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The most precious resource is agency

simonsarris.substack.com

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Re: The most precious resource is agency

#91

Post by ayngg »

I think one of the greatest things that is missing from formal education is the encouragement of exploration, and the acclimation towards the failure that often accompanies that exploration.

Everyone in school is so caught up on checking off the right prerequisites in the curriculum for the next set of prerequisites all the way up until graduation, that there usually isn't much room for any sort of real exploration in the system until graduation. However, after graduating, a whole new set of real world responsibilities appear that often restricts the ability to both explore and fail since they come with real consequences that make failing a high school class seem like nothing in comparison. For example, it is kind of hard to explore in university when that year exploring will cost tens of thousands of dollars, or if you are on your own and need to find multiple low skill/ wage jobs just to survive.

I was just lucky that my dad had a stem job and had a computer, which got me into video games, which got me into hacking them, which got me involved in communities full of people way older and smarter than I was, which facilitated my growth in a way that school never could. Without that first computer, there is a good chance that I would have just been railroaded into some soul draining corporate job pushing papers.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#92

Post by idolaspecus »

jkhdigital wrote: post #34
idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

Hits close to home… had these exact thoughts a little over seven years ago. At one point I was convinced that sending my son to a public school would be child abuse… actually I still kinda feel that way, but I’ve softened my stance a bit. I read up quite a bit on unschooling, which sounds great on paper but is probably only feasible when both parents are enthusiastically committed. Sudbury schools are probably the cl…

> One big realization I’ve had is that children really grow when their parents aren’t around. Schools may suppress agency, but so do parents.

This sounds like a good point, I'm going to try to keep it more in mind, thanks.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#93

Post by fellowniusmonk »

theonething wrote: post #77
combatentropy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should let your child have lots and lots of freedom to do whatever he wants, even if that is often watching television or whatever. Ideally you would have a lot of outdoor places for him to roam --- whether that be a large amount of land that you live on or just a green neighborhood. This is based on my own experience, because I was allowed to manage my free time. When I got out of school, I had a chore or two, b…

> I've known a handful of adults who were homeschooled, and most of them have turned out very poorly. They basically are walking time bombs: quiet and obedient through childhood, then they get out of the house and explode. I don't doubt your account of a handful of adults, but the research seems to point to the opposite conclusion: > Homeschooled children are taking part in the daily routines of their communities. Th…

I know nearly innumerable homeschoolers, they regress to the mean like any other group, but they also have far more hyper successful outliers.

There are a number of people I know who transcended the station of their birth but I know a disproportionate number of homeschoolers who did from an early age per capita.

All bets are off if the homeschooler is insularly religious. Has a kid at a young age or they became "homeschooled" because they were kicked out of every regular school for extreme violence or other similar behavior.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#94

Post by FreeSpeech »

jkhdigital wrote: post #40
sillysaurusx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went and did the other side, living nontraditionally and trying to be what I wanted. I just applied for a regular job. Because to be honest, it’s gonna be pretty sweet having a fat bank account, even if it’ll take till I’m 50 to have FU money. My current hypothesis is that the team is all that matters. The work can be the most boring, crud-type work. As long as you’re working with people you like on something vague…

Amen. I’m a sober alcoholic, and if I died tomorrow I’d be content knowing that I did at least one worthwhile thing with the time I had: I helped another alcoholic, a 23 year old man who tried to kill himself shortly before I met him, get sober and start working and move out of his mom’s basement and stand up straight and look other people in the eyes and then go and help a few other people stop drinking. Not a singl…

> why didn’t they tell us it was this simple?

Because it has an intangible effect on GDP. Our culture optimises for creating obedient worker drones who will capitulate to authority. Fostering empathy for others and leading children to a life of fulfilment conflicts with establishment incentives.

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#95

Post by idolaspecus »

swader999 wrote: post #64
idolaspecus wrote: post #20

My first child is due any day now and I’ve been thinking a lot about the central problems presented in this article. But I don’t know what to do about them. Should I keep my son home with me, allocate mornings to academics and afternoons to more practical endeavors? Should I teach him to cook? To garden? To build cabinets? To train a dog? To do his taxes? Should I send him to public school but supplement his learning…

They'll follow you around and do all those things with you if you do it. My six year old mows the lawn since he could push it. Each kids has a raised bed they tend to each summer. School is ok for socialization but a lot has to happen at home in terms of this agency thing.

My intuition tells me this is the crux of the matter: If I spend my time in the kitchen and the garden and wrenching and cutting and repairing, then my kid will be drawn to like activities. I hope I can behave accordingly and I hope you're right!

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#97

Post by xnxn »

handmodel wrote: post #90
jkhdigital wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics is the new god, the god of materialism. At some point in the 20th century we decided that material prosperity is really all you need for a happy and healthy society. Doesn’t seem to be working out so well…

I never get what motivates people to blame the system here. If you have 150k in the bank you could go to a remote place in the US, take a lowkey job where you work 25 hours a week, and live perfectly fine. No one is stopping you. The only reason you don't do this is because you like nice things, nice food cooked for you, nice immenities, and want your kids to have material prosperity.

I just cut out avocado toast and now I'm well on my way to 150k!

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#98

Post by [deleted] »

esperent wrote: post #57
qqtt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic life script we all seem to have in western society seems pretty awful when you think critically about it. On the flip side, if you step outside the bubble of comfort that Western society generally affords people, you'll find that life is "nasty, brutish & short" as Hobbes put it. We've come a very very long way in a short time towards raising our standard of living and our expectations for what our lives…

I live in a non-western low income country. Life is not "nasty, brutish and short". Honestly, it makes me pretty angry when I hear people from the west espouse this sentiment. Have you ever lived in a non-western country, to state that with such assurance? Life here is beautiful, the sense of community is so much stronger than it is in the west and overall I'd say that people are less stressed. On the flip side, many…

[deleted]

Re: The most precious resource is agency

#99

Post by aidenn0 »

CarVac wrote: post #15

I think I found school tolerable, or even fun, because I was able to figure out the proper way to exercise agency within the confines of the system. As an analogy, as a kid when I played with Lego or K'NEX, my favorite thing to do was not assemble kits but instead come up with my own designs from the parts therein. Working within the system, but being a creator rather than a consumer. At school, I wasn't just trying…

I exercised my agency by annoying my teachers. That tended to lead to me having much lower grades in subjectively graded classes. It was a lot of fun, but I cringe sometimes in retrospect.

Here's one example:

Slashdot posted a link to a place that would let you search all graduate thesis papers at about the same time I was starting an English class taught by a grad student instructor.

I looked up the instructor's Master's thesis and found it was on . While the instructor was passing out the syllabus, I said loudly to the person next to me "I hope we don't have to read anything from ." The instructor just froze and stared at me mouth agape for about 30 seconds.

By 4 weeks into that class, the instructor informed me that regardless of my performance, I was not going to get a grade higher than a D. I did in fact end up with a D.

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