"But I cut him much less slack than I was given as a kid."
Could work great. Could also end up inhibiting his executive function and turning him into a heroin addict.
The formula for success is multiplicative: Ability * Motivation * Opportunity.
If any one of those factors is zero, success is zero despite how much of the others you have. The thing about forcing kids to do their homework is there's no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever you gain in terms of extra external opportunity may be easily offset (and then some) by reductions in intrinsic motivation, executive function, etc. Or not. The point is that it's a wicked problem[1], and as such there isn't any simple and/or one-size-fits-all solution. Keep in mind also that doing well is largely beneficial because it gives you more opportunities to do various things. But thanks to new social structures that are being built on top of the Internet, those sorts of opportunities are becoming less and less valuable every day. While having them will always be better than not having them, it may no longer make sense to optimize for them either, especially when you're young enough to have a decades-long arc.
Although I am somewhat less enamored with him now that I used to be, I think John Taylor Gatto's list of 14 things that elite private schools teach that public schools don't is by far the best list of things to focus on for high school age kids:
Gatto's ideas about education are based on history and spirituality (esp. Christianity) rather than science, which can be somewhat offputting at first, but having read the best of the sciency books on the various aspects of childhood development and education I generally think Gatto has more to offer. (Not that the other books aren't good too, but they're generally more useful for designing education systems that scale rather than parenting, except for when the kid is less than five which it doesn't sound like yours are.)
Could work great. Could also end up inhibiting his executive function and turning him into a heroin addict.
The formula for success is multiplicative: Ability * Motivation * Opportunity.
If any one of those factors is zero, success is zero despite how much of the others you have. The thing about forcing kids to do their homework is there's no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever you gain in terms of extra external opportunity may be easily offset (and then some) by reductions in intrinsic motivation, executive function, etc. Or not. The point is that it's a wicked problem[1], and as such there isn't any simple and/or one-size-fits-all solution. Keep in mind also that doing well is largely beneficial because it gives you more opportunities to do various things. But thanks to new social structures that are being built on top of the Internet, those sorts of opportunities are becoming less and less valuable every day. While having them will always be better than not having them, it may no longer make sense to optimize for them either, especially when you're young enough to have a decades-long arc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem