Let's End Adolescence
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Necessity is the mother of all virtues. People responsabilise when there is a need for it, especially when there is no other choice. Should the economic crisis worsen and make our life tougher, you'll see a lot of young people do whatever it takes to support their family and take a more serious stance on life and politics.
Some people are afraid that young people cannot responsabilise because of their education. I would argue that the same people underestimate (1) the potential of the young people, wich fuels the problem, and (2) underestimate the greatest educator of all : necessity.
teenage 1921, formed from -teen as a separate word + age; derived noun teenager is from 1941 (the earlier word for this was teener, attested in Anmer.Eng. from 1894). Teen-aged (adj.) is from 1952; shortened form teen is from 1951 (though this had been used as a noun to mean "teen-aged person" in 1818). Teeny-bopper is recorded from 1966, from teen but also felt as infl. by teeny. For second element, see bop.
Couldn't find the word "adolescence", unfortunately. Based on this, you could argue that the first "teenagers" showed up as early as 1894 or as late as 1941.
The result of this has been every bit as disastrous as Newt claims.
You'll notice that it also allowed the society of services to emerge, and we wouldn't have this discussion on Hacker News if we had to work 12 hours a day just to satisfy our basic needs.
Overall, I don't share your opinion that the country is a "whole worse off" now. We only face different challenges because our fathers did their job in their own time.
Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if we had the same growth of technology but without the decline in the political system. I suspect though, if we could glimpse into this alternate world it would blow us away.
I would argue the exact opposite. The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. The statistics show we have a society of increasing class stratification; people never marry down anymore, for example.
College and credentialism is also reinforcing an elitist attitude to manual labor. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." We're getting MORE social division, not less.
And let's not kid ourselves about the real level of diversity in colleges. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.
It depends on the college that you go to. Some colleges don't let anybody of less-than-middle class in.
people never marry down anymore, for example.
You'll have to clarify this a bit more. People marrying down wasn't ever common, to my knowledge. And, this is my biased and bigoted opinion, but people in similar classes often have the same values, and this is why cross-classing never works so well. For instance, I tend to be attracted to people who are very logical and very expressive. I find myself attracted to the gap right in between programmers and actresses, because that's where people share similar values to myself. That might be shown as a sign of bias on my part, and it is, but it's a bias that can't be fixed, because elsewhere people and I are less compatible. I'd assume the same to be true across social boarders: people who go to certain places in society all have similar traits. Forgive me if I sound ignorant: I'm not at all knowledgeable in this field.
I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker."
I don't look down on people who work with their hands. At the same time, though, I think that the power to create original things is the best power we've got. To be fair, few people ever do this, regardless of position. If you look at hackers as a whole, we're no better.
Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.
True. But I was talking more about people based on location. People of similar classes and skin color will be radically different based on where they come from. And some people never realize that until they get to college. It's not a huge change, not as huge as it could be, but it's a change and I'd argue that it's good for most college students.
As for universities - the top universities have a rainbow of skin colors, but the culture is overwhelmingly "Whiter Person" - http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
Please provide citations of serious studies of these trends you talk about; this analysis seems facile and frankly misleading, even as a first-order approximation, but I’m not an expert so I’d be glad to be convinced otherwise. In particular, “indoctrination” of immigrants is going to be hard to establish as a primary goal of the education system, and the benefits of credential laws and the technical training institutions that go along with them in fields such as medicine, engineering, and so forth are hard to overstate.
As for credentialing laws, pretty much all professions rely on some level of book knowledge plus on the job training. The book knowledge can be provided for by reading books and passing an exam. You don't need to attend three years of law school in person to become a great lawyer. Nor do you need four years of university to be a great engineer. The architecture profession seems to have been much better off without any degree requirements. Just compare the architecture of the 1800's to that of the past few decades.
30% of jobs in the U.S. economy now have legal credentialing requirements. That includes everything from hair dresser to interior designer. Even jobs like parole officer now require a four year college degree. We're essentially recreating the old guild system, which stifles economic growth. I don't think it's any accident that the most dynamic sectors of the economy - software, consumer electronics, movies - have virtually no licensing requirements.
What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees?
Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?
Today all of them do because it is legally required. My girlfriend is currently attending architecture school and it is beyond useless. She's learned an awful lot about "aura" and "algorithmic design" and precious little about designing buildings for the real world. Architects end up learning everything on the job.
In the 19th century, it was not uncommon for architects to be high school drop outs. The New York Public library, some of the tunnel projects under London, the California Aqueduct, were all designed by drop outs.
The structural integrity of the buildings was very high, and the aesthetics far surpass the creations of modern architects.
To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading.
I obviously would not want an untrained surgeon practicing on me. The trouble is that credentialing laws are a highly unstable equilibrium. It requires 8 years of post-secondary schooling to prescribe penicillin, read an x-ray, or set a broken bone. I could be convinced that 2 years of schooling might be necessary. But not 8. The reason it is so high is because of lobbying by the AMA. I'm sure they argue that the requirements are in the public interest. Perhaps they even believe their own PR. But if you talk to doctors about medical school, most of them will tell you that it had little relevance to their actual job.
Perhaps the most notorious example of credentialing is the orthodontist profession. The average orthodontist works 35 hour weeks and makes 350k ( about 40% more than dentists). The reason for this is that number of orthodontists allowed to graduate each year is actually capped at 280. The orthodontist association have even gone after inventors who devise new labor-saving (and thus income-reducing) braces, See the case of Viazis v. American Association of Orthodontists. This is blatantly anti-competitive, and it costs thousands of dollars from the pocket book of every American.
Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?
I once worked a bit on capitol hill. The civics class description of American democracy bears little resemblance to the reality. However, these the civics class lies are probably necessary to make a democratic system even marginally functional. My preferred solution then, would be to get rid of electoral democracy.
To be replaced with...?
Other options include something like Juristopia ( http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/05/juritopia.html ) or Formalism ( http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... )
Or, if you want something a little more proven, there is always Monarchy.
Basically, anything that doesn't use a ritualized form of gang warfare would be better than democracy in my book.
Luckily, the job of the government isn't to do good deeds -- it's to hold onto power in order to stop even worse people from getting it.
The purpose of democracy isn't to get the best people into power, it's to stop the worst people from getting into power.
I'd also note that democracy is altogether a failure at preventing the worst people from getting into power. Some of histories worst tyrants from history have come to power through party politics.
Or are you saying that all systems with parties are abominable because of parties, regardless of the details of how the systems work?
Well, that list mostly goes:
1. Hitler
2. A few others
But, y'know, Hitler counts for something.
But you could also do a lot worse than US-style democracy. See any number of lunatic 20th century dictators - and lots of monarchs. The disaster of WWI, for example, can largely be blamed on the monarchs of Germany, Austria, and Russia.
My take on the origins of World War I is quite different than yours. From my readings, the monarchs were much less willing to go to war than the politicians, and the politicians were less rabid than the mob. Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Russia all had elected parliaments with universal manhood suffrage that voted for the war. The rise of universal suffrage in the late 1800's gave rise to a number of jingoistic newspapers and politicians. Imagine five powerful countries and all the sources of news were like Fox News - no NYTimes or NPR. That's the recipe for one of the worst wars in human history. Pre-democracy, the kings would fight a few battles and call it a day ( see the Franco-Prussian war of 1871). With a democracy, calling a truce was "giving in to the aggressor" and the war lasted four terrible years.
Some good books/articles on the subject: Liberty Or Equality ( http://blog.mises.org/archives/006326.asp ), The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, Once an ArchDuke by Archduke Ferdinand, "Churchill on the Great War" - http://themonarchist.blogspot.com/2008/08/churchill-on-great..., Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"
Many 40 year olds manage their lives as teenagers (look at the low birth rate in western Europe, or high divorce rate in the US) and vice versa - teenagers build $15b (if you believe it ;)) companies.
However, it IS fair to say that society reacts to people of certain ages as if the sheer fact of getting older meant instant change in mood and personality. And that's harmful.
(I'm not judging this, btw, it's a valid choice.)
In Scandinavia birth rates are relatively higher - definitely not because Scandinavians don't like cars or vacations, but rather because the society makes it easier to have children and a job at the same time (e.g. kindergartens available and so on).
Anecdotal, yes. But your comment relies on a stereotype. How do we know that teenage mothers do not quickly start maturing from the point they become teenage mothers, relative to their peers? They almost have no choice.
(I say that knowing of some concrete counter-examples to what I just argued. But that's just anecdotes, too.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy#Impact_on_the...
Granted, these are just vehicles to maturity, not a promise of success. Everyone fails in some measure, some horribly.
Yeah. They bring out the ASS in some parents.
All the while, people are getting fatter and fatter, and less and less active. Our great grandparents had to struggle and suffer just to survive. Most of us have never dealt with true scarcity in our lives.
Each generation is getting lazier, more privilaged and more destructive.
Given the amount of ADD we have as a culture, training hackers with an emphasis on "you as an individual can create things that have the potential to become forces of nature with only a cheap computer and some knowledge" and deep familiarity with the internet (irc? google-fu?) seems to be the best way to graduate world class engineers. You won't get middle American teenagers to sit down and study like Chinese students will; but that's fine. Our hackers will end up just as knowledgeable as theirs, and maybe more creative.
EDIT: One more thing: we need to drill home that "post things to share with your friends for free!" is neither a business model nor a KILLERAPP!!111oneoneone. We need to inspire kids to go after the next big problems, and not just fill them up with hype and dreams, but actually give them the technical abilities to do it.
I couldn't agree more.
Our national drive to rebel against things and disobey orders is one of the best, if one of the most frustrating, things we've got going for us. We should encourage people to do things their own way, to try thinking out of the box. Even if it doesn't work, any time you try to do things differently you'll learn something, even if that thing is "what not to do next time."
Furthermore, Newt is completely off when he claims that all adolescents want more responsibility. This is simply untrue. A small fraction of adolescents want more responsibility, the rest want to hang out with their friends all day and do nothing. Which is actually pretty close to high school.
It's a question of the meaning of "want." I think a small fraction of adolescents can articulate that they "want" meaningful responsibility and structure, or make any efforts to get it.
I thought it was otherwise: that people who didn't want to work or improve or learn were people that didn't have a good method of doing so, that they were restricted by the system. Long story short, I found out that's radically not the truth. Some people are a little bit icky inside.
That's because you can't start with adolescence. You have to start increasing responsibility from roughly age 2. Get them used to it, reward it, show them the connection between increased responsibility and increased choice and freedom. Then they'll want it. The problem with most adolescents is the 12 years prior.
You can really want to be the kind of person who gets up and goes to the gym regularly. And you can also simultaneously want to sit motionless on your sofa and passively watch dumb TV programs, even though those things are totally incompatible.
I suspect it may be similar with figuring out whether teenagers really "want" to be mature, responsible, and productive individuals.
Teenagerdom has come to be the no man's land of life, the purgatory.
The fact is, most young people want to be challenged and given real responsibility. They want to be treated like young men and women, not old children.
Where have we heard this before?
PG wrote everything. Let's take that as a given. Now can we move on?
I'm not trying to be persnickety, but your comment adds absolutely nothing to the discussion and sounds like fanboy tripe. If PGs article was on here, we could talk about that. But it's not. AFAIK, every one of PG's articles has already appeared on here and we've already talked about it. So on with the new material, okay?
"X and Y are the same" is a lesson we all learned on Sesame Street, and isn't much worth discussing.
Rather than give some kind of credit to PG for anticipating NG, I wanted to point out how weird it is for the two of them to be agreeing. Gingrich is respectful of tradition and has a politician's instincts for rationalization and euphemism. Graham has said (along with everything else) that groups of people are inherently dumb and lazy, and is almost contemptuously truthful.
There's plenty of real intellectual content in there if you take the time to dig for it, and much of it is cool and subversive...
My own thinking is that it is impossible to end adolescence because American society is structured around competition, and competition depends on measurement. And because there's no good theory on what can verse can't be measured, it's too easy for the proponents of adolescence to put some numbers on what they're selling. And because these metrics make the benefits of adolescence seem more salient than the benefits of anything else, adolescence will always beat out every other option, short of some radical philosophical shift in society, which is beyond the scope of this movement.
* What are the numbers? What are they selling?
* What benefits? What would "anything else" be?
* Is there anything to take home from that drawn-out paragraph?
Sounds like a bullshit theory to me.
Schools, colleges, associated faculty and staff, parents, politicians, employers, etc.
"What are the numbers? What are they selling?"
Degrees, GPA, US News rank, X vs educational attainment (e.g. future earnings potential), etc.
"What benefits?"
The story of school. That is, what it means to be well educated/qualified is having a degree, having gone to a good school, having gotten a good GPA, etc. The social currency these things bring is all tied up with the story of school, or its foundational myth, or whatever you want to call it. By going through the system you earn the right to invoke the story.
"What would "anything else" be?"
Anything else. As it stands the only way to renounce adolescence is to become sanyasi sankalpa, which isn't a very good option.
"Sounds like a bullshit theory to me."
Maybe it's a bullshit theory, maybe it's the most poignant observation about western civ ever made, but you're smart so figure it out for yourself, I'm not here to play Bodhisattva.
http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.h...
And experiments such as the one my daughter, Jackie Cushman, is running in Atlanta—where poor children are paid the equivalent of working in a fast-food restaurant to study and do their homework—are examples of a more dynamic future.
How is being paid to study and do homework an example of early adulthood? One huge difference between adults and non-adults is adults tend to grab every opportunity to improve their skills, and understand that those don't come that often.
This article started with an interesting (if incendiary) premise, but then the author showed that he has poor logical skills. Perhaps he should go back to school himself.
In short, this article is a hodge-podge of potentially interesting half-ideas and downright nefarious illogical conclusions.
Not most of the adults I know. Nor most of the teenagers either, for that matter. Actually, I think "grab every opportunity to improve their skills" describes children under 10 more than any other age group.
The real purpose of education is to turn people into intellectuals. Industry does not want to simply hire people who know exactly how to do the job. Industry wants to hire people who are intellectual, and they do this by hiring college grads.
Now certainly the value of a diploma as a measure of intellectual curiosity has gone down dramatically, but I believe this was the original reason.
I don't think this was ever true. You can read about the European universities centuries ago and even back then they were about getting the children of the rich to socialize and drink a lot. More recently Jefferson said his time at William & Mary was waste of time, mostly drinking and riding and such. In the same period teenagers like Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Thomas Paine self educated to high levels of sophistication while working full time. In the case of John Paul Jones he was a ship hand from age 13 on at sea for months at a time, for crying out loud.
I really think the institutions of higher education have historically boiled down to the library. Books were extremely expensive and it made sense to collect them in one place for common use.
To be usefully educated about anything now is a lifelong process. This idea that there's something special about four years of the much longer process is a bit silly.
The idea is that a, colleges move to you places you'd never be (I have friends at NYU and Dublin who absolutely are getting more out of the locale than they are anything else), and b, because college is specifically made so that people can learn, you'll attract a purer blend of people, all of whom are interested in learning.
For the most part, that latter point is absolute bullshit. College has become so psychologically mandatory in the United States that people go to college whether or not they're truly interested in learning. And while I love the idea of liberal arts learning, and while hopefully if I stay I'll learn things I'd never thought to learn otherwise, the fact of the matter is that as colleges defocus themselves, there's less of an emphasis on really bright people who are going to blaze through early college to get to a meaningful level. In my classes, I'm learning to program in Processing and Scratch, for instance: one is a kid's language, for crying out loud, and for the other, I can't see the point of using Processing rather than Java. In my other classes, I'm learning to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, both programs that I have a good deal of familiarity with. It's an absolute waste, and my professors absolutely realize this, but they have no choice because other kids don't know a thing about programming, and the course that I'm in makes these classes absolutely mandatory.
As for the kids being enlightened and focused: don't get me started. At the time of this writing, one kid is in trouble because he brought tons of kids to his house and they threw up and now he's refusing to apologize to his parents because, as he puts it, "I'm in college. This should be expected behavior." Same kid told a real knee-slapper about stealing four thousand dollars while working at a Target. I mean, it makes for an amusing story, but it's despicable. And I'm in a pretty top-notch school, for what it's worth.
No, people who are really fascinated in learning nowadays tend to try and be practical about what they know: I'd bet that the brightest people of college age are doing things like trying to create start-ups, or at the very least trying to earn a living with the skills they've got.
You should try harder to get around this. I've never had a problem getting "mandatory" requirements waived.
If you don't manage to waive the classes, but are indeed hot shit, you should be able to crank out a semester's work in a day or two sometime early on. Professor might be more impressed/willing to waive when you turn in every problem, solved, on day one.
I'm pretty sure that Gingrich who is a professor, and every other republican who has ever considered the question in any way, recognizes the use and purpose of calculus and biology. But don't let reason get in the way of your mindless contempt.
The real purpose of education is to turn people into intellectuals
No, it isn't, unless you are talking about highly selective liberal arts colleges. And even then, the best you are going to get are 3rd generation photocopies of Susan Sontag.
Industry wants to hire people who are intellectual
No it doesn't. Period. Even the relatively "creative" jobs like software engineering want a fundamental skill set and raw intelligence, not the ability to quote Chomsky.
Reminds me of something Seth Godin (?) once said - that the whole purpose of school is to institutionalize mediocrity
That quote, however, is spot-on. Anything that doesn't focus on the best and brightest hurts the best and brightest in a way. And the fact that they survive despite this is a sign of those people ignoring the system rather than of the system's working. I wrote a lengthy post about this long long ago: can't find the link, apparently subjects delete themselves here?, but my point was that by making a system that was hostile to people like that, while ensuring it possible to live without the system, American school systems encourage people driven by ambition to become successes. It's why we have such a powerful entrepreneurial drive in the country.
I wish I could find the link, though, because I said it better back then.
No, it isn't, unless you are talking about highly selective liberal arts colleges. And even then, the best you are going to get are 3rd generation photocopies of Susan Sontag.
It would seem to me that that IS the purpose of education, especially a technical one. To me the definition of intellectual is a person who is always seeking to learn new things and better themselves educationally. In a field like engineering where things are constantly changing, the intellectually minded will be on the cutting edge and will be the ones you want to surround yourself with.
PS: And yes the English department was insanely hard for a public school, but I still got a CS degree while taking 4 English classes, 2 history classes, art, music, horseback riding etc. They even force philosophy majors to take take a single collage level math class.
Right, but the people who have the ability to quote Chomsky may be able to transfer that skill and quote Knuth or Sedgewick instead.
if you had a real education you would know that chomsky's initial ground-breaking work was in language structure, and his work is used widely in compsci texts on automaton theory
so you basically just got fucked by your own defense of ignorance
finally i get a chance at a college education and choose something that i hope better gels. if it doesnt its back to step one. if i succeed, im most likely stuck in a 9-6'er at a job that will eventually bore me, turning the cogs for the economy in the dream i am supposed to have.
the more money i make, the more things cost. meanwhile the politicians take summers off and long breaks, pay themselves handsomely and imagine that this is fair. they wonder why i am not happily churning out kids for them to support their economy and further wedge myself in their dream. i'll keep pissing about thanks.
then drop the fuck out! go work at ford. see you in twenty years.
If high STD and drug use rates tell us anything, it's that these young people are, on average, too immature to assume adult roles. I adore the feelings of achievement that being an entrepreneur/adult have brought me, but at the same time I recognize the fact that "being a kid" wasn't as bad the article makes it out to be. I spent most of my time playing video games, hanging out with friends and, yes, doing drugs! OMG! But you know what, at the end of the day, it was still fun.
I think we as a society should do everything in our power to encourage young people to focus on school so that they don't get dragged down into the worlds of drug addiction, poverty, etc. However, the reason I had so much time to dick around during my adolescence/teenage years was mainly because school was far too easy and not engaging enough. The entire schooling system is not nearly as progressive as it needs to be. Furthermore, there are not nearly enough reasons to excel at it. Working hard in high school just means you can get into a good college where you have to work even harder (and, unless you really excel or are financially secure, take a long-term monetary hit for the privilege) and the reality is that where one attended college is rarely relevant today.
School should be designed to provide useful knowledge instead of information that is merely cataloged, regurgitated, and forgotten. It should encourage and enable young people to find something they are passionate about and learn relevant things about that and gain useful experience in the process. The only classes that I worked hard to excel in and go beyond the bare minimum were programming and writing courses. It should come as no surprise that these are the two topics I am most passionate about to this day.
Or that they have nothing better to do?
And here I was thinking that sex and drugs are loads of fun, regardless of whether you're bored or not.
I've smoked marijuana before. I've been drunk. I haven't had sex, because I'm into the idea of abstinence, but I'd done everything but. And absolutely those things are enjoyable.
The difference is that I don't rely on stuff like that. I write, I program, I design things, I read, I try to write music and shoot films. I don't feel the need to drink once a week, or to go out and randomly hook up. And that's because I have so many things I can do at any given moment.
If you don't have that stuff, you're forced to rely on sex and drugs. And those things are both easily abused.
Therefore, it's "dumb" in that it requires no effort whatsoever on your part. And if you come to rely on that stuff for entertainment, then you're not gaining anything as you go. As opposed to its being used sparingly, in which case you're off doing more productive things.
That said, if the purpose of "adolescent" institutions such as high school and college is to prevent people from indulging in these things until they're ready, then they're a massive fail.
Had I gotten a job at 15, I would likely be far worse off than I am now since my life would have been filled with more things I didn't like, leaving less time for me to learn what I did like and make mistakes trying, etc. I believe the fundamental problem here is that kids are basing their actions off of their peers, who are just as bored and unsatisfied and just as immature. Therefore, they end up making the same immature choices. If, instead, schools were improved, parents were more proactive and children were all extended the same opportunities someone like myself was, this wouldn't be an issue.
Of course that's never going to happen so the drug business is safe. Phew.
What's wrong with making 13 year-olds support themselves? Why do parents owe their children support? Why should a single mom have to bust her butt to support her 13 year-old son who is bigger and stronger than she is so that he can have plenty of time to hang out with his friends, play video games, do sports, take drugs, etc.?
In my mind adolescence is like venture capital. It only makes sense to fund a person (and thereby to excuse self-funding) if the person being funded works hard during the funding period so as to generate a payoff.
Consider the numbers for a 13-year-old.
$7k education/year
$10k lost wages/year (assume the kid could get a job @$5/hr)
$7k parental support/year
= $24k /year
Seems to me there are better ways of spending $24k than to force a kid who doesn't want to to stay in school and jobless for a year.
Because she birthed him. Look, if a 13 year old kid wants to get a job, more power to them. However, if they don't, it's the parents' responsibility to provide for that child until they're an adult mainly because, at least in this society, kids aren't raised to be factory workers by 13.
You're looking at it from a perhaps pragmatic point of view, but you're missing the human factor; children aren't some investment you can liquidate if it doesn't work out. Having a child is a conscious decision to bring another human being into this world -- a human being who never actually asked to be brought. Once you do that it becomes your responsibility to care for and raise that person (or find someone else who can) regardless of whether or not they provide a return on investment.
Until when?
I'm not sure if I disagree with you or not, but the post you are responding to isn't saying parents have no responsibilities to their children, only that a 13 year old could take on a whole lot more responsibility than is typical in our society.
So, maybe "get a job and take care of yourself" is too harsh, but is there some middle position?
it tells newt nothing, because stats actually run contrary to his assumption. drug use and teen pregnancy are not rising, they are falling
The article draws rapid conclusions from its anecdotes. The U.S.'s social problems can't be summed up or resolved by such simplistic ideology.
the US education system needs to be made more efficient.
Instead there are
-arguments about semantics
-Republican VS Democrat
Only lower down, in the less pointed-to comments, is there any meat.
To me, this idea, that everyone should have a valuable place is society, explains what's wrong with adolescence. We as a society do not allow adolescents (young adults) a valuable place in society; we should be encouraging them to do the most useful work they can do; instead we discourage them. Sure, there is encouragement for being a scholar and for excelling in sports, but only a few adults are gifted in those areas: those few who will later go on to be teachers, professors, writers, and professional sports players. The rest of them are forced to do work which they are not good at, which they don't value, and which society doesn't value. Is it any wonder they become bored and turn to other things?
A better system is described in an old book I recently re-read, "Farmer Boy" (http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Little-House-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/...), not long ago which describes the life of a boy on a farm in New York in the 19th century. He was given as much work and responsibility on the farm as he could handle and he grew to the challenges. At school he learned to read and write and do arithmetic, and at home on the farm he learned to do useful work, negotiate, and spend wisely. When he was about ten or eleven, a wagon-maker offered to apprentice him. In return for several years of work, the boy would get room and board and training in the whole business of wagon-making with the likelihood that at the end of the period, he would buy the business which employed about 50 men. His father preferred that the boy become a farmer like he was, but he let the boy decide, saying to his mother, "We can keep him here on the farm by law til he's twenty-one, but he won't do any good if he's wanting to go."
Such a system worked very well in the past because it efficiently transitioned young people from a state of dependence on their parents to independence and it's accompanying responsibilities. A possible problem with that system is that it offered young people few opportunities beyond what was available to their parents. However, even then adults had a lot of opportunity to improve their situations by working harder at their jobs and by educating themselves. Today, there are many more opportunities. The job market is global: if you're not getting paid what you're worth, it's easier than any other time in history to find someone who will pay you more. Educational opportunities abound: books are relatively cheap, there are lots of libraries where you can read for cheap or for free, the Internet has lots of educational resources, and there are many institutions offering formal education. In addition, the number of work hours needed to survive is smaller than ever. So the argument that young adults need to be restrained from working and confined to public schools for several years because they won't have an opportunity to educate themselves later is unconvincing.
If the average person is not contributing at least the economic value they are consuming, your society is in a death spiral, and it doesn't matter how anyone "feels".
So I think "feeling" captures the idea of economic value, and it captures the idea of an individual's happiness which is also important when discussing public policy.
Economic law always functions of course. Even under an affirmative-action quota system, a person is only hired if it makes economic sense as a whole to the employer. However, the employee may not feel as valuable.
With respect to topic, I think much of the angst felt by adolescents comes from them feeling not useful. Allowing them to be useful, i.e., to get a job and support themselves, would help them feel useful.
Assuming we _could_ replace them with a robot, this would seem to imply that the person is truly without use but that we are providina a made-up task in order to make this person feel 'useful'. They might as well be tieing and untieing knots on a piece of string, leading an existence depending on the generosity of others. I am not sure if there is a better definition for 'society would be better off without them', even if this is hidden from them. I am all for finding useful tasks a human of IQ 80 (whatever that means) can accomplish, but withholding progress and providing a fraudulent sense of accomplishment does not strike me as the most respectful approach one can take towards solving this problem.
Well, perhaps that review is a good introduction to the criticism of The Bell Curve after all.
i.e. apprenticeship v. general education
fact: public universities will increase tuition when the number of students graduating with degrees in <4 years increases.
Not one that makes them work and leave school, mind you. Just one that respects them aging. A part of me feels that if we let teachers swear in front of students, let them act like people than act completely neutral, and start teaching them about how to solve their own problems, we'd find that a lot of the problems in modern society would just vanish.
Every instance in my life that I've felt like rebelling against a system was an instance in my life when I was treated like an adolescent per se. And that happened very rarely: I was lucky enough to have teachers that usually took the time to treat me like an adult. Whenever I see a student in college getting violently drunk and acting like an ass, I would place money on that person originating by acting against some authority figure. (Indeed, I have friends whose families let them drink, and none of those kids are alcoholic whatsoever. I wouldn't call it a formal study, but I think trends say that kids get into stuff like that when they associate that with being grown up.)
Gingrich is right in that the institution is a failure. However, his proposed solutions merely reinforces those institution. A big part of the problem comes from the shift in meaning of the words "teachers", "students", "homework", "responsibility", etc. As the author from the Wharton article says:
"Consider this one example from my recent experience. I attended a conference of school counselors, where the latest ideas in the realm of student counseling were being presented. I went to a session on the development of self-discipline and responsibility, wondering what these concepts mean to people embedded in traditional schooling. To me, self-discipline means the ability to pursue one's goals without outside coercion; responsibility means taking appropriate action on one's own initiative, without being goaded by others. To the people presenting the session, both concepts had to do solely with the child's ability to do his or her assigned class work. They explained that a guidance counselor's proper function was to get students to understand that responsible behavior meant doing their homework in a timely and effective manner, as prescribed, and self-discipline meant the determination to get that homework done. George Orwell was winking in the back of the room."
I just thought of an alternative solution, one that does not necessarily require a lot of political clout. The solution is something parents can implement directly without having to lobby for legislation. Simply, the parents has their kids pass their GED by the time they are 13. They may be required by different laws to also pass the different standardization tests, but depending on the circumstances, studying for the material in the GED should be enough. This can probably be done over the age normally reserved for middle school.
A 13-year-old with a high school diploma (via GED) has a lot more social clout within the adult world than a middle-school kid. He may not be legally able to vote, or drive, or smoke, or drink, and he'd get in trouble with underage-sex laws. However, he would not be considered a high-school dropout.
The options open up from there. The parents probably should choose an apprenticeship, whether that be something as humble as a janitor, or something more aspiring such as a researcher, a programmer, an entreprenuer, a soldier, a fireman, etc. A more traditional college track would still available.
Like you said, better finding your passions at 16 then at 22. Finding your passions though is an essential part of life and shouldn't be taken as "screwing around".
Choosing an apprenticeship for the 13-year-old is meant to give them a nudge. It doesn't matter if they pick it up or rebel against it. What matters is getting out of the home to see the world. Travelling around the world (without family) accomplishes the same thing.
Staying within the comfort of the home is screwing around ... even if it is "exploring" your passions. That's just extending childhood. So what I should have said is that after getting the GED (or equivalent) parents push them out of the nest, whether that results from choosing an apprenticeship for them, or having them travel around the country, or having them take college courses at college campus. That is what the old rites of passages (and the hero myths that go with it) accomplish: force the adolescent out of childhood, just as being born means going from the comfort of the womb to the bright, cold world. And of course, there are some who already know what they want and will already have plans in motion.
There is an obstacle with this idea is that many jurisdictions require you to be 16 to take it. Yet I remember hearing of college prodigies earning their degrees before that. It makes me think there is a way to hack it.
You can't raise children on the macro-scale. You raise them at the micro-levels.
So is this a Sub for these companies to target & market stuff? ~ http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/our_members
Similarly, anything that's left open to profit will corrupt. Look at the difference between Fox News and PBS. In some cases, not having to worry about money lets you be uncompromising in your delivery. I think schools would work the same way.
but in this case, replace 'hell' with 'serfdom.'
The first two stages are an unnecessary waste for most people, since they end up going through a lot more schooling than is useful for them, and could be abolished. For the third stage, I really don't see an easy fix, because we're talking about an extremely deep social problem. Closing the high schools and the mediocre colleges is only going to dump people into the "failure to launch" period early and prolong it, possibly to an even later age than now.
oh and aren't these alvin-tofler-acolytes the ones telling us we will change careers three times? that flexibility requires intellectual flexibility...you aren't going to have that if you mainline people into one job at 13. so what is it newt?
and his "stats" on rising teen pregnancy, drug use, stds??? not only bogus but 100% wrong.
newt is just a gruff dick who never smoked a bowl in college, never got a drunk grope from a gorgeous girl way out of his league, never woke up on the front lawn of the dorm still half wasted...and he wants to make sure you never have fun too! college was the time of my life! i got a degree and learned a lot...but also had more FUN with booze and women than i did before or since? WHY IS THIS TO BE AVOIDED????