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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

Now I wonder how many those parents are willing to be in debt for kids' academic tutoring. It says a lot about American parents.

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Huh? Is it a given that we should optimize life for school, particularly tutoring which I assume pertains to high school and below? I think in the absence of a disability, money spent on sports or drama club or 4H or whatever extra curriculars is a way better investment than extra math or something. To me it says they have sensible priorities.

This is a tough call- while I generally think that everybody should get a well-rounded liberal education, it's pretty clear that investing more time into math and science leds to generally better long-term outcomes in terms of money, and that money translates into significantly greater life quality.

That may make sense for setting public policy but it's not necessarily true with your own kids is it?

Unless the kid is really passionate about it and shows some real potential, I don't think it's worth breaking the bank for the kid to play in a competitive league. There are lots of fun/casual leagues for kids that don't travel and are much more affordable and provide a lot of the same benefits as the travel/competitive teams.

The survey was about extracurricular activities and if you look at the charts things like music and debate team are pretty high on the list.

I'm not sure what it says about Americans. If anything, I would wager that spending on tutoring is correlated with spending on sports.

Would you consider martial arts lessons to be sports, or academic? Personally I found my martial arts classes were key to me "shaping up" in my youth.

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