If the 13-year-old already has his heart set on something, I'm not going to stop him. But I suspect, at least with the first generation, they're going to screw around ... just like the first two or three years of college. Chances are good that if the area of study isn't something he wants to work with, he'll figure it out fast and get on with working on something else.

I would think that screwing around for a few years is exactly what you would want a 13 year old to do.

Like you said, better finding your passions at 16 then at 22. Finding your passions though is an essential part of life and shouldn't be taken as "screwing around".

I think I didn't write the apprenticeship part very well.

Choosing an apprenticeship for the 13-year-old is meant to give them a nudge. It doesn't matter if they pick it up or rebel against it. What matters is getting out of the home to see the world. Travelling around the world (without family) accomplishes the same thing.

Staying within the comfort of the home is screwing around ... even if it is "exploring" your passions. That's just extending childhood. So what I should have said is that after getting the GED (or equivalent) parents push them out of the nest, whether that results from choosing an apprenticeship for them, or having them travel around the country, or having them take college courses at college campus. That is what the old rites of passages (and the hero myths that go with it) accomplish: force the adolescent out of childhood, just as being born means going from the comfort of the womb to the bright, cold world. And of course, there are some who already know what they want and will already have plans in motion.

There is an obstacle with this idea is that many jurisdictions require you to be 16 to take it. Yet I remember hearing of college prodigies earning their degrees before that. It makes me think there is a way to hack it.