Taken literally (I think I can see what you mean), creating boredom will not work on all kids. Rather, providing a creative child with various tools/means/ways to amuse oneself might actually make him/her spend more and more time to use them, instead of going for the usual.

One thing my father did for me was to install a small workshop (in our 2-bedroom apartment with 5 persons living, I'll let you imagine the reaction of my mother, but we held strong), equip it with various tools, subscribe me to a DYI magazine, and teaching me some first gestures, to make sure I am reasonably safe being alone (I was 7 at the time). Later, I have never heard a "no" from him when asking to buy this or that new tool.

That was a very unusual thing in that place and time of overcrowded small apartments and low resources. When my schoolmates saw that, some of them started to do the same, and their parents gave in, I was good at school so an example to follow ;-)

Suffering the same problems with technology with my 7 year old as so many other parents. I am inspired by your story to do the same for him. I too am in a 2 bedroom apartment. I would really appreciate if you can give some pointers on how one could go about creating such a workshop and any DYI magazine recommendations.

Hard to give you an immediately applicable advice, it was very, very long time ago. Some points though:

-- try to observe him and determine what his interests are, at least on a very high level. Is he attracted by mechanisms? electronics? architecture? sewing? something else? In my case, it was easy, I started to break toys since I started having them, my parents reprimanded me until they noticed that I don't actually break them but dismount properly. (For that, obviously the toys had to be of the kind allowing that, not all in one piece.)

-- the workshop doesn't have to be big, but

a) it should allow instant access to any tool of the collection, any time. Storing them in a locked box hidden away and taking out for the occasion won't work.

b) you need to have a full set of tools allowing to start and complete a simple operation (and safely at that), i.e., to be able to saw the piece, it needs to be firmly attached, etc. To control the investment, optimize on the number and type of of operations -- think of making something very simple, make sure the child shares your interests, and equip for that, but from as to z. (To illustrate -- a bird's house requires a saw, a hammer and couple of nails, but make sure the child cares about birds getting it.)

c) tools don't have to be expensive and complicated, but they need to be above junk quality. If you yourself have the experience, you should be able to determine the required minimum. If not, ask a friend who has. Some of them simply cannot be of "kid version" (drills, for example), don't buy that. In my case, it was the time when tools were inherited from father to son, and none of them were electrical, but all of them were good, I just had to learn to use them -- at the beginning, this will test the kid's patience, so dose carefully. (At the same time, this is where the bulk of the skill development lies, and the age is right too, so...)

d) try to teach your kid to clean up the mess after they finished for the day, but don't set out with high expectations ... sometimes, they will be just too tired after having fully invested themselves in the process fro several hours.

e) help him to always reach the end of each project, not just drop it because they lost interest. But do not insist. This is the hardest, much harder than d).

Thanks a lot for putting time into coming up with the suggestions. Its helpful and I really appreciate it!

> I'm ashamed to admit that I like private schools, but wow, have they been good for my kids.

Nothing to be ashamed about. You want the best for your children and private schools get more money.

The problem is not that private schools are better, but that public schools are so much worse. The people feeling shame should be the politicians who have worked and continue to work to dismantle the public education system (in large part motivated by religious fundamentalists seeking to replace public education with voucher-based religious schools), and the people that vote for them.

>in large part motivated by religious fundamentalists seeking to replace public education with voucher-based religious schools

This can't possibly be the reason. Otherwise the bay area would have the best schools in the nation because religion here is borderline illegal.

What is the relationship between proportion of non religious people and quality of schools? There a few factors of bad schools, and along with it a less than ideal group to classmates. Wealth seems to be the primary problem, as it creates unstructured homes and poorly funded schools. Another problem is religious parents who want to teach children that lack of evidence is a good thing. The fact that the latter want to divert taxpayer funds for their own agenda is also a cause for bad schools, as it diverts funds from public schools.

FWIW Bay Area public high schools are ranked some of the best in the nation.

> in large part motivated by religious fundamentalists seeking to replace public education with voucher-based religious schools

This is preposterous.

Public schools have been neutered by deep budget cuts by politicians of all parties who, along with their boosters, can afford to send their children to private schools. School budgets rely heavily on taxes (which politicians cut for political gain), state/federal grants, and programs like state lotteries.

The wealthy alumni of private schools, denomination be damned, bankroll candidates and in return the politicians push programs to force kids out of public school. They also fill the curriculum with inferior text books based on handshake agreements with publishers and drop standards to maximize the number of "successes".

TL;DR - adults fail to value the education system, watching those who can afford it send their kids to private schools, so people want more money in their pocket (less taxes) to pay for private school or demand "options" - like vouchers.

> This is preposterous.

There is overwhelming evidence that this is exactly what the current United States Secretary of Education DeVos' motivations are:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/betsy-devos-chri...

I think the difference is not that public school systems are being dismantled but that a higher percentage of private school parents value education and are engaged in their childrens' learning.

Wrong link, you're partially agreeing with the parent (they ARE less engaged), and I don't really buy that all parents at all socioeconomic levels believe in the power of education equally. I came from lower to middle socioeconomic levels and most of my peers came from families that DEFINITELY did not value education highly.

California public schools seem to be, on average, much worse off than non-california schools.

One obvious reason is that, relative to cost-of-living, the per-student funding is incredibly low in costal Revenue Limit[1] districts (this distinction applies to 95% of districts statewide, but only ~65% bay area).

This makes it hard to retain teachers. It is made even worse off by the fact that the wealthy school districts tend to be so small. Where I live, there is a school district with ~15 K-6 schools in it that is funded as a Revenue limit district. Less than a mile away from there are two separate districts each with only one elementary school each, and no secondary schools. Both of those schools, of course, are Basic Aid; one has per-student funding of double the larger district and the other has per-student funding of more than triple.

This doesn't explain all of it, of course. California has had to deal with more ESL students, for longer, than most other states and those students are very uneavenly distributed as well (Aforementioned school district with 15 schools has only one neighborhood school with less than 80% either hispanic or non-hispanic).

1: In california there are two ways that schools are funded. The state has a limit of around $6k per student that it will guarantee each district gets, if the property taxes cannot cover that amount. This does not include Federal funding, or state funding that is earmarked for specific purposes, so districts budgets are a bit higher than the $6k.

If school district has revenue in excess if the ~$6k limit they only get the special-purpose state funding, but can keep the excess. Thus small wealthy neighborhoods have a strong incentive to have as small a school district as possible, to increase the per-student funding there.

Wow - this blew up. Sorry, just got back from another 14 hour day of tractor work (it's 8-9 hours on the job but then there is prep like sharpen all the chainsaws and after prep of you have to grease the excavator. It's almost 9pm and I need to take a shower to get the dirt out and go to bed).

I would love to go through all this and reply, there are a lot of thoughtful comments here, some I agree with and some I don't. I'll try and get to them on Sunday, I know that's an eternity in internet time, it is what it is.

I love that this has generated a discussion, in the US we are so screwed because you can't talk about anything without in devolving into my team versus your team. We are so stupid. We should discuss stuff. As in look at a thing, see what is good, see what is bad, be engineers and make it more good. In the US right now, that is simply not a thing. We suck.

On the plus side, I'm making close to as much as I made as a successful CEO doing tractor work. Who knew that was a thing? It's hard work but I'm liking it.

> In my opinion, the best thing you can do with kids is create boredom. If they have access to a shop, or some lumber, they will start to build stuff.

As a kid I was constantly bored, this strategy was deeply ineffective on me. I did grow into it as an adult, but it took a long time.

In short, YMMV.

Did you have have available creative outlets though, like a workshop?

Yes, my point was that I had preconditions and yet didn't reach the expected outcome. Interestingly enough, my twin brother did.

Kids are complicated and non-deterministic.

You are confusing the negative stimulus of boredom with the positive stimulus of the satisfaction one gets from having done something challenging like crafting an object.

Delayed reward can be taught and boredom is far from a good teacher.