It might work to have a specialized HS for hacking (hacking, not founding startups), but even there you'd face problem (a). Probably the best bet is for HS students interested in hacking to take courses at their local college-- which they do already.

That's an awfully broad statement. I'm sure there can be found someone very smart that would be interested in contributing back to children... Woz comes to mind, as does Will Wright...

(b) only a small fraction of people are suited by ability and temperament for this kind of work, and you can't select them at age 5.

I think you're thinking along different lines than the poster. He doesn't look at this as starting a venture capital firm, but as a replacement for the broken public school system. The funding doesn't have to come from equity, but the general hypothesis smells right:

A good early schooling would allow those currently going to public school to create (on average) more wealth in the future. One could use a fraction of that (future) wealth to actually fund the school. From the little I understand, a lot of private Universities work this way - where a good chunk of their budgets comes from alumni donations.

Why can't this system work before college?

This is a serious question. I'm sure the idea isn't exactly brand new, so why hasn't it worked? There's gotta be some kind of problem, but I'm not seeing it...

Try these

- http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

- http://paulgraham.com/mit.html

Would it work if the focus was actually founding startups, though? Four years of intensive programming training followed by the chance to found a startup (or co-found one) when you've graduated. Class projects could even be to actually launch startups, as a class.

We can do better.. We can at least try to do better than what's offered out there. I didn't have a place to be creative in high school. That happened after school, during the night. I know thousands of other kids are in the exact same place as I was.. Could we somehow give them a little hope?

One of my most vivid memories of childhood is from about 7 years old, when my brothers class (he was 9 or so) was doing an entrepreneurial project. The premise was a company to build the best paper aeroplane, where longer flights would earn more money which you could spend on more materials. Or something. I remember being obsessed by it, and begging to be allowed to do it as well. The same things I love about startups now (having come back to that realisation after a detour to phd land) is exactly the same as then.

What I love about startups is sort of hard to explain. Its not exactly running my own company, I find little excitement in the idea of a consulting firm. Its really being in that feedback loop of making, selling, reinvesting and growing. Its plugging the outputs back into the inputs, optimizing your clever piece of technology and scaling out of sight.

I desperately want schools to include more of these sorts of projects when my kids (first one on the way, yikes :) go to school. I think entrepreneurship and creativity are deeply linked.

Yes, better education produces "smarter" kids, sometimes dramatically so, by some definitions of "smart", but "where the vast majority are geniuses" is stretching it beyond credulity.

Touche :)

Hot-house them on 'how to launch a startup' and 'coding in Fortran' and you'll probably turn out legions of people very good at passing exams in 'structure of business plans (in the year 1999)' and 'syntax of Fortran', but when the world moves on they won't be able to adapt.

That said, I think your idea is sound, though your methods are wrong. A school should encourage creativity and intellectual development - that's how to produce your future YCombinators, journalists etc.

I think we're seeing the failure of the training model in India, where they do turn out legions of capable developers, but comparatively few capable entrepreneurs.

I guess I think that the best way to achieve your goal is actually closer to the current educational systems than one so directly and narrowly orientated towards the goal: education is more of a journey than a race.

It seems like the best compromise will present itself when real-world tests are done. The whole school won't be devoted to training, but there will be a certain percentage of training. The fact that there is a single focus (Your startup at the end of the road) will be the motivating force for students. I would've given anything to know that there was light at the end of the tunnel besides "go to college".

I totally agree with you. Education is a wonderful journey, not a race. Students would be able to find out what they like and a specific idea that motivates them, then get access to resources that would help them create value relating to that idea.

As justinsb points out, there are schools in India teaching this model as we speak...and while the startup culture in India has been exploding, I believe the success rate is even lower than in the US (maybe there's many other factors involved...maybe in ten years or twenty, India will be a startup machine, and all because they've built this programmer training culture within major universities). Certainly a strong math and science education can't hurt anyone, whether they want to be an entrepreneur or not.

Also it would have to really be multidisciplinary and the main focus would need to be on fostering creativity and transferring creative skills into the "real world", not just programming and a few art classes.

There is a really interesting "entrepreneurial" program at Everett Community College (http://www.everettcc.edu/programs/bat/sbd/), that could possible be reverse engineered into the type of program described above.

Hackers and entrepreneurs become who they are by realizing that they don't have to ask anyone's permission.

I remember learning violin when I was a kid. If I played something that wasn't on my "to-do" list, my parents would call upstairs "are you practicing, or just messing around?"

I read that Andre 3000 used the three chords in "Hey Ya" because, well, he'd just recently picked up the guitar and those were the three chords he knew. Didn't ask any permission, just started composing.

Recently, I saw a dude in a coffee shop with a guitar, and he was technically awesome. It was fun to stop and listen for a few minutes, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you what he was playing five minutes later.

Schools don't really teach creativity, and I don't think they can. But they might do a better job getting out of the way.

The engines all wait for Sir Topam Hat to show up at the station with a task for them. Once, Thomas the Train didn't like the task, and started to object...

"Really useful engines don't argue," says Sir Topam Hat.

So Thomas goes off and does the task.

Personally, I agree that really useful engines don't argue. Why would they bother bringing this dude around to their point of view, when they have so many other options in life?

Anyway, I think a lot of these stories date back to a time when the US economy really needed a lot of strong arms and backs that didn't argue. Try to manage programmers like that now :)

Actually, try to have that career now as a hacker. You may get to limp along with a task list for a while, but no way are you getting anywhere with that approach. It's not just about startups - I doubt you'd even get hired for anything remotely promising. Won't work, not a chance. The last thing I want to give my kid is a set of values that will make it impossible to thrive in a modern economy.

This is feasible up to a point. The all out "charter school" idea would have the most government and beaurecratic hangups. There would still have to be standards and accountability (read: testing) that would have to go along in order to comply with this.

However, there could be some smaller, scalable, proof of concept models that you could deploy to both public and private schools. For instance, you could create that whole idea into a subject (Design, Hack, 'trep 101), or you could make it completely elective like during lunch or after school.

Another way to approach it is create it through a vocational program. These programs exist for other trades, mainly blue collar, in which they get paid a little and learn to be an electrician, car mechanic, etc. Around my area, there is a vocational school that pulls from all the high schools in the area, and they take the second half of the school block to attend. Transferring that sort of model over into "Hacker School" would seem like a nice first step to see whether it would succeed.

I think there has been a significant and artificial extension of childhood, and it is a bad idea. Expecting more from kids and giving them power and responsibility is a good idea.

From that blog (which quotes these paragraphs from Kay Hymowitz): " Teen paid employment is at an all-time low; about 35% of teenagers are working at some point in the year, compared with close to half at the post-World War II peak in 1979. That's because for kids these days, summer is no different from the rest of the year; it's always time for education, or, more precisely, resume-building.

In the junior-high and early high-school years, middle-class strivers spend summers at soccer, hockey, swim, diving or baseball camp to sharpen their athletic skills; they go to science, computer and arts camp to pump up their academic records. In their junior or senior year they jet off to exotic destinations to fill in the international travel/community service credential, building huts in Guatemala, supervising nursery-schoolers in South Africa or, as one company offers, reforesting fruit trees in Fiji. And then, finally, for many older teens, it's an internship, a part-time, usually unpaid, job-lite at an office in a business or nonprofit organization. "

How does a 6th grader know that she wants to be a startup-founder?

Are you attempting to replace an admittedly broken schooling system with another one?

Are you attempting to increase creative space? If so, can creativity be decoupled from freedom? Are you going to force them to be creative?

Finally, at a risk of sounding a tad off. What good will this do anyone? What pain are you fixing? Is there a pain big enough? Why hasn't it fixed itself yet?

Any given 6th grader doesn't, but it seems like if enough children get a chance, some will succeed. The nice thing about this system is there's no penalty for failure. Students can work for other startups or go to college.

This sort of system could be an alternative for people actively seeking one. Maybe parents who realize the current model might not be the best for their child, or a student not satisfied with the rate of teaching.

The school would be an increase in creativity.. It's focus would be on creation. Of course the school wouldn't force anyone to do anything. It's simply an alternate path, one that would probably be fun for everyone involved.

I was actually trying to fix my own pain, and this seemed a reasonable way to do it. You see, I'm nineteen. At seventeen I dropped out of public high school to work for a videogame company because I couldn't stand it one second longer. I felt caged, mentally beaten up, and I felt extraordinarily hopeless. Running off to pursue a creative endeavor like writing video games at a game company solved all that. It was simply the best choice for me.

But wait a minute, if I was so miserable, there must be other children who are, too. Creative ones who can accomplish great things if only society deems that they could follow their dreams. And why couldn't they actually work on their dreams in the best place for it, in an environment with creative people? Yeah, they need a certain level of maturity, but that can be supplemented by having mature people around to go to for advice.

So, in short, it would be great to offer the hopeless some hope, something other than "Just wait 'til you get to college, everything will be wonderful then".

The challenge is that the current system is generic, it allows you to choose any field of work or study and that choice can be postponed. In your school, that choice is made early and that brings with it a risk.

I think your pain was that 'you' felt mentally caged in the current educational system and that 'you' fixed your pain by making a change. What you seem to be doing now is applying a 'mass fix ' by generalizing/abstracting your problem, and while that works in most cases it may need additional fleshing out. Perhaps the fix for each individual might be more effective, perhaps everyone who feels caged needs to apply an individual patch just like you did rather than fix something which isn't broken when they are in 6th grade. Are we fixing before there is a pain?

Hope these thoughts help you develop your idea. Best of luck.

By simply removing the obstacle (traditional schooling in this case), doesn't that cheapen the creation? Put another way, if hacking is the status-quo, is it still hacking?

This would be the greatest hack in the fucking world. Replacing the traditional school system.

There will always be restrictions and great things to create. Don't you want more people having the chance to create fantastic things and crush obstacles left and right?

I know what you mean though, and to a certain extent that might be true. But it doesn't seem like subjecting kids to current public school conditions is a good way of doing things.

Having a whole class do this makes sense. First, not everyone does it, only the smartest. I wouldn't expect everyone to be better off in such an accelerated program. Also, rather than enterprising individuals losing out on the social aspect of High School, I'd expect this group of kids to be much more mature for their age.

A vocational senior project may as well be a startup for some in the group.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/07/wizard-school.html

If a Wizard is given complete technical control over a project (which is usually the smartest thing to do, but companies are rarely very smart), the Wizard will typically write in one of the super-succinct "folding languages" they've developed on campus, usually a Lisp or Haskell derivative. They call them Folding Languages because they write code that writes code that writes code... Wizards swear by it, and there's no question that they can produce amazingly compact, fast, clean-looking code.

lol!

Also, you could do trial runs during the summer, and if both the parents and kid like it enough, they get to stay.

It's not your right to detain anyone, nor to scare anyone. When students cause undue trouble for others, just tell them why that is not acceptable and inform them they need to change their behaviour or leave. Not as a scare measure, but so they know their situation so they can make a decision. If they don't want to attend this school, or if causing trouble is more important for them than that, they're best out. The main problem with behaviour in public education is that you can't ban the bullies and assholes except maybe in extreme cases.

You can't just explain abstract consequences to a kid and expect them to react the same way as a rational adult. Some might, most won't.

If you want a middle ground, you might readmit non reincident students, if they insist, after they give some service to the community (not necessarily the school). But you don't present that as a punishment, but as a token of regret and will to change. For that reason, you have to be pretty convinced that it's the child who wants back into the school. You shouldn't listen to parents for this purpose.

It's beyond the pale that with our present technology and abundance that we still use "being out on the street and starving to death" as a stick to make people work dead-end jobs. At least, if you'd like a future where all human beings are valued and cared for simply because they are human.

For crying out loud, it's the 21st century and the world still has human slavery. Don't judge your country based on it being better than the worst -- that encourages a race to the bottom. Judge it from a future perspective; science fiction has offered plenty of promising visions for humanity.

More appropriate here, let me ask: how old does an average child have to be to comprehend all of the features of Lisp or Haskell?

No really, I remember learning about things like x + 2 = 5; solve for x in 2nd grade in Soviet Union. After immigrating to US, I recalled the level of math education we got in USSR. One teacher remarked that according to the development theories he was taught, it shouldn't even be possible for such young children to grasp such abstract ideas as variables. Good thing nobody told the Russians this fact.

The main problem I have with the Hacker School idea is that compared to the Sudbury Model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_model), it is stifling and pushy. I'm a Sudbury Valley alumnus, and I doubt the time I spent there glued to computers all day would have been as fulfilling as it was, if I were doing so under coercion (and I bet even the real deal hackers I know from there, as opposed to mere computerphiles, like me, would agree). Also, I got somewhat bored with computers for a while, and I'm glad nobody forced me to stick with them, so I could return to them later with greater intensity fueled by nothing but pure desire.

My criticism of this idea is similar to Paul Graham's criticism of "incubators."

Here are the Grahamster's words on the subject I'm referring to (http://www.paulgraham.com/sfp.html):

I've heard Y Combinator described as an "incubator." Actually we're the opposite: incubators exert more control than ordinary VCs, and we make a point of exerting less. Among other things, incubators usually make you work in their office-- that's where the word "incubator" comes from. That seems the wrong model. If investors get too involved, they smother one of the most powerful forces in a startup: the feeling that it's your own company.

Incubators were conspicuous failures during the Bubble. There's still debate about whether this was because of the Bubble, or because they're a bad idea. My vote is they're a bad idea. I think they fail because they select for the wrong people. When we were starting a startup, we would never have taken funding from an "incubator." We can find office space, thanks; just give us the money. And people with that attitude are the ones likely to succeed in startups.

Indeed, one quality all the founders shared this summer was a spirit of independence.

He said "if investors get too involved, they smother one of the most powerful forces in a startup: the feeling that it's your own company." Allow me to slightly modify this quote to illustrate my point:

If teachers get too involved, they smother one of the most powerful forces in an independent person: the feeling that you're in charge of your own destiny.

In other words, give someone genuine independence, and he'll go for it if he's got the stuff.

So we need to go to school in a structured environment to learn to play with technology, break it down and build it up again?

http://hacketyhack.net/

It's Why the Lucky Stiff's venture into creating a ruby programming environment for kids that tries to entice their creativity.