Week 52 - a year in review

This week marks a year of our homeschooling effort. So here is an attempt to summarize my experience of the past year:

- Everyone homeschools for their own reason and all the reasons are right
- Intellect and persistence are over-rated; curiosity and patience are more important
- Uncertainty is a part and parcel of our lives - you can plan for everything but then some curve-ball will change the circumstances and you have to improvise on-the-fly
- Things will work out eventually - just keep the faith!

For the coming year, there are a few things that we did not follow up in the last year that I am keen on pursuing now:

- Asking questions daily - encouraging him to maintain a blog around being curious
- Keeping a journal - the ability to document things
- Developing a plan to respond to the next "black swan" event better as a family

It has been an amazing journey, with its ups and downs, and I am thankful to everybody who helped us in different ways, known and unknown, throughout this year. I continue to look forward to your cooperation and help as always this year too.

Week 51

Covid-19 has become huge and we are all stuck at home. Lockdown has been implemented across the world. And what that means for us - return of the introvert. As a homeschooler, my son has not been as social as some of his other friends. Now that we are all locked down, it is business as usual for us with only some extra precautions in place.

A bigger challenge will be to understand the changes in business models across everything and explain that to the kids. They will become comfortable with a lot more technological tools, will need to dig deeper into themselves to keep engaged and keep learning new things.

Week 50

I heard something that I do not know how to react to "You had foresight to homeschool your child. With the Covid-19 shutting down schools and colleges, we have to learn it too". Yes, this pandemic is going to change the way a few industries operate - expediting the introduction of online courses and tuitions, for one, but I guess it was only going to be a matter of time any way.
But more importantly, this self-quarantine being observed in many areas is a good opportunity to really connect with your family in a less-distracted manner. The kids are home and with limited opportunities to mingle with other friends, are more likely to engage with you. Take this opportunity to inculcate some basic family ideals in them as you might not be getting another chance of such distraction-free engagement soon enough.

Week 49

We are at the grandparents' house and his cousin has come over. So it is a lot of fun time and the one thing that grandpa has been insisting is to show patience with the kids. We tend to get aggressive with them as we are not in control of our own emotions - the need to control is high and anything that seems out of control brings out the worst in us. But honestly, patience is needed in all walks of life and is necessary for us to do well.

Week 48

This week was dominated by Covid-19 (Wuhan coronavirus). The stock markets around us crashed, people became worried about its impact and it became evident that no one knows what to do when a pandemic is ravaging the globe. In a connected world, these kind of things will become the real brakes to the global economy and growth, rather than physical wars. Whatever biology does not achieve, technology will - the same kind of connectedness ensures that any digital outbreaks will also cause big mayhem - viruses all around. So one of the subjects our kids need to know is handling viruses!

Week 47

Another week passed by and what was achieved in this week is difficult to pinpoint. The one conversation everyone seemed to be having revolved around CoVid-19 and the causes and impact of the same. Some of the theories were plausible and some were extended based on the beliefs of the people. The only thing I seem to really believe is that the impact would be more severe than we anticipate and we are underestimating the impact irrespective of whatever we think it to be. Most of the commentators are not taking into account the second and third-order impacts of the disruption of a global supply chain - a country impacting one-third of the global economy virtually shutdown for a month more than planned, will in the worst case affect global economy by at least ~1% (1/11 months). But given the impact on travel, meetings, fairs, conferences, etc. this will get exacerbated and that also needs to be factored in. We will wait and see how it plays out.

Week 46

Yet another week passed and as we inch closer to the anniversary of this experiment, I realize that it is difficult for us to follow any plan at all. And most of the blame for the same is mine for a plan needs a firm mind while mine roams everywhere. This week included a trip with friends and lots of discussions around entitlement of the kids. It was funny to note that when I look at my own behavior with others, there are a lot of elements that shout hypocrisy. There is a lot of work I need to do on myself before I can tell my kids what is right and what is wrong - accountability has to start at my level before I can expect it from them.

Week 45

This week was spent in weighing the pros and cons of sending your kid to a good school and homeschooling. Though there are no definitive answers in my mind, one thing in favor of a big school is access to a bigger social network and that brings some diversity into your social circle. In case you do believe that life is unpredictable (2019 nCoV in China is an example of a "black swan" event that can completely alter your life plan), you need the flexibility of being able to associate with some broader networks that are part of the mainstream and that give your family the option to ease back into the common stream easily.

Week 44

How things change in one week! My daughter got accepted to another IB PYP curriculum school and my wife is now worried about how expensive such schools are. I guess we will take up the admission as it fulfills the desires of the child to go to school.

As for my son, he participated in the arts festival that I mentioned he was working towards. It was quite eventful as the initial structure that was put up could not last even one day and had to be replaced the next day with something sturdier. I was skeptical that homeschoolers would not be easy to convince about something suddenly because I presumed that homeschooling is pursued by a few outliers of the society who are assertive and strong-headed. But then one thing I had not considered is that they become quite flexible as they need to make new associations quickly, not having the luxury of a fixed large circle. This flexibility means stripping down to essentials in order to generate solutions rather than any fixation to an established precedence. If this skill can be developed further, I would be really happy as it would prepare these kids well to survive the 21st century. Yuval Noah Harari, a famous thinker about the past and the present, has highlighted this need to adapt and learn quickly in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG6WnMb9Fho

Week 43

Another week, another news. My daughter did not get admitted to the fancy school that my wife really wanted for her. And it started another round of introspection about our parenting styles and whether we are doing a reasonable job at all. Any rejection pushes us back into doubting ourselves and I don't know how to handle it. Since it is difficult to handle one aspect, it starts affecting all the other aspects too.

But the trick of survival lies in overcoming these self-doubts with a narrative that pushes you to keep working on your process to improve your decision-making. My narrative currently is that these kids need less knowledge and more tools that will help them navigate situations better, so I need to ensure that they are protected from being exposed to too much information. Only time will tell if I erred in my judgement but my only solace is that it would have been an honest mistake.

Week 42

This week was a bit of a washout as all of us were unwell for a couple of days affecting productivity. However, he managed to do some work for an art festival that he is participating in with a group of other homeschoolers. It is going to be an important theme this week also. I hope they manage to find a coherent voice while bringing different perspectives. Homeschooling is about your own way of doing things and it will be interesting to watch how different priorities and perspectives are woven together in this installation.

Week 41

This week was about trying new things. My son is working with a group of other homeschoolers to come up with a project for an arts festival. There was ideation and hopefully, there would be good execution in the coming week. Apart from this, we also went to the Children's Museum and an art gallery, so that he could understand the different types of creativity.
He also put up his list of predictions for the coming decade:

- Bendable devices

- More reusable things = less garbage

- More natural medicines 

- Bigger and fewer countries

- More people = more wars

- Autonomous cars driving by themselves

- More planets to live on

- More diseases due to chemical pollution

- Ability to design and produce own instruments

Week 40

Happy New Year!!
A new year means a new beginning. This is the beginning of a new decade, one which will have far-reaching consequences for the next few decades. At work and personally, it was marked by a series of predictions that I wanted to make as per my understanding of the world. While I completely agree with Bill Gates about our inability to predict changes in either the short or long term, this exercise forced me to think longer and a little harder and to bring together things that I have read and thought about in recent times.
I think I will also ask my son to write down his predictions for this decade. It will be an exercise for him to think in a little longer timeframe.
Anyways, the following are my predictions for the decade:

15 predictions for the decade

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1. Currency will move from a fiat currency to being benchmarked to an asset base - not necessarily gold alone, but a basket of metals/cryptocurrency/(rare earth metals?) - some benchmark that will retain the flexibility to be stretched, even though will put some constraints on freely-printing money
2. A new economy will arise as the world leader supported by Europe - its loyalty will change from the US to the new power, and that will give it a relative jump in world standing - by remaining constant also, sometimes you tend to outperform
3. China will see the rise of spiritualism over consumerism - social upheaval followed by the rise of new “preachers” who promote detachment - go back to Confucianism
4. Corporates are going to see consolidation and become more powerful - lead to larger gross profits, but in a bid to stay relevant to the new generation, they will keep their social and climate commitments
5. Organic food will become more mainstream - more efficient supply chain will ensure that the reduction in productivity of the farm will be offset by the savings of less losses
6. Drones will be useful for difficult-to-reach deliveries - will help cities become less congested, maybe reversing urbanization
7. Cost of healthcare will come down significantly
8. UPI will become a significant payment method around the world
9. Governments will take the hard decision to convert large amounts of debt into equity; reset their own sovereign debt through higher growth and lower nominal yields
10. Political prediction: Reordering of the global order through domestic/international aggressions - persecution of Asians in developed countries, large scale conflagration in the second half of the decade
11. India: 2024 - BJP, 2029 - Coalition of parties, Nifty targets - 2020 (14,500), 2023 (6,500), 2026 (21,500), 2030 (15,000)
12. Higher taxation should lead to normalization of higher gross profits of larger corporates
13. All public/long-distance transportation modes will become primarily electric; personal vehicle ownership will be at multi-decade lows
14. The number of countries winning medals in the Olympics will hit multi-decade lows
15. Consumption of leisure and experiences will grow exponentially in this decade

I hope to come back and see how right/wrong I was a decade later. Hopefully, I would have also helped my son understand the value of thinking from a long term perspective.