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?
Do what Harry's dad in HPMOR does: hire local grad students to be homeschool tutors. I do this for my 6 year old and 9 year old, and it is awesome. We parents do very high-level curriculum, taking about half an hour each week, and the tutors and kids do the rest. Teach at the kids' pace, choose material and progressions that make sense to you (or make sense to him), and have constant contact with teachers. I've found $20/hour is an attractive wage for most PhD students, and their expertise means that the barrage of "why?" questions the kids ask can actually be answered, often with current research findings. We've found we can cover 2 to 4 times the material in public school curriculum, and school is from 9 to 2. Also, you can do reasonable things like teach radians before degrees, graphing and functions along with each operation, foreign languages with native speakers, and Greek and Roman roots starting in kindergarten.
How do you find and connect with the grad students?