[itronitron]

>> less likely to screw things up

By virtue of education or selection process?

The main problem with throwing 15 year olds into NASA is that, for a given year, there are far more of them than there are MIT graduates.

What is unbalanced about how we educate teenagers is that we saturate them with too many interactions with other teenagers (8 classes a day with 30 other students ~240 unique edges per student) and expect them to be able to focus on learning the course material. This despite the fact that adults outnumber teenagers by a considerable margin. It should be no surprise then that our society in the US is largely centered around childish interests as the majority of our social interactions have occurred as children with children.

[aje403]

By both virtue of education and selection process, and given that their education was adequately rigorous, they've likely been working hard at academics for > 10 years, they had the mental faculties to understand everything in their field, and they're certified by grades from the most educated people in their field on the planet (same is true for other top universities, as well). There are far more problems with hiring 15 year olds at NASA than sheer volume of applications - I would advise you to think more deeply about what you're suggesting as, even in your alternative education scenario, it's a truly terrible idea.

Devil's advocate: why is that a bad thing? Kids get social/organization exposure, to sports, music, basic education. The motivated ones are still apparently rising to the top despite the shitty environment. Most humans don't need to go into rocket science, and half of your graduating class will end up directly selling things to other people (in some form or another).As well, are you arguing that kids need less social exposure? That would be true if most kids were going to become software developers, which is not the case. Most of our social interactions do not occur in childhood; you're not speaking for everyone.

What I will say, that is somewhat similar to what you're arguing, is that it would be great if students had direct access to more challenging curriculums at every stage of their education. To my knowledge, ambitious high schoolers need benefactors willing to pay for college courses that are standard fare for secondary school in a lot of countries. If you're naturally bright and hard working without affluent parents, you're SOL in HS, which is not fair, and I think it's also unreasonable that they need to rely on being autodidactic from a young age, which is really the only alternative.

[itronitron]

I do think kids need less social exposure, if only for their own sanity. There is only so much water bottle flipping, fidget spinning, and faggot calling that some children (and adults) can put up with in one day.

Because that is the social environment within large middle schools and high schools, it detracts significantly from their education. Since it is not something that they will experience often as adults it seems like a waste to force them through that during their education, just sayin'