Ask HN: What does the best possible education look like?
<i>to instead teach a single student directly, without any time or resource limits. What would the ideal course of study look like then?<p>In particular, I&#x27;m interested in time allocation</i><p>When I homeschooled years ago, I read an article that indicated that a survey done by a parent of a typical school day at public school found that only one to two hours of the day were spent actually learning&#x2F;studying. The rest was spent on roll call, lunch, recess, changing class rooms, etc.<p>At the same time, the state of California had several ways you could legally homeschool your children. One of those was &quot;hire a tutor for three hours per say.&quot; Not eight. Just three.<p>Having homeschooled my sons for years, I can tell you that more than three hours a day of one-on-one instruction is not sustainable. It&#x27;s too intense. It&#x27;s too exhausting.<p>Eight hours a day of school only makes sense when you are splitting the time of the teacher between twenty or more students.<p><i>To what extent should the education be directed by the teacher, and to what extent by the student?</i><p>Homeschoolers often advocate for pursuing &quot;child led learning.&quot; It generally works best to let the interests of the child direct things, if you really want to optimize for them soaking things up.<p>Though do be aware that you may need to place some limits and insist they learn certain things they don&#x27;t really want to learn, especially if they have known disabilities. But it still is helpful to give them latitude, where possible, on how they learn those things.<p>Forced learning tends to not go over well.