April 13, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Cause or effect?
Robert Epstein challenges the whole concept of adolesence:
As a longtime professor and researcher, I got curious. Were our young people always required to attend school, and were their work opportunities always limited to babysitting, yard work, and cleaning the floors at fast-food joints? Were they always subject to so many restrictions? Are teenagers necessarily incompetent and irresponsible, as the media tell us? Is there really an immature “teenage brain” that holds them back? After all, past puberty, technically speaking we’re not really children anymore, and presumably through most of human history we bore our young when we were quite young ourselves. It occurred to me that young people must be capable of functioning as competent adults, or the human race quite probably would not exist.
Speaking for myself, I was immature and thoroughly incapable of managing my own life at the age of 17. Of course, I often feel that's true at the age of 34, so this may not be evidence for the existence of adolescence. More to the point, it's worth asking whether we treat adolescents thus because they are immature, or whether they are immature because we coddle them in such a ridiculous fashion.
Certainly, it is not evolutionarily normal for children to spend the majority of their time immersed in a peer group composed of people within a year of their own age. Nor is it probably healthy. Children act rather like animals when they're in groups together. Not only the immaturity of adolescence, but the barbaric cruelty of much of it, may be due to the fact that herding children into a series of age-segregated activities profoundly retards the process of socialisation. If Judith Harris is right, and peer group effects dominate parental influence, we are in effect letting large groups of children raise each other.
On the other hand, while I understand that "adolescence" was not, as such, a concept in 19th century America or before, "youth" was. The literature of the era seems to be firmly of the opinion that there is something sad about fourteen year old boys having to work to support their families. And it is a commonplace thing that young men and women are very likely to do foolish things from which they should be protected. People may have stepped into adulthood earlier, but they did so with training wheels, surrounded by a huge extended family that guided them through the rocks and shoals of early adulthood. Now that a first job may be across the country from your parents, it's hardly surprising that they want you to wait until you're really well prepared. Not to mention the fact that modern jobs require a bit more training than the basic 19th century employment of writing things down in books, or moving heavy objects from one place to another.
But then, even after all this extensive training, young people on their own for the first time still manage to have disastrous relationships, unsustainable credit card debt, summary firings from first jobs, and so forth. So perhaps Epstein is right, and we're only extending the foolish phase well into the twenties.
Posted by Jane Galt at April 13, 2007 9:33 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>I also was incapable of managing my own affairs at 17, but then I hadn't had to up to that point. I am of the opinion that adolescents are immature because we expect nothing more from them.
Posted by: Yancey Ward on April 13, 2007 10:14 AMNot to mention the fact that modern jobs require a bit more training than the basic 19th century employment of writing things down in books, or moving heavy objects from one place to another.
I believe many 19th century "youths" (males anyway) were in apprenticeships learning rather complex skills and trades.
Posted by: Slocum on April 13, 2007 10:22 AMI would love to see the results of a Nexis search that showed how often 16- and 17-year olds are described in the media as "children." My casual observation is that its become much more frequent over the past 10-15 years.
Aside from the legal abstraction of childhood/adulthood, people that age are NOT children.
Push childhood into the late teens or even up to 21, and we shouldn't surprised if adolescence stretches to 30.
I agree that we let childhood and adolescence go on way too long if we expect kids to leave the house when they're 18 or 22. But I don't think it's accurate to call this some major break with past practice. It wasn't too long ago that children lived with their parents until they got married, which could be in their mid-20s. The idea of a young, single person living alone is novel by historical standards, isn't it?
Also I think there is an venerable distinction between phyiscal maturity (at 18-20) and emotional maturity (in mid- to late-20s). Roman men joined the army in their late teens or at around 20, but they weren't put on the main line for several more years. They couldn't run for office until they were 28 or 30, a practice that is reflected in our own Constitution.
Extending childhood forever like we do now isn't good for the way we expect people to live now, but I'm not convinced that "most of human history" is behind the idea that we're fully-formed individuals at a relatively young age. At least not in the upper-class Western tradition that our culture descends from.
Posted by: AT on April 13, 2007 10:52 AMJane wrote: " ...I was immature and thoroughly incapable of managing my own life at the age of 17...."
When I was 17, I was a junior in college. A year later, I got married, and the marriage lasted for 27 years. Admittedly, we did get some financial help from our parents while I was in Grad school.
Treating young adults (i.e. girls who have passed puberty and boys over the age of 14) as "children" is an absurd, self-fulfilling prophecy that flies in the face of Nature. And it just demonstrates the immense political power of the Education [sic] Industry.
This is my primary justification for homeschooling my four children. I prefer multi-generational contexts of my choosing for my four young children's social development over the forced socialization found in public schools, which becomes more like "Lord of the Flies" every year.
Not for lack of concern or effort by public school teachers, of course. Most teachers I know are dedicated and caring. It is the parents who are abdicating their responsibility to mold and shape their children into mature and productive members of society, leaving their children at the mercy of other children who think rap music and Paris Hilton have values worthy of emulation.
Posted by: Jerry on April 13, 2007 11:08 AMSlocum's point extends well back into history, back to Rome, Greece and beyone. I suggest that adolescence as a concept is a result of the industrial revolution. Only countries with a lot of extra wealth can afford to keep part of the population out of any real labor from the age of 12 to the age of 18 or so.
I also suggest that a lot of the parents of the 50's and 60's had to work at some kind of job during the Depression, and went out of their way to spare their own children that experience. This well-intended gesture resulted in a whole bunch of 18 year olds with the emotional maturity of someone younger (say, 12).
There are families, usually in the lower economic strata, where children are expected to help around the house. Not always in the sense of assigned chores, but rather "if you see any of the jobs on this list that need doing, then do them". Farms often still operate this way, for example. People I've known who grew up in such families are always more mature at any age above 12 than the usual suburbanite middle class individuals. Something about being handed 20 or 40 acres of land and a tractor at the age of 16, and told to get it cultivated by sundown vs. mowing the lawn, perhaps.
So I'll take "nurture" as the dominant factor; if you treat people like children, they will act like children. Touching on that brain development issue, it might be interesting to consider epigenetics with regard to the issue of frontal lobe development. If people are not really caused to use that part of the brain until college, why should it develop before then? Yes, I know this is a radical position, however it has become evident that brain plasticity is much greater than we thought. "Use it or lose it" applies to the gray and white cells just as much as it does to muscle tissue. So "don't use it, and you never get it" also applies...
Posted by: ellipsis on April 13, 2007 11:10 AMI prefer to think of adolescence as a luxury. We can extend a lack of maturity to a later age. This is a good thing. It allows development of more valuable and productive skills. Maturity only comes with responsibility. Responsibility is time consuming.
Fifteen year-olds have the emotional capacity to accept balancing check books, planning to have money on hand to pay utility bills, get up and go to work each day etc. But is it the best use of their time?
Posted by: Njorl on April 13, 2007 11:15 AMRe: Chris Anderson's comment, AP style -- which is what nearly all news media outlets use to guide to decide such matters -- says that males and females under the age of 18 are to be called boys and girls. So, you should not have seen an increase in this usage, as it has been standard for a very long time.
However, I'll add that I perceive an increasingly casual use in the media -- not necessarily by reporters, but by commentators -- of "kids" or boys and girls to refer to people in the 18 to 25 age range. I bet you'd find a number of such references to the Rutgers women's baketball team, for example. This is done for political purposes, of course, just as it was done in the Monica Lewinsky controversy but I think there's a cultural foundation to it as well as the 20s become the new teens.
Posted by: Kevin B. O'Reilly on April 13, 2007 11:35 AMGood point about AP style, but just to clarify, that wasn't what I really had in mind. I was thinking of the quotes within a story describing individuals in their late teens and referring to them as "children." The object wouldn't necessarily be to see if reporters and editors are trending towards that language, but rather whether the experts and ordinary people that they interview are. To my mind, that would be evidence that the both the expert and public perception of childhood and adolescence has shifted.
Posted by: Chris Anderson on April 13, 2007 12:16 PMTeenagers may have been expected to take on the trappings of adulthood way back when (when life expectancy was less than 50?), but how well did they handle it? This is the era of high poverty, infant mortality, misogynistic marriages, beggars guilds, substance abuse, etc. Maybe things were rough then because children were thrust into adulthood.
On the other hand, we aren't doing them favors by coddling them either.
Posted by: Half Canadian on April 13, 2007 12:30 PMThrough most of human history, children went to work as soon as they could hold the work implement and were married upon puberty. The concept of adolescence was not invented until late 19th century, when in our infinite wisdom we decreed that all children must have an education, thus creating the self-perpetuating education bureaucracy that comes with self-serving designations such as "adolescence".
Posted by: djg on April 13, 2007 12:46 PMIs there some kind of axiom or rule that covers all the usage for how and when we can harp back on "the good old days". It's seems like both sides of the aisle do it and use it as proof for their point. Conservatives talk about the good old days and how marriage and the family was a stable unit. Liberals say, "Ya but you also lynched people and women were stuck in the kitchen".
From my experience it is both the right and left-leaning people who talk about the good old days when kids did hard work and were not coddled. Presumably the right feels that way because they can be harsh on punishment and/or put them to work. The left, it seems, brings up the "he's not really a kid" argument anytime one of their own is caught sleeping with minor.
Posted by: cdub on April 13, 2007 1:52 PMIn the (very heavily-researched) Movie _Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,_ one important role is that of Mr. Midshipman Blakeney---who ends the movie as a war-wounded (one arm gone) combat veteran---and who's no more than 14 or so, and is too young to shave yet. He was far from unique or a singular character; in the days of "wooden ships and iron men," it was routine for a midshipman to start his career (as, basically, an apprentice naval officer) around age 12 or so, and midshipmen no older than 15 often had enough experience and authority to be put in charge of "prize crews"---basically, they'd be put in command of a captured ship, with some sailors from their own ship, and expected to take that ship home, with its captured crew locked up below-decks. Not a job for a mere child.
If we were willing to allow even young teenagers more responsibility (making sure that they had the right skills first, of course) we might be pleasantly surprised at how competent they often would be.
Posted by: Technomad on April 13, 2007 2:12 PM"Through most of human history, children went to work as soon as they could hold the work implement and were married upon puberty."
Didn't we already have this debate a few months back about whether 13 year-olds were commonly married in the past?
I'm most disturbed by the age-segregation effect of our schools. I do not want my children socialized by other children, but I have few alternatives.
Posted by: Holly on April 13, 2007 3:06 PMJack Lucas, of North Carolina, was 13 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He lied his way into the Marine Corps within a few weeks. He proved to be extremely proficient in short order, so much so that his superiors ordered him to stay behind in North Carolina, so as to assist in the training of new recruits, while the men he had trained with were shipped off to Hawaii. He in effect went AWOL to get into combat, by stowing away. Upon arrival in Hawaii he conned officers into believing that the orders had been botched due to clerical error.
When he was fifteen, an censor read a letter to his girlfriend in which he mentioned his age, he was nearly tossed out of the Corps, and talked his way back in, but he was assigned to driving a truck in Hawaii.
At sixteen, as Marines were boarding ships destined for Iwo Jima, Lucas went AWOL again, stowing away again so he wouldn't abandon his unit. He slept on deck and scrounged food from other men, but then he realized he might be classified a deserter. He turned himself in, after the ship was days out to sea, and an officer finally concluded that is it was best to allow Lucas to fufill his ambition. Iwo Jima awaited.
Just after he turned 17, his unit engaged with 11 Japanese soldiers in a trench. Lucas killed one one of the Japanese before his rifle jammed, and as he was trying to unjam the weapon, two grenades landed at the feet of one of his fellow Marines. Lucas dove on top of the grenades, sinking into Iwo's volcanic ash. One was a dud, but the other went off, inflicting terrible injuries, so terrible he was taken for dead. A Marine in a following unit saw his hand twitch, so he was evacuated, received the Congressional Medal of Honor, and is still among us today.
Nope, we don't want our 13 year old citizens today to experience what Jack Lucas did, but they really are capable of quite bit more, if given the opportunity.
Posted by: Will Allen on April 13, 2007 3:14 PMNot to mention the fact that modern jobs require a bit more training than the basic 19th century employment of writing things down in books, or moving heavy objects from one place to another.
Well, I don't know about this. Many people prior to the 20th century worked in farming. My guess is that farming takes a lot more wide-ranging knowledge than the typical job today. Farmers had to know how and when to plant various crops, how to harvest them, how to preserve and can food, how to prevent a wide variety of diseases and pests, how to rear and take care of farm animals, how to maintain or possibly manufacture farm tools, etc., etc. That's not even taking into account all of the ancillary things that a lot of people had to do for themselves back then (in fact, all these are things that my own grandparents did well into the 20th century) -- sew, make candles, build barns or sheds, repair shoes, deliver babies, kill animals for meat, perform household repairs, etc., etc.
Posted by: Stuart Buck on April 13, 2007 3:31 PMNot to mention the fact that modern jobs require a bit more training than the basic 19th century employment of writing things down in books, or moving heavy objects from one place to another.
One of the examples given above was command of a sailing vessel at 15. WWII bombers - electronic warfare kit included - were operated by 18 year olds with 6 months training. These seem pretty skilled jobs to me.
Modern employers are not complaining about a shortage of English Language or European History graduates. The reason for extending the school leaving age is that the schools get steadily less capable of teaching their victims to read and write.
Posted by: anon on April 13, 2007 3:46 PMit was routine for a midshipman to start his career (as, basically, an apprentice naval officer) around age 12 or so,
It was also routine for boys in that capacity to be the target of rape by their superior officers, since they had zero legal recourse and weren't strong enough to fend off attacks physically.
Let's beware of romanticizing the past too much.
Posted by: Alex Knapp on April 13, 2007 3:50 PMWhile I do think its good that we allow students time to get more education, I do think that many parents really are infantilizing children. I teach seniors, who are generally 16-18. Its standard practice in schools to call parents when children act up or are failing a class, and it disgusts me a little that I still am required to do this for seniors, the same way I do for freshmen. We are about to push them out into work/college. If a 17 year old is incapable of sitting quietly in class, I shouldn't have to call mommy to get him to stop. If a 17 year old is choosing not to do his homework, I shouldn't have to call mommy and let her know. Yet if I don't, the parents will pitch a fit and the school won't allow me to render consequences on the "child". To me, by 17, we should be leaving parents out of it and treating the student like the adult he/she is on the verge of being.
Posted by: Jennifer on April 13, 2007 10:07 PMAs I understand it, the original wording of 'compulsory education', and still the law in many states, is age 16, or completion of the 8th grade. I believe that most citizens at the time were poor, and the poor have always had to 'grow up' faster. Perhaps M. Epstein is confusing shifts of economic status toward affluence with the nature of adolescence.
I have raised a couple of foals. I know from personal experience that between age 3 and 4, a horse's intellect matures. Concentration and patience improves, problem solving improves, impulsive behavior that detracts from performance decreases, understanding increases. I call this a 'mature head'. Draft horses can be and often are bred at age three and four. I have seen similar changes in humans, from puberty to age 16-18. That is, while we could put 12-17 year olds to work, I would not assign full adult responsibility, until their thinking mind reaches a more mature state. The change is often quite distinct.
I cast my vote for a physical change in the mind, years past puberty, when the mind changes to a mature state. Adolescense, if you will.
Posted by: Brad K. on April 13, 2007 11:33 PMPaul Graham has a wonderful essay about the prison that is public school at http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Posted by: me on April 14, 2007 2:11 AMIan McEwans latest book identifies the precise time when childhood & irresponsibility came to be seen as good, and adulthood as bad. Edward views his teenage years with contempt, a blip on the road to adulthood. The sixties ruined everything, now we all live in a perpetual adolescence, it's pathetic really.
Posted by: adrian on April 14, 2007 7:51 AMAt 14, I entered University, and had a (high-school provided) 'work permit' that allowed me to have a real job. For 4 years prior to that I had a paper route. At 8 I was taking the bus to my appointments. At 12 I was responsible for purchasing my own clothes (with an allowance), for shopping for groceries, for preparing the family meal a couple of nights a week.
My parents expected me to grow up, and I did.
Today, children are driven to their (self-absorbed)games and appointments. How many actually are responsible to just get themselves to school? Parents want to infantilize them, and the children are happy to oblige.
TO: Jane Galt
RE: Stupid Teenagers
The reason we have stupid teenagers is because we haven't taught them any better than to be self-indulgent pre-schoolers.
These days, we treat them like pre-schoolers all through their time in a family. They have NO CONCEPT of reality because they live in a creche-like environment until they go off to college, or out into the world. And even at college, they're being treated in a similar fashion.
Reading The Patriots, a book on the lives of the Founding Fathers, I was intrigued by the report that before going off to school at Harvard, 14-year old Samuel Adams had a breakfast of oatmeal and a mug of dark ale.
Heaven forefend that we should be giving our children life experiences involving alcohol THESE days. We'd be thrown in jail and our children wrested from our loving care by a bunch of dweebs who don't really love them.
That's just ONE example. There are myriad others; work, fighting, love, history, civics, etc., etc., etc.
No wonder these young men and women behave like ill-mannered children instead of adults.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. -- C. S. Lewis]
I have three adolescent boys. Yes, adolescent. I love and respect them with all my heart, and I know them very intimately. Are they capable of living their own lives? Yes, in a way. But if you think of all the constraints you would have ordinary people work within - consideration for others, moderation, generosity, diligence, obedience, chastity, etc, then if you were to imagine a life lived without any of them you could easily foresee an independent lifestyle for boys between the ages of 13 and, say 20. I know I'm vulnerable to the charge that this must be the anomalous effect of my personal experience, but I challenge anyone to deny that there is an unbalanced, unbridaled, cruel, crude competitiveness among groups of teenage boys (and, I hear, girls), and that this is at all unique to our time. Years ago, these "boys" were students, rebels, soldiers, pirates, knights, barbarians, etc., drinking, whoring, murdering, terrorizing the landscape. Today, they're terrorizing my basement playroom. They're "men children" with all the physical and mental faculties of grown men, except that they lack experience, specific knowledge of things, and a rationale for innately constrained and controlled personal conduct (by innately, I mean done so for its own sake, and not as a conscious act to please adults). They yearn to experience, to be free and independent, and are totally terrified of it at the same time because they don't really KNOW very much. We get worked up about the psychic and physiological, and forget that adolescence is about imbalances that are very understandable - a world where booze and sex mix with Playstation and stick hocky, and wilfulness and ignorance really combine to create the essential reality.
Posted by: Matt C on April 14, 2007 10:09 AMGreat discussion....I was 8 when I had my first paper route, but I would not let my son go door to door today selling papers like I did. Why? Fear of some pervert trying to molest him. That fear would never have entered into my parents mind back in small town America back in the early-mid 60s. Were they naive?..I don't think so, it was a different culture then. My father ran away from home with an older brother (14) and cousin (14) when he was 12 (1942), leaving North Carolina for California. He was caught in Texas and held in jail by a very kind Sheriff. He had worked his way across the states to Sweetwater, Texas. The Sheriff eventually learned who they were and sent a telegram to my grandfather, who eventually sent them money to return by train to NC. Now I could not imagine my son, who is 12 years old, even attempting to do this... My father on the other hand had been removed from school in the third grade so he could help put food on the table and allow the other children to go to school. He was the only child of 16 who did not finish school, but all the others were fed and clothed by my grandfather with my father's asistance. My believe is that we, has parents, do not allow our children to grow up and that the public school system does not improve their socialization.
Posted by: Budahmon on April 14, 2007 10:16 AM"Manhood and womanhood are gifts from God. Adulthood must be learned."
-From "Journey To Adulthood" By Leader Resources
In the past the family and clan were much more influential than today (in the West). Married adolescents were often supported and guided by family. On the other hand, my great-grandfather, orphaned by the Civil War at 10, at 18 was teaching school in Missouri where he married his 15-year-old student, moved to Oklahoma, raised 12 children and was elected county treasurer.
I believe expectations have a whole lot to do with it, for example, I understand that in Japanese schools the elementary age children are expected to prepare and cook lunch.
A science-fiction story from a while ago postulated a US where all high-school juniors and seniors rotated through a number of internships with a variety of companies. This allowed them to learn and contribute in the "real world", in return for funding for college after they graduated high school. Would it work?
Posted by: Jack Okie on April 14, 2007 10:33 AMWhen I arrived in Inchon, Korea, at age 19, I was astonished to see the captain and sole crew-member of the ferries that shuttled us ashore were 12-year-olds. These were million-dollar vessels, and their captains were very competent and very much in charge.
Flash forward to the contemporary US, and I have been astonished in a different way how many parents of a professional stripe in discussing educational plans and ideals want it kept entirely cerebral. They shoot down any component that is hands-on or vocatonal, that requires personal responsibility or that takes processes from start to finish. In my mind, the education they want for their children can best be described as mandarin.
In their minds book-immersion will best insure that the loftiest perches of our society will be open to their children. However, there is, for example, a vocational program in France, hundreds of years old, that puts high-school-aged kids into apprenticeship programs for pipefitting, masonry and other trades that produces a much higher percentage of CEOs, top executives and master artisans than do our Ivy League colleges.
All these mandarin-raised kids will depend for their future employment on peers with comparable book knowledge, yes, but who also learned how to actually do something. No wonder that 40 years later Korea is an economic powerhouse.
Posted by: Charlie Tips on April 14, 2007 10:40 AMIts standard practice in schools to call parents when children act up or are failing a class, and it disgusts me a little that I still am required to do this for seniors, the same way I do for freshmen.
Heck, USC did it to undergraduates this week.
Posted by: Rand Simberg on April 14, 2007 10:41 AMI am somewhat disappointed that no one has discussed the role that the criminal justice system plays in this. How much of a contribution do defense lawyers make when their client is depicted as a mere child and this is picked up by the media megaphone.
There are also the many instances of cries of "we're robbing our kids of their childhood."
I think the concern has been around for awhile though. J.M. Barrie wrote the book "Peter Pan" many years ago.
Like FlightpERDoc, I was expected to grow up and had jobs young. However society today strongly discourages it. Paper routes locally are not available for kids - the DMN actually says they will not hire children. Yard work companies abound and are cheap. I tried damn hard to get kids to cut the lawn - the college kids I used one year gave up because they couldn't compete with the illegals in terms of costs. So its damn hard for a kid to find work. I see it in the college students. Rural kids from farms and small towns where they still can find odd jobs are much more sensible and mature than their city or suburban counterparts.
You get what you raise it seems. And as a country, we had decided to raise self-centered children instead of young men and women.
Posted by: Kevin on April 14, 2007 11:03 AMKids can be given practical competence and responsibility, and at the same time be given the room to pursue complex topics of study.
Our current system of "education" and adolescence is a horrific failure. There is no rational excuse for it.
Posted by: njarl on April 14, 2007 11:04 AMInteresting post as well as comments...
I started working part-time when I was 12 yo in 1974...I've worked ever since, whether I was in school (eventually fin'd a Ph.D.) or not...I've made sure that my kids (I have 3) started working in their early teens so that they could learn what it means to "earn their way". We took a portion of the earnings for "rent, food, utilities" (40%) so that they would understand what we meant when we said "turn of the damn lights!" etc.
They are just entering college now, and have become as a result of our training far more frugal than their peers, as they have learned that it's not cheap to live. What they didin't know at the time was that we put the 'rent' money into a savings account and are giving it back to them through college...
Just some thoughts to the thread, any comments?
Posted by: Rich Vail on April 14, 2007 11:06 AMI'd like to clear up a few misconceptions:
1. Midshipmen were young and physically weaker than old salts. That wasn't the point. The point was that they were capable of complex critical thinking, advanced levels of skill, and life-or-death decisionmaking. It's not "romanticizing the past" to discuss that fact; furthermore, who, after seeing Master and Commander, would romanticize that past anyway?
2. People on the American frontier were most certainly highly-skilled. Farming, alone in the wilderness, takes a great deal of skill. Making candles, birthing babies, timing crops, making/repairing tools and clothing, hunting, animal husbandry, butchering, cooking over wood fires, tanning, canning, etc. are not simple and most modern Americans can do few if any of them! Furthermore, many people on the frontier could play a musical instrument or two.
3. Some people on the frontier had other complex skills. Handmade rifles were accurate enough to make squirrel a common protein source. Wagons built by hand took pioneers a thousand miles over rough ground. Shoes and boots were made by hand, wells were dug, all without electricity or complex tools.
4. Keeping a checkbook and paying the bills are NOT a waste of time for a 15-year-old. Many of us end up deep in debt at 30, and spend a few years and many missed opportunities getting ourselves out. A good number never DO get ourselves out of that debt. I wish I'd been put in a position to learn those lessons earlier, rather than scouring record stores for the latest punk rock import single!
5. I was a competent computer programmer, in a few languages, at 14. I quite developing the skill, because I didn't see a good use for it. At 24, I ended up going back to using it to earn a living. I could have done that 10 years earlier and done my emotional development while learning about the "real world", instead of being insulated from it. That insulation led to nothing but frustration.
Posted by: Barry on April 14, 2007 11:06 AMFrom the various comments, I think there are two compatible positions on this topic. One, that we infantilize our teenagers. Two, that we shouldn't thrust our children into independence upon puberty.
What seems clear is we lack a middle alternative in today's education system. As Matt C. implies, and others echo, teenagers need the socialization of adults to help them temper their baser tendencies. Yet, they also need more accountability, responsibility and authority.
I haven't read Jack Okie's science fiction story, but I would love a high school that offered a modernized apprenticeship system, if for no other reason than to mitigate the pernicious effects of peer socialization. In the realm of impossible dreams, I'd love to see a thorough revamping of the education system to eliminate age-based grades.
In my sons' Catholic elementary school (K-8), which is age-based, they have some structured opportunities for the older kids to interact with the younger (seventh-graders as "prayer buddies" for first-graders). It is startling to see the seventh-graders "rise" to the occasion and behave with a maturity rarely seen before. I suspect the effect is extensible with older students across all grades, and with adults socializing the oldest students.
Posted by: David Oboyski on April 14, 2007 11:13 AMThe desirability of adolescence is all that is in question.
As for its existence, the spectacle of the Boomers' second adolescence for the last seven years is self-evident.
Posted by: Brett on April 14, 2007 11:59 AMIt's all on the parent. My parents, bless them, let me have the best of both worlds. They made sure growing up that I understood and fulfilled my responsibilities - getting good grades in school, doing my chores, getting summer and after-school jobs. But they also always let me have my adolescence also - I had to save a portion of my earnings and allowance (and show them the bank statements to prove it) but the rest was my own to buy anything I wanted. After a while, I figured out not to waste my money on stupid stuff. I had to work a job, but I was also encouraged to go out with friends, play sports, find dates etc etc. As long as I took care of my responsibilities, I was trusted and allowed to have my fun.
There is absolutely zero reason any other parent cannot do the same.
Posted by: Jonny on April 14, 2007 12:00 PMI would love to see the results of a Nexis search that showed how often 16- and 17-year olds are described in the media as "children." My casual observation is that its become much more frequent over the past 10-15 years.
I had an odd "coming of age" moment at 19. I was playing tennis on a public court (shaded by the pterodactyls swooping gracefully overhead) and I overheard one lad, maybe twelve, say to his buddy "We can play as soon as that man gets off".
I looked around to see to whom they might be referring and was mildly surprised to see it was me.
However (and I *am* on topic here) I reflected for a moment and realized that if I were to die in a ghastly auto accident or be swept over Niagra falls, the NY Post headline would almost surely be "Man Dies In Falls", rather than "Youth Killed In Hideous Accident".
Quite a moment for me.
That said - my impression is that people are men and women at age 18 unless they are soldiers in Iraq - there, they become our children again.
Posted by: Tom Maguire on April 14, 2007 12:04 PMFirst off, I'm a Juvie PD so I spend my days with teenagers. I am terrified of what will become of most of them upon turning 18.
What I see are parents who have completely abdicated parenting. Give their offspring a pill and counseling once every two month for their Bipolor and ADHD diagnosises and call it a day. Since they are "mentally ill" a parent can't possibly be expected to control their behavior or teach them responsiblity. They are mentally ill, remember?
I was told a long time ago that water rises to it's own level. If your child has never had expectations of achievement or expected to behave at some minimum level, they will get eaten alive.
I have no illusions that I am changing the world. I am fully aware that a very large percentage of my current clients will be incarcerated after they turn 18. And I have no idea how to fix that.
Posted by: xyz on April 14, 2007 12:04 PMKnapp wrote:
It was also routine for boys in that capacity to be the target of rape by their superior officers, since they had zero legal recourse and weren't strong enough to fend off attacks physically.
Let's beware of romanticizing the past too much.
To which I reply:
Let's be wary of making a point that has no bearing on the topic.
Your comment is a non sequitor.
Barry's reply is exemplary.
Posted by: Tom Perkins on April 14, 2007 12:08 PMApparently due to better nutrition, puberty comes several years earlier now than it did before the 20th century. A girl in the past might get her period at 15 and expect to marry a few years later.
Posted by: Joanne Jacobs on April 14, 2007 1:53 PM"Children act rather like animals when they're in groups together."
One sentence (Title) comes to mind: Lord of the Flies.
Posted by: AntonK on April 14, 2007 1:56 PM"Certainly, it is not evolutionarily normal for children to spend the majority of their time immersed in a peer group composed of people within a year of their own age:"
Nothing like a T-Rex snapping at your ass to promote rapid maturation.
Posted by: fghj on April 14, 2007 2:05 PMI was married at 16, had two children at 22 and had worked for 7 years. I took care of everything in my family and my spouse took care of his "extra martial needs"...It upsets me to see young adults, say 16 on treated as two year olds and two year olds treated like infants. If we coddle them, then we get the most narcissistic generation, which, if I am not mistaken, we have finally achieved with the current generation. Welcome to the future!
Posted by: Sue on April 14, 2007 2:36 PMWhen I was maybe in elementary school I remember going to a camp and being told we were going to make our own robots. "How wonderful" I thought. Gears, levers, swithces, learning a bit about electricity and so on. But no, we were supposed to make artistic representations of "robots" and talk about them. What a farking waste of time. But teaching even high schoolers to use arc welders and so on would be a huge liabilty and thus too expensive for most people. The only teens who knew about using them were, as mentioned, farm kids. It was nearly impossible as a junior high student even to buy more TEST TUBES. I had two or three that came with a chemistry set my parents had given me, but the chemical supply companies like Fluka wanted you to have an institutional permit to buy anything from them. If I'd had the internet, things might have been different.
Posted by: Ryan W. on April 14, 2007 3:12 PM"Children act rather like animals when they're in groups together."
That's right.
But adults do too.
"In every army there is a mob trying to get out."
-John Keegan
The very same techniques to run a successful army and prison can also be used to run a successful classroom.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on April 14, 2007 4:19 PMIt is the job of a good officer/warden/teacher to make sure his subjects behave in socially acceptable ways. Kids are happier and learn a lot faster when they know a teacher is in charge.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on April 14, 2007 4:26 PMIt is also the duty of every generation to complain about the narcissism of the next.
Posted by: Zhong Lu on April 14, 2007 4:29 PMGrowing up, I was never interested in my peers at all. The adults were the interesting ones, because that's where the knowledge was.
When I was six or seven, my family went visiting with an aunt with two teenage cousins of mine (circa 1975 or so). This was the moment when I first noticed the existence of "teenagers", and I disliked them almost immediately. They seemed to be a loud, stupid, mutant form of human, and I feared the possibility of growing up to be like them instead of a regular adult.
"The desirability of adolescence is all that is in question.
As for its existence, the spectacle of the Boomers' second adolescence for the last seven years is self-evident."
I can only improve on this post by saying that one of the best measures of how healthy/sick a society is can be determined by how quickly/slowly that society and its institutions move people from childhood through adolescence (the rottenest stage of human development) and into adulthood.
The faster, the healthier.
Ours is getting more ill by the minute.
xyz, if memory serves there is about a 10 fold increased rate of incarceration for those having been diagnosed as ADHD. Perhaps there is a brain condition that also has something to do with it. As for your running into 'juveniles' diagnosed as bipolar, one of the criteria that may contribute to a diagnosis is 'engaging in activities that other consider risky, dangerous and not recognized as such by the person..' which would seem to be the position that you may be finding them in. I suppose the rub is how about criminal responsibility? It's best to establish limits by a sanction generally.
I recall some 45 years ago looking for job in my high school freshman summer. I ran into a construction tradesman who said he was going to have his son work with him, the closest I got. Had I found a job, I suppose there should have been a headline, '14 yo finds a job not working for the newspaper!'
Posted by: michael on April 14, 2007 5:15 PMMichael,
Some of the kids I deal with have legitimate mental illness issues. Without a doubt, I struggle with balancing their best interest and how to represent them. On the other hand, most have chaotic, lousy homes and their behavior issues arise out of that. I struggle with them too.
As a general rule, telling the teacher to fuck off or throwing a chair because she yelled at you to stop talking can not be explained away by either diagnosis.
I do not discount mental health issues. Jails (or in my case, detention centers) are the new mental institutions. What I do see are parents/schools/police trying to medicinize (pretty sure that is not a word) youthful and, sometimes, criminal behavior. No, I'm not talking about people who are unable to conform their conduct (as they don't recognize it as wrong) but rather about those who chose not to conform their conduct.
It's a rare, rare day when I have a parent tell their kid that it's the KID'S fault they are in my office. The majority of the time, the parent is too busy telling me why those kids should have known not to mess with Johnny/Jane or the teacher should treat their baby with kid gloves because they've got ADHD/bipolar. Naturally, I get to be the one who explains it's not acceptable to curse a teacher/throw a chair/steal from the grocery store/vandalize the neighborhood. I still do my job but I do not ignore, and by extension, approve of their actions, mental illness or no.
I have no doubt these folks love their children. Parents, however, are doing their childen no favor by using a medical diagnosis as an excuse to forego raising them.. Part of raising children is to allow them to take their lumps and, using a phrase I say alot, 'suck it up.' Figuring out that part is pretty much my defination of adulthood.
Posted by: xyz on April 14, 2007 8:00 PMCertainly, it is not evolutionarily normal for children to spend the majority of their time immersed in a peer group composed of people within a year of their own age. Nor is it probably healthy.Whether this is healthy or not is certainly open for debate, but forming "age cohorts" -- small groups segregated by age and (often) sex -- is very common, not only among humans, but throughout the animal kingdom. Critters as diverse as fish, antelope, and elephants all form age cohorts. There's a body of complex theory to explain this, but in a nutshell, a lot of critters seem to feel most comfortable among others who are at about their same age and level of development.
While we certainly don't want children to be totally socialized by their peers, wouldn't we wonder about a 15-year-old who wanted to hang out with 5-year-olds or 30-year-olds?
Posted by: Swen Swenson on April 14, 2007 8:31 PMxyz, Opinion Journal, a free site of WSJ, cited a Dallas report about 10 days ago. During a trial of a young man for shooting a police officer, an aunt of the accused said, 'You shouldn't throw out a good boy just because he likes to point a gun at people for giggles.' I don't think this compels us to throw out the phrase 'good boy.' She has been no more victimized by a society that came up with the term 'good boy' than 'the parents who no doubt love their children' have been by psychiatric diagnoses.
Posted by: michael on April 14, 2007 9:19 PMAn abstract of a recently recommended article on juvenile bipolar disorder is in the link.
Posted by: michael on April 14, 2007 11:17 PMIt's clear to me that children who socialize with adults more than other kids, are much more mature in general.
I have a niece who's dream from a very young age (5) was to be in musical theater. She has always worked very hard to accomplish her dream. The result is that she grew up spending most of her time outside of school with adults.
She has always been mature for her age, working the local theaters, graduating from high school a year early, and graduating 2 years early from a prestigious college.
Soon after graduating, she joined the national tour for a new musical. She is now about to debut on Broadway in another new musical, and she isn't yet 22 years old. She has a college degree, a great resume, lives on her own in NYC, and is earning more than than most adults.
She's driven to succeed, but she also had tremendous support from her mother, stepfather, grandparents, and extended family.
If only all kids had this drive and opportunity, maybe we would see a lot more mature young people.
Posted by: Rainy on April 14, 2007 11:43 PMMichael,
Perhaps I've given you the wrong impression. I'm not saying that juvenile bipolor/ADHD are figments of parent's imagination. They do exist and can be beyond difficult to deal with.
However, what I see on a regular basis are parents who can not or will not parent. These are the parents who use the diagnosis to excuse their children's unacceptable behavior while doing nothing to teach their children to control themselves. These are the same parents who think that giving a pill 2x a day to a kid will solve their behavior issues. Medicine can help but it is not the end-all be-all.
Unfortunately, the medication only path is rampant where I spend my days.
Posted by: xyz on April 14, 2007 11:46 PMIt's clear to me that children who socialize with adults more than other kids, are much more mature in general.
Funny, it's been my own observation that children in that position are probably being rejected by their peer group or had some sort of deficit in their upbringing that makes it difficult to socialize with other members of their peer group. Neither of which strikes me as being especially healthy.
Guess it goes all ways.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 15, 2007 2:28 AMWell, if you have any doubt about whether American teens are both infantilized and isolated from adults, here's some food for thought: According to anthropologists, there are still many cultures in which teens spend only 5 hours a week with peers, compared to 65 hours a week here in the U.S. In many cultures teens aren't trying to break away from adults - the people who restrict and control them - but rather to become adults. For more information, you might want to check out my new book on this topic, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen. From cover to cover, it celebrates human potential and the uniqueness of the individual. See http://thecaseagainstadolescence.com.
Posted by: Dr. Robert Epstein on April 15, 2007 3:46 AMI think the current state of affairs is, to a great extent, for the perpetuation of the Education Industry. Maybe it didn't start out that way, but that is what it has become. There are a lot of jobs and pensions at stake, and young minds are the "coal" shoveled into it to keep the engine humming.
Posted by: GuyInCT on April 15, 2007 4:53 AM"It is also the duty of every generation to complain about the narcissism of the next."
- Zhong Lu
Ah, yes, and to do so from the contents of their own consciousness!
Posted by: M. Carey on April 15, 2007 8:57 AMDr. Epstein, thanks for promoting your book. You could promote another one, too, The Odyssey, where you will find a similar discussion in the first few chapters on Telemachos. Now get some sleep.
Posted by: Matt C. on April 15, 2007 9:06 AMMatt C.:
It's tough explaining to people that history didn't begin in 1950 and literature didn't begin in 1600, isn't it?
Posted by: AT on April 15, 2007 1:58 PMSomeone wrote:
It's clear to me that children who socialize with adults more than other kids, are much more mature in general.
Also schreibt Anony-mouse:
Funny, it's been my own observation that children in that position are probably being rejected by their peer group or had some sort of deficit in their upbringing that makes it difficult to socialize with other members of their peer group. Neither of which strikes me as being especially healthy.
Well, hmm...many peers of children have the wit and manners of the barbarian hordes of the 5th century AD. A child who can say "please", "thank you", "excuse me" and so forth will stand out among those peers like a lace doily in a feedlot. Which one is healthy? I guess it depends on what you want...
Guess it goes all ways.
Humans learn mostly by doing, it's only after learning how to learn that we can learn by thinking and speaking. So children need to learn how to be humans, by doing the things humans do, and from an early age.
Allowing peers to socialize children is teaching them something, I'll agree. But it isn't generally teaching them to be human beings.
A few straws against the way this wind is blowing:
One commenter complained that schools now call parents when high school students act up. I don't think this is new at all. At least in the high school where I teach, this is only done when internal school procedures don't seem to be working.
On the other hand, when our kids went to college, we learned that their schools no longer mailed student's grades to the parents. Grade reports went to the students, who then decided what to do with them.
My impression is that, in some ways, my students take more responsibility than my generation did. They are more likey to drive and to have jobs, to do their own buying, and to be make more of their own decisions.
Posted by: Roger Sweeny on April 15, 2007 8:08 PM"Through most of human history, children went to work as soon as they could hold the work implement and were married upon puberty."
Not quite. Children worked beside their parents from a very early age. In medieval Europe, even the most privileged children - the sons of the nobility - started real jobs as pages at age 7, often away from home in the castle of an allied noble family. At 14, they moved up to squires - a job that often put them on the battlefield, where an officially non-combatant status wasn't much protection. Their sisters did light housework as soon as they could hold a dustrag, helped sew the families clothes as soon as they could handle a needle, and were apt to marry at 14. Peasant children had it much worse, and were probably doing brutally hard physical labor at not much more than seven.
However, I know of no society where it was routine for boys to marry at puberty, with the exception of royalty who often married their heir at the earliest possible age, either to cement an alliance with a political marriage to show the stability of their dynasty by starting the next generation ASAP. Aside from that, men rarely married before the mid-20's, when they had done or acquired whatever their society demanded to show that they were ready to support a family (a Cheyenne brave needed a herd of ponies, an 1850 frontiersman needed either a productive farm and house or a team of horses and wagon loaded with the necessities to go claim land and build the rest, a 1950 middle-class young man needed to hold a good job for long enough to be sure it would last...) In some times and places, these men would marry barely pubescent girls about a decade younger, in others men and women went through long courtships and engagements until both of them were over 25 and finally well enough set up to marry.
Posted by: markm on April 15, 2007 9:12 PMNot quite. Children worked beside their parents from a very early age. In medieval Europe, even the most privileged children - the sons of the nobility - started real jobs as pages at age 7, often away from home in the castle of an allied noble family. At 14, they moved up to squires - a job that often put them on the battlefield, where an officially non-combatant status wasn't much protection. Their sisters did light housework as soon as they could hold a dustrag, helped sew the families clothes as soon as they could handle a needle, and were apt to marry at 14. Peasant children had it much worse, and were probably doing brutally hard physical labor at not much more than seven.
And sometimes lived even unto the ripe old age of 40, if they survived the above and childbearing. When the span of your life is compressed by 40% or more, lots of things happen earlier.
Posted by: anony-mouse on April 16, 2007 2:40 AMIt's just an extension of the dependency culture. The government wants you to be dependent, so you can be more easily manipulated.
The point about other cultures is a good one. In Japan, one unambiguously becomes an adult the year one turns twenty.
Here, we've pretty well destroyed whatever clarity used to exist. I could drive (without restrictions), drink and be drafted at 18, but couldn't vote until I was 21. Now the drinking and voting ages have changed. When is someone an adult? I'd argue the age has moved from 18 to 21.
Posted by: MarkD on April 16, 2007 8:32 AMAnd sometimes lived even unto the ripe old age of 40, if they survived the above and childbearing. When the span of your life is compressed by 40% or more, lots of things happen earlier.
If 14 year olds were capable of x in 1007, they should still be capable of x in 2007, whatever happened to life expectancy.
In fact, if better nutrition leads to people developing further and faster physically, it should have the same effect on mental development. Kids today should be more capable than those in the past, not less so.
Posted by: anon on April 16, 2007 5:41 PMWe spent a sabbatical year in Shanghai, when our son was 15. There was no available high school program, so we enrolled him in our university's Chinese immersion program.He hung out with the other students, who didn't care how old he was. And to the Chinese he met, he looked like an adult because he was tall and they had little basis for comparison.
And you know what? He was treated as an adult for that whole year, and he turned into one.
The life expectancy figure is misleading; the main reason pre-modern life expectancies were so low is the cruelly high rates of infant and child deaths. If you lived to be five, you had a pretty decent chance of making it into your 60s or later. Or, as they say, the Biblical three-score and ten.
Posted by: Linda Seebach on April 16, 2007 9:31 PMTo paraphrase from the Te of Piglet "Human beings were designed for a long child, a short adolescence and then adulthood. what we're getting is a short childhood, a long adolescence that increasingly fewer and fewer adults are growing out of."
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm 27. I started working (illegally) at the age of 8 delivering the pennysaver. I really resent the implication that "young people today" are the world's most self-absorbed generation. Let's take a minute at the generation preceding us - the generation that finds it easier to shuffle us off to soccer practice while they get botoxed or liposuction-ed or otherwise naval gaze. The generation that continually pays for their tax cuts, by rolling back education and social services on the young. I came of age at the first time in American history when more children (i.e. under the age of 18) were born into poverty than elderly people. Take a look at the dominant culture, and who is perpetuating it, and that's who is to blame. And that isn't the youngest generation - it's the boomers who are hell bent on getting kids hooked on candy coated crack to fatten their own coffers. It annoys me to no end that most people who work in TV admit to neither watching TV nor allowing their children to watch TV. In no other medium is that acceptable.Would you go to a chef who refused to eat his own cooking?
As for the age that one is legally an adult. In the eyes of the federal student loan programs it's 24. Before that you have to prove that you are emancipated, and have lived on your own without any parental support for at least a year to qualify as an independent student. And even then you still might not, depending on the rules of your own institution.
Lastly, the fact that children no longer follow in the job footsteps in the form of informal, or formal apprenticeships of their parents is a good thing. As a recent episode of Battlestar Galactica hi-lighted, when children do the same jobs as their parents jobs become inherited, class becomes inherited and this is not a good thing. As for the person who cited French vocational high schools as an example of schools done right - many of those high schools suck. The kids ending up being able to do one thing (repair tv's or fridges), and because they don't sit for the bac, they can't ever go to college. Their futures are cemented at 14. Those schools have become a way of shunting (mostly) minority males out of the "regular" school system. There are vocational high schools, however, in NYC - Fashion High School, Aviation High School, and one that graduates nurses (the name escapes me), but the kids get their vocational training on top of their regular high school courses (leaving college open as a possibility). The kids also have very long days - they start at 8 and end at 5. Yes, adolescents need more responsibility than they are currently being given, but they also need more freedom for experimentation.
Kids, especially on the competitive college track, increasingly define themselves in terms of the person who will be most attractive to a college, and then once they graduate realize, wait a second I'm not that person after all. A lot of the twenties futzing around, for this group, is because they never stopped to figure it out in their teen years. The culture wouldn't allow it.
Posted by: A Million Paths on April 16, 2007 9:50 PMAdd me as another person who recommends Why Nerds Are Unpopular. I didn't have that rosey childhood that most people seem to have had, and mine was about as bad as Paul's.
Part of his premise is that we've built our society around coddling and infantilizing young people.
If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.
My first "job" was at 12 delivering papers for a lazy guy. He paid me in cigarettes. At about 13, smokes went from 25 cents/pack to 35 cents, and as my allowance was only 50 cents, it was "smokes or comics" so I quit smoking. My first real job was working as a bus boy in an Irish pub (in Ireland) at age 16.
http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
http://paulgraham.com/say.html
To start out, What we see on television and mass media mediums such as the internet is none more than a generalization.
Alright, I'm 18 years old. I've been living in my own apartment working fulltime at a pizza place and finishing up highschool via internet/computer based systems taking aprox 3-5 hours a day. My brother is 22 years old as of last week. He is married with one 6th month old child and has another coming in about 8 months. He is planning to attend college this fall and work part-time with the financial aid of our grandparent's to help pay for babies and marraige type expenses.
So, I work at Masseys pizza aprox 44-50 hours a week delivering and making pizza's at just over minimum wage. The average age of the other 12 employees I work with is about 28 years old. Cracked out, irrisponsible, alcoholic, and child support paying would be the basic description of most of them. Not to mention 90% of them are highschool dropouts. To be honost all of them from ages 24-32 are still adolesents and incable of living a debt free comfortable middle class lifestyle. Instead of working most of their time at work is spent watching VH1 and MTV reality shows while orders constantly print. This kind of delayed maturity I feel is from a lack of 3 main factors.
A). Poor parenting or lack or parenting figures.
B). Lack of education and higher education opportunities.
C). Influence from mass media and peer groups.
My parents/Gaurdians instilled hard work habits good basic morals and independant attitude throughout my entire life. I'll be starting at a community college this fall and working towards a 2 year degree. So really. I'm not a better person. I just had better influences and chose my path in life with a little more care than most others. Maybe this whole good parents type rolemodels is how we should be solving this problem with extended adolesence.
Really people there's not to much else to blame. and some people do take longer to mature. But really 28 year olds living with their grandparents and working 25 hours weeks not looking for anything else in life... should really be helped...
Posted by: MicahChamberlain on April 17, 2007 2:53 PMFrom Wikipedia: David Farragut entered the Navy as a midshipman on December 17, 1810. In the War of 1812, when only 12 years old, he was given command of a prize ship taken by USS Essex and brought her safely to port.
And anyone who thinks handling a sailing ship was easier than virtually any entry level job today is an idiot.
My point with the above is not that every "child" is capable of such. The problem is that **no one** is given much opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities any more. An example, state and federal laws prohibit any one under 18 from using power tools and equipment, including trash compactors; I was using a chain saw, one of the most potentially dangerous tools there is when I was 14. And I was not that unusual then (mid 1970s).
MicahChamberlain-
I am glad you are trying to do well for yourself. You seem to have the right attitude to advance yourself.
A few things, though. You say "television and mass media mediums such as the internet is none more than a generalization", and yet you go on to say that these media are what are corrupting the people you know! Which is it? Or is it that low-lifes continue to subscribe to media that supports their life view, and VH1 and MTV are just selling what sells?
In response to your points:
A. Parents should be held to much higher standards, and be fined, or if necessary, imprisoned for their neglect/abuse of their children. (This is unlikely in the current political environment)
B. The schools suck because of the teachers' unions, and most parents just want their kids to get an easy pass to graduation, and in lower-class schools (or maybe most schools?), academic achievers are discriminated against by fellow students.
C. Throw out your TV and ignore the main-stream media. You are already reading Assymetrical Information - you must be aware there are much better sources of news or cultural information available!
In a nutshell, ignore the losers and the media they like, just take care of yourself and your kin.
--LabRat
PS ""television and mass media mediums such as the internet" is very redundant, and could be simply replaced by "media"
Posted by: LabRat on April 17, 2007 9:32 PMLabRat-
Thanks for the supportive comments, and I do need to clear up something being that my communication skills are somewhat dull. By, "media is a generalization" I meant to say that not every last person follows sheeplike down the road towards reality T.V. vegitation bliss. I try to throw out at least a little hope in a somewhat hopeless world. For atleast my friends/people I spend time with due to my free will seem to be similarly opposed so such frivolty and nonsense.
So really I couldn't agree we shouldn't have direct and harsh punishment for child neglect not just from a nutritional standpoint but from a mental health standpoint as well. Say, if your child is working/playing a sport/leading a club at school/volunteering, or atleast mowing the lawn once a week. There should be somekind of reaction from society like.... wow what a lazy bum, or, his parent's should really get on him about this... But instead we see mid adults living at home playing D&D with no solid job, looking for nothing more in their professional life(nothing wrong with D&D I still play some) But anyway. It just seems to many parent's are giving into the buddy system, where they become thier childs best friends and provide no real guidance, admonishment, and punishment for thier childs actions.
But really I don't see the problem getting any better. It seems to be a mattter of conditioning from our wonderful leaders. No child left behind, (not to jump of topic) is just another road block for individual progression and success. Which I think goes along with you saying public school systems are generally a shitty enviroment for anyone striving for academic success.
Ok so thats it, me trying to act like I know all the answers and such. Public schools we all know are a big problem, it's just no one seems to be comfortable with change in this country. I mean We are having trouble deciding if we should have a black president or women president first as if it's some big deal??!!!!! wth.... really wth. Bottom line public school doesn't seem to have tides of change on the horizen, being that it's been pretty much the same since its institution.
Well I've really just said to much for just this topic but for now things look dim for our poorly parented youth.
Beginning of the second paragraph is supposed to be, I couldn't agree more. Not I couldn't agree.
Lets hear it for proof reading!
Posted by: MicahChamberlain on April 18, 2007 12:32 PMand again... it should pretty much read. "I couldn't agree more, we should"---------------------"Say if you child isn't"... >_>
Posted by: MicahChamberlain on April 18, 2007 12:35 PM