[fock]

So, as a European I read: mormon paper (Deseret...) hails parents who made their child work their farm. Because reading things like:

> His spelling and grammar lagged behind grade level. He consistently misspelled the word “business,” and stumbled over the pronunciation of simple words.

doesn't really spell hidden genius of the 21st century but probably describes millions of peasants in Europe during the middle-ages. Family died of the plague, so son got a businessman at age 9. It happened a lot, but they were just some other serf and didn't have ideologists (recall the NYT-author who resigned because "woke") who celebrate going fullspeed back to the middle ages.

[julianeon]

They don't call him a genius though, they call him America's most remarkable kid, with emphasis on his business acumen. It seems unfair to say something like "he's not going to revolutionize science" when they never implied he would.

[fock]

> They don't call him a genius though

no, but about half the other posts here do - so I put down what my perception of the case is.

> with emphasis on his business acumen

To me, the business acumen of his parents seems a lot higher. On their twitter they start publishing his future books already :). Also there is a lot of financing (for example his John Deere) going on and while I can't see the full picture, I doubt that he signed those contracts...

[butlerm]

As a minor, his signature on a contract would probably be worthless - or at least beyond the value established by name and reputation.

[karaterobot]

Did you read on a couple sentences and see this part?

> Later, when opportunities came to publish his thoughts, the written word became more important to him and he found mentors to help him polish his communication skills.

Worthy of note is that he'd published a book by the age of 14, so was probably at least at grade level. Sounds like he just didn't learn things homogeneously, but rather focused on some things before other things.

[JeremyNT]

And just how much of the "mentoring" is actually just plain old ghost writing?

There are too many red flags and people with agendas here to take much at face value.

[watwut]

You can publish pretty much anything. The hard part is to get one of good publisher houses that can do promo etc.

But publishing on itself does not require anything.

Thins kid also supposedly bought 50000$ by himself at 11.

[towaway15463]

Financed. He was able to make the payments and I’m guessing the loan was in his parents names.

[watwut]

Contract also had to be done in parents name.

[bequanna]

So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram a sentence is more important than understanding tax law?

[Hermitian909]

> So in your view, it sounds like being able to perfectly diagram a sentence is more important than understanding tax law?

What's being described isn't the ability to diagram a sentence, but to write above a certain minimum standard. That skill is certainly more important for the average person than understanding tax law as most jobs that would require you to know tax law have good writing skills as a pre-requisite.

As part of my previous work in education I did a lot of interventions for "unschooled" children in the Bay Area and can confirm the results of even well educated parents were almost uniformly disastrous.

There's a lot of value in:

1. Being well socialized

2. Having the standard set of skills that are a base requirement for being a white collar worker

If you're missing either of these (as most homeschooled kids are) it can be very difficult to find your way in the world.

[mensetmanusman]

Did you also teach the ‘schooled’ children in the Bay Area who graduate but can’t read?

[Hermitian909]

Actually yes! I've helped children with almost any challenge short of, say, Down Syndrome.

In short, children who don't learn to read or write well in school almost certainly would not learn to read or write well when unschooled, but most unschooled children who don't learn to read or write well do learn perfectly fine in a traditional schooling environment.

Schooled children who don't learn to read for different and harder to deal with reasons, a quick top 3:

1. English as a second language (ESL)

2. Learning disability that was never addressed

3. Severe behavior problems that interfere with schooling (this is often caused by problems at home)

These problems are exacerbated by parents who are poorer or themselves ESL.

Unschooled kids, conversely, tend to have relatively affluent parents who speak fluent English. Overwhelmingly, the reason they can't read or write is that either no attempt at teaching was made, or it was made with no reference to educational theory. This failure mode is much rarer in schools.

P.S. I don't want to give the impression here that I think the US education system isn't a tire fire or that there aren't different pedagogical approaches that might be radically better for most children. I'm just saying I have nearly a decade of experience showing overwhelmingly that "unschooling", even when performed by some of the most educated and affluent people in society, fails overwhelmingly compared to even the sub-par experience of standard schooling in the US.

[fock]

Well, to understand tax law, you need to understand language quite well (see another post these days on the frontpage...) - which usually comes with some skills in applying it. It smells a bit fishy, if you claim a person can do the first, but not the latter.

[bequanna]

Wait, you’re claiming that someone needs to be able to diagram a sentence or spell perfectly to understand tax law?

That’s ridiculous.

[ribosometronome]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32889072

The number two post on HN, when you posted this, was how poor writing/reading skills are the biggest barrier to understanding legal language.

[fock]

I don't know, but I guess that the intricacies of tax law are written down. And to study that (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/112b here?) you need to be able to be quite proficient at reading. And usually proficiency at efficient reading of laws translates to an ok command over speaking/writing as well (which apparently is not the case here)... if you read weird words a 100 times, I expect a moderately intelligent person to remember how to spell them...

[formerkrogemp]

I work in tax. Yes, you need to be able to read and write well to understand the changing tax law in the US. The tax code is also used as social policy in the US, and it's important to know for liability reasons that even the person you're paying to do it for you is doing some parts correctly. Did your payroll employee not withhold key taxes? That's a pretty large headache and fine you have coming.