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The Slackification of the American Home

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#81

Post by _pmf_ »

m_mueller wrote: post #56
_pmf_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you want independent and creative thinkers That's probably the worst you can do to a child. It's setting them up for unhappiness.

Just give em space and see what happens, don't create a damn curriculum from school out to sleep.

> Just give em space and see what happens, don't create a damn curriculum from school out to sleep.

It's typically parents who nominally want their children to become " independent and creative thinkers" who setup a curriculum with music school, dance lessons and foreign language courses.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#82

Post by close04 »

seszett wrote: post #60
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.

Kids at 9 are absolutely not able to choose what career they will actually want to do when they are old enough to work. They just don't know enough of the world to make this choice. What they have to do at this age is discover as much of the world as possible in order to be able to make a better choice later on.

It always puzzled me that the same kids who are expected to think that far and be able to take "career" decisions are not allowed to watch any movie they want or drink alcohol. There's a bit of a dissonance there.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#83

Post by garmaine »

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).

If that’s what you meant you should have said “listen to your meditation instructor.”

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#84

Post by theelous3 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #16

> As per our earlier conversation, we have decided that the children will be enrolled in tennis camp over the summer. Please let me know if you want to follow up on this. I cannot even imagine what it would be like being a teenager under that. Your two choices are either do everything you can to win your parents' approval, or run away at 16.

That is beyond disturbing.

It's one thing for education to be hyperfocused on results and training for the workforce, it's another for the home to restructure in that direction too.

Extremely regimented people may excel in extremely regimented environments, but frankly they are often deeply uninteresting people to socialise with. (Also, any workplace I've been in hasn't actually been that regimented, and was better off for it. The less flexible people were good but often struggled with being more fluid when required.)

I much prefer the other extreme. Those junkyard diy playground kids and that whole movement away from hyperstructured and linear play. Not that you can't trello a trip to one of those in to the schedule, but I'm guessing that the crossover between the slackified group and the junkyard group isn't huge.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#85

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #64
dvdbloc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've heard arguments that Soviet times were bad because it was government that told you where to go to work

In some ways that must be quite freeing, assuming that the selection is reasonably correlated with your abilities and temperament.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#87

Post by majewsky »

lukey_q wrote: post #74
stackzero wrote: post #28

The next step is to open source your family as a project on Github

I'm imagining the classic scene from movies where a teen boy comes to ask the dad if he can take the daughter to prom, except he just opens a pull request

"Will you marry me?" - "Merge request closed without comments."

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#88

Post by majewsky »

TylerE wrote: post #76
purplezooey wrote: post #65

Trello pisses me off. Stacking some colored cards with notes. A four year old could come up with the idea. Yet acquired for $425M. The world is not fair.

Why didn’t a four year d think of it first then? Lot’s of things are obvious in retrospect . We put men on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.

> We put men on the moon before we put wheels on luggage.

This claim was so outlandish that I had to fact-check it. Wikipedia says:

> Luggage carriers [...] date at least to the 1930s [...] However, the wheels were external to the suitcases. [...] The first commercially successful rolling suitcase was invented in 1970.

It appears you're technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#89

Post by etripe »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #26
awadheshv wrote: post #21

>Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum, a mom of three children ages 8 to 12, uses Google Calendar to manage her children’s time and Jira to keep track of home projects. oh god..

Why oh god? Sounds reasonable. Firstly a calendar can be very useful for knowing which activities kids are doing, what playdates etc. Schools sometimes throw one off things into the mix. Most parents would use a regular calendar anyway. For JIRA - well that seems a bit heavy handed when trello would do but really it's a good idea. It's a todo list... so is the default todo app on your phone bad? Pen & paper bad? It's…

It sounds reasonable if you value chores and compliance above everything. Why should children be "productive"? Is there any time left for play, discovery, spontaneity?

As to your final paragraph, I'm wondering what effects using "productivity" tools like Trello have on a child's memory development. Do they remember chores better or worse independently? Do you remember typing a ticket as well as writing it down physically?

Re: The Slackification of the American Home

#90

Post by p_l »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #85
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've heard arguments that Soviet times were bad because it was government that told you where to go to work In some ways that must be quite freeing, assuming that the selection is reasonably correlated with your abilities and temperament.

Even then, AFAIK you weren't "told" what kind of career you were getting, but at times people would get assignments they could take for a job in their field?
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