get that in a rural area,

Rural life precludes having or setting high standards?

>you don't generally have to pay for it in areas where the houses themselves aren't close to free.

You're paying for it, whether you have kids or not. You just don't have the freedom of picking your child's educators without having to buy a new house and move to change school districts.

And that's presuming the rural school isn't sufficient, which is a loaded assumption all on its own.

> Rural life precludes having or setting high standards?

In practice it does because people going there generally go for:

1. Nature - awesome!

2. Self isolation - you can't hack it in mass society anymore, hardly a premise for high standards, statistically

3. Are stuck there because of financial reasons - it's hard to have high standards when you're unemployed, underemployed, underpaid.

4. Are stuck there because of family - that's a valid reason but you're also stuck there with people at points 2 & 3.

Cities have a much greater degree of variance, but as the floor is lower so too the ceiling is much higher.

There's just more people of more backgrounds around in cities.

Inner city schools can be bad but they usually have more opportunities than rural ones. Rural ones literally have nothing to offer. I’ve talked to enough people who went to inner city schools - they had way more opportunity than I could’ve ever imagined. School might’ve had disruptions but opportunity was very much available.

My school was so poor they went to a four day week and cut all electives. No one went to a target college and people struggled when they did go to college (many changing their major from a hard one to an easy one). I think I went to the most prestigious college out of the entire group (not even that good) and I certainly was not prepared. The average student at my university was infinitely smarter and harder working than people at my HS. It was the first time in my life I had to actually work at schooling.

Mind you - I chose one of the most rigorous and difficult majors. So, it was hard even for the kids who did come from good schools. Anyone else from my school would’ve dropped out - I had unparalleled grit and that was the only reason I was able to continue.

Otherwise said, if you want to move there, the wife is expected to stay at home and accept no possibility of getting job or career for much longer time then it would be otherwise.

There is no reason a male of the house can't be the homemaker. Even if he's the one working some of the land, that will likely be before the kids are really awake.

You may also have an elderly parent or an older child who can do the work. Remember, with enough land you can give family members their own house, yard and driveway.

It's important to not get stuck in old ways of thinking.

"It's important to not get stuck in old ways of thinking."

Great comment, but I think you mean stuck in new/urban ways of thinking.

It probably seems crazy to someone in a rural town that parents would spend all their time working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children.

Villages here have tons of women working jobs. Those places are not rich, so when shops and factories opend, they seeked those jobs. Where they can't (like for lack of childcare) they often actually really struggle. The social issues are very real in those places.

Plus, is it? Or you are using rural as shortcut for fundamentalist Christian conservatives subcultures? The manipulative talking point "working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children" suggest so.

> spend all their time working to afford childcare so they don't have to interact with their own children.

That is obviously not the intent. It is a calculation. We come out significantly ahead if we hire a nanny or do daycare than if me or my spouse quits to take care of the kids.

It is more expensive to go the nanny route, but that will give us the option of being near our kids all day and interacting with them, which is very valuable to us, while still working full time jobs (we are both remote).

Every parent is trying to balance income, expense and best interest of the child (attention, education, socialization).

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