Who tells u? Yes,I’m Chinese. In China, only a few kids can’t afford to go to school.But in China, most of parants pay lots of attention to a diploma,they can do anything, only for there schoolkids.

there’s alternative programs for teens too

http://geocities.com/moonwindstarsky/programs

http://geocities.com/moonwindstarsky/unschooling

“Maybe the best option to settle the debate over what kind of high school is best is “no high school”.”

There are alternative schools, free schools and unschooling. Unschooling is basically not formal education led by your interests.

I’m not the expert in case somebody wants to debate. Ask the unschoolers themselves and their parents.

So you’ve discovered unschooling.

This is how I, and most of my friends have grown up: I biked the pacific coast one summer, when I was seventeen. My friend Sarabeth did it across the country at the same age.

I run a small internet service now — I’m twenty-two. I started when I was thirteen, learning on the job. My path has been one of alternating travel and work, and it’s a good life.

Many of my friends travel more: Europe, africa, around the world. One’s now a massage therapist, some are in college (of their own choice).

We don’t go to school. I haven’t been to one full-time since 4th grade, and was only peripherally involved since. I learn on my own — it’s not my parents teaching, it’s me learning of my own volition. It works. It sounds ludicrous (read the above comments!) but it does work.

My sister is another case: She’s twenty now. She’s been a veterinary assistant for years, is a hot-air balloon launch crewmember, a dogsled tour operator, and volunteer firefighter.

My brother is a ballet dancer.

We aren’t suffering from our lack of formal education. We’re thriving.

Well, interesting…but in my maternal view, the years between about 12 and 16 are the years that the kids need the highest parental interaction after infancy.

I’m with the poster who said, go with the kids. Of course, doesn’t quite work if you have 4 kids spread over 20 years.

It’s surprising that no one has bothered to point out that this is entirely feasible today. That $14,000 is coming from your state and property tax payments, so if you have a sufficiently high income to realize the benefits of such an education for your children (argument-from-past-inflammatory-post) then clearly the solution is to pick up some property in Alaska, switch your legal residency, and put Junior on the next flight to Beijing.

Sounds good. Out-source our kids education to other counties and free up this country for the retiring 60s generation!
It would probably be better for the kids. They would learn more cultures, languages, and tolerance unlike some of their parents. The kids would learn that not everyone has a two SUVs in their garage and a 7-eleven on the corner.

However, if I were to extend Phil’s idea, why not take a two-year sabbatical along with your kids, spend it in China or India (or maybe Bolivia – hey, we’re all Americans) living in much larger quarters with a few servants, learning a new language and some new business / technical skills, get another PhD or MBA, and enjoy the time off with your family. This two-year paradise will cost you probably less than a few decent two-week vacations in the US plus the cost of tutors to prep your kids for college. Plus, you eliminate the downside of your kids being away from home for two years.

On the other hand, it seems a little odd that Phil would offer an advice on child-rearing before he becomes a parent himself. Although his best intentions and insider’s insight into the education system are most appreciated (as well as his analytical mind and ability to find great solutions), his lack of first-hand experience in this area make me doubt his ability to evaluate this suggestion from all the angles – not just how great it is to learn Mandarin in China vs. on Canal St. in NY. Note that despite his decade+ experience with cell phones and gadgets like Treo and laptops, he deemed it useful to consult a pretty wide audience on such a minor purchase. Yet he’s offering an advice on one of the most important areas of life for our children with apparently less consideration and thought he spent selecting a cell phone. This is presented from the viewpoint of the parents, not American (like in, US) taxpayers, of course.

For those not ready to evict their precious teenagers from Cambridge basements and send them to study in this Chineese wonderland (like we lack Communist ideologists in Mass.), you may consider that getting a US-born and bred MIT or Harvard grad to tutor you darlings can cost about $20/hr, and pretty good PhD students or post-docs from overseas can be had for about as much (you can try skipping a lunch once a week to afford one). They can give your high schoolers enough homework to keep them so busy they won’t have time for blogs. And if they’re not the studious type, chances are this realization will come to you too late once they return fom China.

Also, I would question Phil’s cost basis for overseas education – I think it has been grossly oversimplified and underestimated. A really good full-curriculum boarding school can cost well above his $14k allowence, accounting for everything. Of course, it’s still cheaper than a comparable $25-30 / yr boarding school in the US, and provides a level of quality that no public school can dream of. Keep in mind, though, that the child needs to be preconditioned to integrate well in such a school – if he’s been hooked on Blockbuster videos and computer games for the previous ten years of schooling, what are the chances he’ll be enjoing fine arts and Lobochevsky’s geometry in his senior HS years?

If you lack the funds for MIT tutors or the ticket to China, and your child is really interested in top-notch scientific education, maybe he could offer some barter deal to Phil – like clean his appartment or walk his dog in exchange for some tutoring. True Phil is not an IIT grad, but he sure beats most public school math and CS teachers.

And if you really want to try to bring some change into the US vs. promoting a mass migration to China or India (are they just as generous with their work visas?), how about asking Bush to deliver on his pre-election promise on vouchers, no child left behind, and other worthless propaganda, instead of holding your breath for this tution windfall? Although maybe sending your kids to China is a more effective way to reign in this ever-escalating education spending disaster

It’s interesting to note the number of responces this posting generated – it nearly exceeds the number of postings on subjects like the stupidity of Bush, the evil Israelis, the WAR without a UN ok, and is approaching the number of responces to questions such as the selection of Phil’s new phone and laptop (talk about community support . Also note the absence of opposing opinions from Europe (must be not much better there, eh?), from anti-Bush left (the vouchers must have some appeal even to democratic parents – but Phil is talking here about cash credit .

Sorry for trying your patience with such a long blurb.

You guys got way too excited about an idea which is not even remotely realistic. It’s being debated like we could all send our kids to a third-world elite boarding school starting next year, maybe along with Philip to oversee this next wave of outsourcing process.

If the parents were able to get even half of the money being wasted on public schools, there are quite a lot of pretty good education options available domestically, for children and youth of any age. While China might still be cheaper, it may not really be better – unless you’re looking at your kids the way they look at the manufacturing process of disposable goods (still waiting for that $3k Chineese car that could drive from Boston to LA and back without stalling or making you seasick).

A more realistic approach to solving the dilemma would be if you were to finance your child’s education personally, in whole or in part, then is it a better option to send your kid to a cheaper but higher-quality overseas school.

It’s been done by many people for college education, where they get BA/BS at an accreditted school somewhere on the cheap, and then come back to the States for MA / PhD (often, though, for liberal arts or pre-law education). There’s no reason why it cannot be extended to 16-18 y.o. for HS – and as a matter of fact, quite a large number of people do it. The difference is that it’s often done by the wealthier parents sending the kids to really exclusive boarding schools, and Phil proposes to extend it to the rest of us if we ever live to see his utopian dream of the federales giving you back your $14k / year / kid come true. But then again, for this money you can find pretty compelling options in the US – and use the overseas option as part of the cultural / language enrichment program or to study certain subjects better developed there – e.g., Chineese herbal medicine or Thai massage.

As far as the idea itself, again, it’s not new, but has been used for quite a long time. As an alternative proposal, perhaps Phil might consider reviving his ADU but geared towards high school kids and offering a much broader spectrum of subjects. Bringing over a few PhD’s from India or China for a group of 10-12 kids would cost less then shipping the kids over, and would compensate for somewhat higher cost of living in places like Maine or Vermont. If Phil subsidizes the building, I’ll subsidize the land As far as the cultural enrichment, the kid coming to Maine from LA may learn just as many new things about people and nature as by going to China – yet those things are closer to home (unless well-meaning Phil expects the kids to remain in Asia, where the $1M condos are just as affordable as they are in Cambridge, but being measured in sq. meters, must be a bit larger .

Thanks for bringing up this interesting idea!

Like kim, I was also wondering about the $14,000 figure. I remembered that Michigan state aid is about $7000/student, so it seemed high. But I tried to find some budget info, and the state aid was only about 2/3s of the total budget (not sure where the rest of the funding comes from? frightening, I’m 46 years old, I should know this!)

I also remember hearing that the cost per student is much higher in high school compared to elementary. The cost of chemistry labs, etc I suppose. So if the NY average was 12,388/student, the cost for a high school student might already be much higher than 14,000.

Then I got to thinking about taking the idea further. How about just giving each kid an account with 13 years * $12,388 and skip the education completely? They could live off the interest and pursue their own bliss. Something like the homeschoolers call “un-schooling”, except better funded.