> Should a kid who is an artist not graduate high school if they don't pass algebra, physics and calculus?

No US school system requires proficiency in Calc to graduate. Here in California, graduation requirements are 3 years of math. The low track in public schools around me is "Integrated Math I" to "Integrated Math III" which perhaps slightly goes beyond Geometry-- a pretty decent path for votech (building some intuition for triangles and solving equations is going to serve you well in a whole lot of trades). If you can't cut it in integrated math, you can graduate taking the "Math Skills" class which is even more practical/vocational-oriented.

Similarly, Physics CP (tracked beneath Physics 1 or Physics 2) is not very rigorous. Indeed, the top class my local public high schools offer is AP Physics 2, which doesn't even require any calculus and is all Algebra-based.

I don't think the graduation requirements are too high, in general. And I think there's a decent votech path available through many high schools interwoven with the supports community colleges provide. The problem is it's stigmatized and everyone expects to go to college.

(And, honestly, US comparative advantage is predicated upon sending a whole lot of kids to college... though we need to do better at getting people into practical majors and control college costs).

My local public high schools do offer "CTE" tracks in food/hospitality, agricultural business, basic IT, vet tech, multimedia production, woodworking, and construction. Before there was automotive and trades, but that's now been centralized to the adult school and the community colleges (a bit of a heavy lift for high schools to do well).

> The uninterested group should not be discarded. They need a different focus and help.

They need smaller ratios and easier, more engaging material.

I can handle 24 students and present very high level material. Because I have a student population that is very much "easy mode". I can even be excessively hands off at times like your kids' robotics teacher-- sit back and see what the room does (after establishing a bit of culture and common goals in the room in prior classes).

In other contexts, I've worked with 6-7 students who were not invested or interested. It is really hard to build that investment if it isn't there.

> My thinking is, if, a big "if", we could "fix" --whatever that might mean-- the system for one generation, maybe two, the parental problem might self-regulate over time. Sadly, there are kids who are in a really bad environment. Can we address that as a society?

Maybe as a society, but probably not in mainline education.

You want things like Big Brothers Big Sisters (which has the highest quality of research in support of their program that I've seen from any nonprofit, based on a study controlled between students-on-the-waitlist and students-allowed-to-skip-the-waitlist). You want social work. You want coaching. Teachers can be subsidiary members of such a team: another set of eyes and hands supporting whatever the big plan is.

BBBS is able to make a radical difference in the likelihood of students attending class, avoiding violence, avoiding drugs, etc, in just several months.

> I've done tons of work with FPGA's. They are great. My fear, when it comes with using them as a teaching tool at that level, is that the student could suffer from exactly the same problem they have when they learn Python as their first language: Everything is magic.

There's always magic. There's a lot of circular dependencies in knowledge and you need to spiral.

When I started with gates, there was "well, wait, what are transistors?" When I started with transistors, there was "how does anyone build something useful from this and how do they work?" I haven't tried starting from semiconductor physics, but I don't picture it going perfectly, either ;).

Few students in middle/high school are going to be able to grasp (and it's arguably not a great use of their time to force them to specialize enough to do so) the whole relations between semiconductors, circuit analysis, gates, combinatorial logic, boolean algebra/synthesis, sequential logic, the software/hardware interface, compilers, etc. The normal approach is to try and handwave through all of it. I teach classes where I give a really deep window into one part of it and handwave around other parts (and maybe if they take another of my classes they get a really deep window into another part and slightly different handwavy explanations of the other parts).

> My example of this is having my own kids take the MITx 6.00.1 and 6.00.2 courses on edX under my guidance and supervision.

This works well with a few highly driven kids, but mostly hasn't been successful for me. Even in my academic environment, flipping with lessons from OCW, etc, gets pretty low engagement. Having a passionate, motivated presenter in the room with a social connection seems to be essential.

(Also, as much as I hated groupwork as a kid... think-pair-share and groupwork is a superpower for retention and overall class esprit de corps. Many kids hate explaining stuff to fellow students, but it makes everyone so much better. Few of these outside resources are set up to really allow you to do that well).

The best thing I've been able to do with outside presenters / material is to use them in a "adversarial" mode in the classroom. Superstar presenters like Jacob Clifford, Richard Rusczyk, or Walter Lewin are great, but students are inclined to tune out from multimedia... OTOH, if everyone is sitting on the edge of their seat trying to figure out if Mr. Lyle is going to go on a rant about what "Mr. Richard" is saying this time, then they pay attention. ;)