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The Slackification of the American Home

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#61

Post by dvdbloc »

megabl8 wrote: post #48
djaychela wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids' school has just been taken over (in the UK) by an academy group whose other local schools were telling 8 and 9 year old that they needed to know what career they were going to have so they could study the right subjects... I'm 47 and I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. How the hell does an 8 year old?

Is it a bad thing to get kids thinking about this? I mean, this is what they have to do when they select what subjects they want to do. This has happened all over the world for at least 30 years.

I think it’s also interesting how a lot of very successful people in the field of engineering identified that they want to be engineers when they were very young and just started pursuing it.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#62

Post by arvinsim »

megabl8 wrote: post #48
djaychela wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids' school has just been taken over (in the UK) by an academy group whose other local schools were telling 8 and 9 year old that they needed to know what career they were going to have so they could study the right subjects... I'm 47 and I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. How the hell does an 8 year old?

Is it a bad thing to get kids thinking about this? I mean, this is what they have to do when they select what subjects they want to do. This has happened all over the world for at least 30 years.

I think the bad thing is that we have allowed our social and economic structure so that kids have to think about their career this early.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#63

Post by flukus »

djaychela wrote: post #35
rusteh1 wrote: post #34

What does it say about us as a society in which a pre-high school child needs to use a productivity suite to manage their lives? The answer here is not to provide more software to allow 11 year olds to eek out a few extra percentage points of productivity. The answer is to expect less of 11 year olds.

My kids' school has just been taken over (in the UK) by an academy group whose other local schools were telling 8 and 9 year old that they needed to know what career they were going to have so they could study the right subjects... I'm 47 and I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. How the hell does an 8 year old?

I'd imagine the most common careers they want were firefighter, youtube streamer and race car drivers.

But seriously, how many kids have more than a surface level knowledge of what various occupations do, or even what occupations were available? How many have practical dreams like becoming an accountant? There were adults in my programming class that became disillusioned with the career path when they discovered it wasn't all about manipulating green scrolling text like the matrix. My 13 year old nephew went through this stuff but has had a change of heart after discovering Architecture was a math intensive profession.

They simply don't have the depth and breadth of understanding to be specializing at that age.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#64

Post by TeMPOraL »

dvdbloc wrote: post #61
megabl8 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a bad thing to get kids thinking about this? I mean, this is what they have to do when they select what subjects they want to do. This has happened all over the world for at least 30 years.

I think it’s also interesting how a lot of very successful people in the field of engineering identified that they want to be engineers when they were very young and just started pursuing it.

If you mean software engineering, those people must be completely unlike myself. I started spending serious time programming at 13. But it took me well into my first job 10 years later until I thought, "well, shit, I guess that's how I'm gonna be making money". My choice of software as a study field when I was 18 was literally made like this: "oh, I can get degree by doing what I like, and hopefully pick up some more interesting knowledge along the way, sign me in!".

For some reason (probably upbringing and local environment), some people start to think about their careers very late. And I don't feel like thinking about it much earlier is productive. When you're 15, or 9, you don't really have enough information (or arguably sapience), to make a reasoned choice.

I feel the "compound interest everything" thinking is infecting our lives too much. I've heard arguments that Soviet times were bad because it was government that told you where to go to work, and free societies let people choose for themselves. But if kids are forced to think about their career at 9 and make decisions that become binding because of sunk costs, that's essentially market choosing for you. You're not free either way, it's just a different optimization system optimizing you.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#66

Post by theshrike79 »

m_mueller wrote: post #36

People, please, think about what you want your children to become. Do you want easily employed drones that just as easily can get outsourced or replaced by AI, or do you want independent and creative thinkers? Creativity needs space and time. Extend both increasingly, with age. It's sad to me that American life requires you to manage their time - elsewhere they can just independently go to school, first on foot then…

Kids need boredom - the best ideas are born of being bored and needing to figure out what to do for yourself.

We did this with our kid, no smart devices in the back seat. We didn't make sure she had something to do at all times. Most of her toys were (and still are) stuff that need some creativity and imagination (just wooden blocks, Legos etc.)

Now she can sit in the back seat for an hour, just staring out the window thinking about stuff. She seems to be able to play with just about anything, any object can be a source of play and games for her.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#67

Post by whymauri »

travbrack wrote: post #40
rusteh1 wrote: post #34

What does it say about us as a society in which a pre-high school child needs to use a productivity suite to manage their lives? The answer here is not to provide more software to allow 11 year olds to eek out a few extra percentage points of productivity. The answer is to expect less of 11 year olds.

They needed paper planners 50 years ago. This is the same thing only digital.

Yup. Many of us had chores magnetically attached to the family fridge with a red and black dry-erase marker conveniently nearby. Sure, we didn't have 'sprints' or weekly meetings like the families in this article, but if I missed my chores my parents were absolutely going to take some time to talk to me and ask what was going on.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#68

Post by flukus »

megabl8 wrote: post #48
djaychela wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids' school has just been taken over (in the UK) by an academy group whose other local schools were telling 8 and 9 year old that they needed to know what career they were going to have so they could study the right subjects... I'm 47 and I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. How the hell does an 8 year old?

Is it a bad thing to get kids thinking about this? I mean, this is what they have to do when they select what subjects they want to do. This has happened all over the world for at least 30 years.

Thinking about careers is fine, but if they're choosing subjects then they're potentially making some life long decisions and shutting themselves out of many career paths early.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#69

Post by gmas »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #51
garmaine wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn’t need religion for this.

Meditation isn't religious. Zen-style mindfulness is proven to be beneficial for stress, anxiety, and even some indicators of physical health. It just so happens that most of the best meditation instructors are Buddhist (to some degree).

Meditation like what you described is a Zen Buddhist custom.
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