Is it that unproductive to read a lot of fiction? I read extremely quickly and still retain a lot of what I read, and this seems to be quite a useful skill, and I've always assumed that one of the reasons I have this skill is because I read so much as a child.
I have the same experience. It could be that I wouldn't have read nonfiction as voraciously, and less practice would result in less reading skill now. But I suspect that I read far past the point of diminishing returns.
I also do seem to have been interested in learning things, and so if they were presented at a faster speed I think I would have learned more. If I had been spending an hour a day on various required subjects like civics and history and English, which would have been enough, and four hours on self-paced math, I suspect I would be in a much better academic position than I am now. (This is what I'm thinking of when I said strongly suboptimal- if I were educating a child, I don't think I would put 8 of their hours into fiction reading, though I might put 4.)
Although my 8-year-old son likes his teacher, he is frequently bored at school. He attends a high quality suburban public school in the United States. He has a lot of traits in common with LessWrong readers, and we would like advice for what he can do to counter his boredom. Many of you must have found grade school more or less tedious. What were your coping strategies?