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Well, who would promote it? Not the US government - this would be like asking a hammer salesman to denounce nails. So that leaves private industry and parents.Most experienced home educating parents will hold forth on the benefits and virtues of home education (I know I do). But, most of us also know about the sacrifices we have made along the way. Some basic facts:In the early years, K thru 8th grade, it is easy and it can be very, very cheap. You do not need curricula; you do not need to buy a lot of books. The library + the internet + your full attention = everything your kids need academically. Add in community sports, involvement in clubs, lots of museum time and travel and you have had a solid and successful era.Then come the high school years. You are not going to be able to teach trigonometry, chemistry, European history, and Ancient Greek literature …. you might have enough knowledge to facilitate one or two of these topics. Tops. So, now you need online classes or tutors. This gets expensive. Then, if your student is college-bound, you will want some SAT or ACT Prep. Most kids who have been homeschooled all along are self-motivated learners — up to a point. But they are human. They are going to need some accountability and they are going to need some expert guidance, and you (mom and dad) are going to need to pay for this. And it is not cheap.Additionally, while you are paying for these academic supplements (ouch), you are constantly worried about whether or not you are doing the right thing Friends and relatives and neighbors want to dissect your methods and second-guess your motivations. This can be hard to take, year in and year out. Many simply collapse under the pressure.So, it is hard to promote something which will take both parent time and (eventually) lots of parent $$$.I have been on this job for over 20 years. I happen to think it is 100% worth it; the outcomes for my kids have been superb. I do promote it - all the time. However, most families do not want the responsibility or simply cannot afford to devote one parent to the work when that parent could be earning an income elsewhere.However, as I have watched the unprecedented disruption of the work force these past 10 years, brought to us compliments of technology, I fully expect this to trickle into education, creating more and more hybrid forms of getting the (schooling) job done with less brick and mortar apparatus.

Talent Gap: There is a growing talent gap between what the industry requires and what the CS departments regularly churn out as graduates. Now this does not mean that CS degrees are not good. They are. However graduates are increasingly needed to supplement their college education with practical knowledge of the most current technologies and platforms. For example no four year CS program can adapt their curriculum to an ever changing web development ecosystem. You know that some_new_shit.JS will come around the corner anytime soon and you’ll be expected to learn that.Not all programs help students get internships and build portfolios. A good github profile is almost as important as your academic pedigree these days. So look for programs that offer extensive career assistance and have industry partners that offer internship opportunities.Sort of a tunnel vision. This also happens with bootcamps. In college you are in a well structured and managed ecosystem of information transfer. If you are not pro-actively seeking to go beyond this ecosystem you are in danger of falling into a feedback loop. In this feedback loop you complete assignments, get positive feedback, reach goals and start feeling that you are the master of the universe. Bootcamps are even worse. Bite sized chunks and frequent feedback lures you into self confidence that is not really warranted. You need to explore the entire development / technology / coding / etc./ ecosystem to accurately gauge your prowess. Otherwise you graduate with a feeling of knowing everything you need and get a nasty reality check in the job market.Unrealistic expectations. Every CS graduate leaves school with some form of delusion of grandeur. I will land a 100.000 K job in silicon valley next month. Yeah, right. Learn to walk before you fly sonny. Here is the thing: There are only so many Google jobs out there. Just be prepared to learn on the job. Accept a lower paying job if it promises to teach you new technologies or create a solid professional network.And finally not all graduates are good or even adequate for most jobs. There is a gradient here from most adept to utterly useless. So, do not think that a diploma is going to be enough to land a very good job.

Q: “Is it not a sad world where visiting a therapist and paying to be heard is normal?”You are sadly misinformed. The sort of listening offered by a Psychoanalyst or a proper Psychotherapist, is a new development in the world - an experience that generations before Freud will hardly have come across - and one which family, friends and lovers cannot offer.In other words the sort of listening offered in psychotherapy does not arise purely naturally, but builds on nature, supplementing it with an experiential training that requires enormous dedication, genuine personal development, and a lot of people’s time.To become a psycho-therapist you must yourself be analysed several times a week for several years, thus involving the services of a Psychoanalyst; and this is in addition to the time spent training, and the extensive period when you will be a trainee. Of course before all that, you will need to have reached the academic level that will enable this very challenging course to be undertaken.In sum, a Psychotherapist working in a clinic or in private practice represents a huge investment by many people, not just the therapist herself, and a sacrifice of proper remuneration in the training years, without which we would simply not have this unique form of listening that I am identifying, since it exists nowhere else.And what is this novelty?It is the capacity to listen to often highly evocative and/or anxiety provoking material, and not be ‘driven to action’ by the experience, but rather to move in another direction, allowing one’s attention to ‘float’ in the winds of unconscious influences, all in the service of providing a deeper level of understanding which supports and facilitates the patient’s own capacity for insight.You will have to trust me that although this is not an academic ability, it is one which only the full training experience can foster. It is expensive in time and application to produce, like any worthwhile creation, and to allow it to exist means to make it a viable profession that therapists can join and still support a family with should they wish to, as well as live a decent life themselves. We don’t want those therapists who sacrifice themselves and their family - they are likely to be a particular kind of patient in disguise.