The Today Show just featured homeschool parents who put six kids in college before the age of twelve. These parents are a terrible representatives of the homeschool movement. They are just as bad as the parents who homeschool so they can intellectually isolate their kids from views that differ from their own. 

I've climbed the corporate ladder and I've supported my family for years as a professional writer. So I'm going to tell you—with total certainty—that however you're teaching your kid to write, it's the wrong way.

Just because your kids like to play video games doesn't mean they should learn to program. You drive all the time. Does this mean you should be a car mechanic? Probably not. Very few kids should learn to write code. 

School is designed to help kids succeed in the workplace. The genesis of compulsory education was to create effective factory workers. Today, enlightened schools realize they are creating knowledge workers rather than factory workers. But here's the problem: most women don't want to work full-time. Which means it's overkill that school focuses so heavily on…

I am not an expert on child rearing, but I am an expert in career planning, so it seems to me that I should be pretty good at helping my kids find careers. Here are things I'm doing: 1. Exposing them to the idea that career is important. I do a lot of career coaching,…

My son, who skateboarded every day last winter, appears to have quit skateboarding. I try to play it cool — he can do whatever he wants, is what I tell him, but I'm not thrilled with the decision: He's good at skateboarding and it seems like a good balance to his cello and piano lessons….

Even though the whole world seems to be going back to school, it's still summer for us. We don't start school and stop school because that would send the message to my kids that learning is something you start and stop. The whole back-to-school hoopla is for people who teach their kids to be poor….

You are not trying hard enough. You only try hard at what you like. This is a refrain you hear in school all the time. Probably because it's true, that kids intuitively try hard at what they like. In early grades, this means boys are trying hard at recess. In later grades it means very…

Now that I have a kid who is really talented, I can see what not really talented looks like. For example, his skateboard teacher tells me he's great. But I think to myself, well, is he one of the best in the country for his age right now? Probably no. I see the 12-year-old who just…

If you are going to focus on teaching kids soft skills for successful living, then of course you are going to teach them about money. The idea of an allowance is becoming controversial. Maybe it's not such a great idea.  But if you are going to teach money, then why not teach how to buy…

The debate over the value of college is heating up. The value of degrees from non-top-tier colleges is negligible.  The future job market does not require a four-year college degree. And now Time magazine is advocating vocational school for most kids. I have thought for a while that homeschool should be like vocational school. For example,…

The post I published yesterday was the first post in six years of blogging that generated only one comment. I was lucky enough to start blogging when there were very few bloggers and almost none blogging with my main topic, careers. So I always had 5-10 comments, and now I almost never get less than 50…

This is a guest post from James Maher. (That's his self-portrait, at the top of this post.) He's a fine art and freelance photographer based in New York City. You can see his photography of New York City on his web site.  I was on Adderall from my Sophomore year in high school until I was…

What is up with people emailing me ideas for what I can do with my kids? I already have way too many ideas. For example, we were at the Guggenheim last month, honestly, my sons probably would have rather run around in Central Park. (They tried running in the Guggenheim, and believe me, it was a disaster.) The…

Today the vast majority of knowledge workers are using LinkedIn to manage their career, so, as a career counselor, it's my job to keep track of what's going on over there. Recently, LinkedIn published a list of the ten most common words people use on their profiles. These words show what people value in themselves…

qMy younger son has been bugging me about skateboarding for a year. I'm not a big fan. I think it's a roadmap to a concussion and also, what are we going to do about cello if he can't play for six weeks because of a broken wrist? But he was relentless, so I decided that…

I notice that lots of people use college admission as evidence that homeschooling works. Here's an example of a mom who says college is proof of her homeschooling success. This is shocking to me. While homeschooling is controversial, ditching college is much less controversial. There are lists of wildly successful people who did not graduate…