I had the afternoon to myself, did a lot of reading and rode my bike around town and into the fields. I still know a lot about topics I just was curious about (alphabets and writing systems across the globe, must have spent hours reading books on those). All that I wouldn't have been able to do with a whole-day school. Although now as a parent, I have to admit that it surely is easier to have your kid in school all day while you are at work.

To be honest I would be terrified to let my kids do this, maybe because I grew up in a place where drivers are the leading cause of dead kids (the US).

This is very interesting regarding half day schools in Germany. We've considered moving to Germany for a while so our kids could learn German while they're young (also we just quite like the place). A half day school sounds enticing as well.

Thanks for sharing your experience, it's helpful to hear from someone who did it.

For the kids involved in sports, sure. That's not all kids.

Varsity football in a state like Texas or Florida where football is king? Definitely a huge value add even if you are not going to play football in college.

That’s utter nonsense. It takes more physical prowess to run 10 miles, sure, but there’s nothing mentally easy about playing the same damn four bars until you have the passage completely locked in, to put in the effort to go from ok to good to excellent.

Before high school, we had a physical education/"gym" class as part of our normal schedule where we would do various althletic things.

In high school, we needed a certain amount athletic credits in order to graduate. This worked out to be either 1 season each year on an actual team (competing against other schools); or 2 "seasons" each year of non competative play (e.g. pick-up games of ultimate frisbee, or joining the cross country team for training runs). They would take attendence each day, and you get credit based on how many times you show up (with no requirement that the days you show up are even in the same year; the only time a teacher would complain about you missing a day is if you need the credit to graduate).

You could also get credit for sports you do outside of the school.

I didn't mean that - I mean people applying for I don't know engineering or whatever having to compete by showing how good their extra-curriculars were.

A lot of public colleges essentially create a formula (GPA and SAT/ACT) and the "soft factors" likes clubs and sports only decide when you are in the gray area.

One easy way to demonstrate this is through extracurricular activity. If you founded a club, excelled in a sport, engaged in charity, won contests, etc., that's a sign that you're somebody who does things in a community and not just a test taker.

(There is room at even top schools for test takers—but you're going to need extremely uncommon scores to stand out that way.)

Meanwhile Asian countries select for skills and don’t hesitate to give 14hrs per day of courses at high school in China depending on provinces. Not that it is enjoyable, but we won’t enjoy much when we have to acknowledge their superiority.

A few spots for IQ160 people still excludes a lot of good workers. Perhaps we shouldn’t suppress our hard workers, perhaps we should even acknowledge them, even if they seem boring for normal people.

Meanwhile if those could actually help us socially, that would be a big win-win, if only because socially-excluded people are harmful to others, maybe also because most tax dollars comes from hard workers.

Not only is that not typical, there seems to be no US in-person high school in the US that has 10,000+ kids (there are a few online/distance-learning high schools that big or bigger.) It looks like the largest in-person is Brooklyn Technical High School, which has ~6,000.

The national “top 100” lists of biggest high schools start in the low 3,000s; that's not typical, suburban or otherwise, either.

Not that this would be the impact on kids' mental health, anyway, that would depend on whether they found sports to be satisfying and rewarding, or just one more stressful opportunity to be declared a failure. That, in turn, probably depends on the parents and the coaches.