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Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

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Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#21

Post by protomyth »

run4yourlives wrote: post #13
ejames wrote: post #7

I feel this article is worth pointing out as a reminder: Almost all concepts of school reform still takes as a given that you will have basically the same foundation of a school. Sometimes it's worth stepping back and asking, "Does it actually make sense to put all children below a certain age in a big building for the majority of the day, where they spend all their time with other children of the same age, taking cl…

Does it actually make sense to put all children below a certain age in a big building for the majority of the day, where they spend all their time with other children of the same age, taking classes from teachers who serve as their only consistent contact with the adult world outside their own home?" Yes, because like it or not, our current set up sees a large secondary function for school: babysitter. The larger pro…

The other problem problem is that the current system has a lot of people and organizations invested in keeping the system running as is or adding more days to the system to add to income. Children aren't the issue, paychecks are the issue.

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#22

Post by iamdave »

chrischen wrote: post #3
reader5000 wrote: post #2

Not only are kids expected to stay in school until their early/mid 20's, depriving them of necessary real-world developmental experience as discussed in the article, they are expected to accept decades' worth of debt to pay for it. The American education model is poison.

I think the worst part is that they're piling more and more school on top of the higher performers, depriving them of the chance to explore outside of school. For example, 6 AP courses or start your own business after school? Which one are kids choosing?

In my case:

6 AP courses, start your own business after school, or drop out and start your own business.

I like option C.

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#23

Post by wtn »

protomyth wrote: post #21
run4yourlives wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually make sense to put all children below a certain age in a big building for the majority of the day, where they spend all their time with other children of the same age, taking classes from teachers who serve as their only consistent contact with the adult world outside their own home?" Yes, because like it or not, our current set up sees a large secondary function for school: babysitter. The larger pro…

The other problem problem is that the current system has a lot of people and organizations invested in keeping the system running as is or adding more days to the system to add to income. Children aren't the issue, paychecks are the issue.

The other problem is that dumping millions of teenagers into the workforce would decrease wages for older people.

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#26

Post by electromagnetic »

reader5000 wrote: post #2

Not only are kids expected to stay in school until their early/mid 20's, depriving them of necessary real-world developmental experience as discussed in the article, they are expected to accept decades' worth of debt to pay for it. The American education model is poison.

I believe it's the worlds greatest deception. At 16 I was working as a reviewer, I worked as an assistant (note: not apprentice) electrician for a couple of years doing identical work to my father who was certified (on several jobs he did solely the testing to pass the work as legal) and right now I'm working in windows and siding. I presently earn more than any of my friends, and job prospects still land me at the head of my group of friends in 10/20 years, only my wife is likely to be earning more than me. I've done virtually everything involved in building a house save for foundation work, and was taught this all by my father. Nothing I did in school prepared me for any of this. Outside of manual labour, I'm a writer, I repair and upgrade friends and acquaintances for cash on the side . . . all of which I did not learn from school.

Nothing in my life has really come from school. I'm only indebted to three teachers, my English teacher who encouraged me into writing, my science teacher who taught me to watch and question everything and my woodwork teacher who encouraged me to hit nails into things all class. For 11 years of education, little in retrospective appears to have been useful. My greatest lessons were of casual knowledge, not of information or education by any institutional standard. Persistence and intrigue.

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#27

Post by viraptor »

timwiseman wrote: post #15
viraptor wrote: post #9

Interesting... however I would really like to know how could anyone convince the teenage me that moving to yet another step of school doesn't really matter - that I should think about actually starting to do some serious freelance work in microcontrollers / electronics instead, which is what I liked to do. In the end, it didn't matter that much what I did during the studies - being good enough to pass, or even puttin…

Good points, but remember it isn't an either or. I had several friends in high school who worked in addition to class. And yes, most of those were "McJobs" but for at least one young lady I know that "McJob" brought in a nontrivial portion of the income for her entire household. And another ran his own business. Granted it was just a lawn maintenance business, but it was his and helped him start saving. In college it…

Yeah - I'm still finishing my masters while working on a normal position. But it's really tiring and at this point I feel like I'm doing it just because I started, to be honest. You really have to enjoy this environment if you want to go all the way to MSc or higher. I would not do it again. But it's hard to know what's waiting for you before you sign up... I'm not sure how to pass that knowledge to someone else - simply saying "if you don't actually enjoy spending the evening on reading those 5 papers (or can be motivated enough to do it during the best years of your life so far), it's not for you" is not going to convince anyone, even if it's true on some level. There's just much more to it than that.

It's actually much easier to show someone what does a normal job feel like while s/he is in high school, than explaining what happens during the undergraduate studies (which can be completely different than you've ever experienced at school).

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#28

Post by shib71 »

apsec112 wrote: post #20
shib71 wrote: post #14

One of PGs essays discusses similar ideas ( http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html ). I agree that segregating teenagers may actually be harming their development instead of aiding it. The problem is specialisation and aptitude. First part of the problem: Underlying most modern education is the idea that each individual is suited to a different profession, and that both the individual and society benefit when people ar…

"The trick is how to compress the spectrum - incorporate reality into a system built on an ideal." It's actually much, much simpler than that. Schools simply don't give a damn about teaching students about anything- their primary purpose is just to keep the kids in one place all day long. So give the sufficiently motivated/intelligent kids, who have proven that they don't need to be kept in one place all day long, an…

I've seen that opinion here a lot, that school is a glorified babysitting service. Maybe that's true in your experience, but that is a shortcoming of those schools in particular, not of schools in general.

I loathe special cases. As a programmer I see them as a sign that program design is flawed. A good program, and a good education system, has mechanisms in place to handle extreme cases.

Opt-out is fine for students who have a specific alternative (e.g. trade apprenticeship). But it is not a "solution". It does not help the 99% of brillient students for whom there is no alternative. Simply cutting them loose is a cop out.

Re: Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today

#30

Post by dsspence »

tokenadult wrote: post #4

What my son has wanted for as long as he has been a teenager is a chance to have grown-up responsibility. That's why he loves working on his start-up project. An actual profit-making business proposal gets evaluated by investors with no "grading on the curve" or concern for "self-esteem." He can deal with that. He found school environments that attempted to coddle teenagers (he wasn't in many such environments, but e…

I realize this is a site dedicated to startups, but business proposals and investors for children? As long as he likes it I suppose and doesn't rationalize happiness = money.
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