Why Are We Growing Up So Slowly?
posted by Lightfiend | April 17, 2010
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In light of my recent posts on self-reliance and individualism (1, 2) I came across a very interesting editorial in Newsweek that asks the question, "Why Are Teenagers Growing Up So Slowly Today?"
The article mentions author Dr. Joe Allen, who says today's children aren't growing up because adults simply don't let them. In his troubling book Escaping the Endless Adolescence, he shows how modern culture has shun children away from real life.
Long ago we as a society decided that children should be in school for at least 13 years before they can display any sense of competency in the world. Allen writes:
“We place kids in schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a year or so of one another in age. We equip them with similar gadgets, expose them to the same TV shows, lessons, and sports. We ask them all to take almost the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality.”
I think Allen would agree with me that modern society has reinforced a culture of dependency. Nowadays we look around and see child-minded young adults in their early 20s, early 30s; in fact, some don't ever seem to grow up.
Some of the most common excuses we hear are that "teenager's brains aren't developed enough," or "our world is more complex now, so we need more education." While it may be true that teenager's brains aren't fully developed or that our world is more complex, what better way to learn than to step outside of the classroom and embrace this complex world head first (especially while our brains are most ready to learn).
As I mentioned before, many of my posts on this blog already address these issues and draw upon my own personal battles with formal education. In many ways this blog is a reaction to that whole culture. However, I want to hear your guys opinions:
- What are your experiences with the current education system?
- Can you name any particular instances where you felt your individuality was being suppressed?
- If you could, how would you reform education in today's society?
Comments
Funny you should ask, I was
— Apr 17, 2010
Funny you should ask, I was just thinking about writing a blog on this exact topic.
We need to teach not only what has happened, but what inevitably will.
Elementary school needs to be about how to navigate social systems, grow food, and build things. We don’t need to know the middle name of every founding forefather from here since the beginning of time, we need to know the things they’ve taught us and how that knowledge can be applied. School should be less about the details and more about action, and about what works.
For example, all children should be given the choice of physical fitness from a large group of choices. Yoga, pilates, tai chi and other physical activities could engage a much larger group of people - not everyone enjoys running their asses off or being smacked in the head with a kickball.
Another class I'd thought about was a self-sufficiency class, taught every year a little more advanced. They would learn how to clean and cook, as well as how to farm urban or rural when the season is right. Extended shop classes would teach them how to build, and how power has been created up until now. How can they come up with ways to harness power better? How can they solve community and social problems? How can we all get along together and help the human race grow?
Our children are brilliant brimming with the trillions of bits of knowledge their parents have absorbed. They do not need to be started at point zero anymore, we need to take out the fluff and teach kids how to take care of themselves, our earth, and our animal friends.
What do you think about this and what can you add?
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”-Victor Hugo
Schools are brainwashing
— Apr 18, 2010
Schools are brainwashing machines, factories to turn out more worker ants for the colony. well obviously...
I was looking through an old sketchpad I used when I was around 17/18 for getting down story ideas, poems, drawings, the odd painting, and essays expanding on things I'd been reading, psychology, philosophy and magick books mostly, as well as for practicing biblical hebrew which I was studying at the time for the Golden Dawn sort of paradigm that I was following back then. I used to spend hours writing/reading/drawing while listening to music. I'm at uni now, 5 or so years later, and I was struck when looking through this notebook how in-depth I got into some of the ideas I wrote about, especially compared to some of the work I do now for my course, which is also on philosophy, and social anthropology which is psychological. The essays I turn out now are usually on topics that don't really thrill me (although I am only first year) and they're almost always laboured. I enjoy writing them, but I'm only doing them because I have to in order to get a 'degree' token. 5 years ago, sitting in my room, I was learning a hell of a lot more, not because I had to, but because I was curious. And I think that individual curiosity should be the basis of the education system - right from the beginning. Children are not unripe adults - they're human, they're naturally curious. When they're really little their curiosity is play, learning is play. When they get to school, this natural curiosity is perverted and what was play now becomes work, it's constrained ("do your work!", "sit still!"). Learning about the world is no longer fun.
I've seen language courses that profess to teaching language the natural way, the way a child learns a language, i.e. by listening to it being spoken rather than learning grammar, syntax etc. in written form. If this is the best way to learn a language, then why shouldn't general education be set up in the same way? The natural way to learn is to experience things in the world, to play with things and each other.
When I look into my baby niece's eyes, there is such infinite beauty and perfection there. It makes me so angry to think that she'll probably go through the education system as it is, be filled with all these absurd fears and complexes and come out the other end as a functioning worker ant. That quote you posted from Dr. Joe Allen sums it up emotively in a way that I've never quite read before. It seems to take a step back and look at what we're doing to kids objectively, as though studying the behaviour of some foreign culture. It needs to be done. The idea that education is ok the way it's going is so ingrained. I watched a politician's debate on tv the other night, between the 3 main party leaders in the uk, and the answer from two of them, I think, to the problem of unruly children in school was Discipline. Greater Discipline for the children who just want to play. It's so transparently ant-colony, worker factory, it's disgusting. Education is to curiosity what Catholicism (for instance) is to sex, it perverts and crushes natural development
~ ~ ~
The DIEing Society
...
— Apr 18, 2010
There may be some benefits to increased immaturity: for example, think of how long human infants remain in immaturity compared to other animals. That extended immaturity allows us more time to accept new software programs and changes to our brain before it gets hardwired into us. And I do think that many adults, or people whom I think of as adults typically, are very 'hardwired' people in terms of their identity and their habits. It might be that an extended immaturity gives us the opportunity to create a life that is more complex for ourselves.
Sure, if the education system had given me the opportunity to 'grow up' earlier (people used to be fully developed adults at 18 or so)... I might have been able to do more with my life but on the other hand I may have gone straight into a job, formed my brain's hardwiring around it, and then found it hard to transition if I found that unfulfilling later in life.
Cheers,
Meade
I'm not in school anymore
— Apr 19, 2010
I'm not in school anymore but as far as I remember I thought elementary school was boring and scary this is because I was bullied a lot and couldn't enjoy my time there... a lot can be said about the education system but I'm no expert so I'm just going to rely on my experience... and for me what killed my learning so to speak it was my fear of the bullies I didn't even want to go to school because of that much less focus... just recently I saw like 3 cases of kids committing suicide because of the heavy bulling and I think the school system has not addressed that properly because it keeps happening and regardless of how infantile I may sound or how you all may be thinking !!! get over it already!!! I just can't... so my memories of childhood where sad in that sense...
I guess the only think I can think of would be for the education system to not be so homogenize but I in my job we design and build schools and just by the classrooms, technology and curriculum they have I mean I'm jealous... they have car shops, journalism, cosmetology, cooking or like skills as they call it one school had aquaculture, another one had a farming area where you'll have sheep, pigs, chickens... so I'm confused to say the least because first of I went to school in Mexico (from pre K to University) so I compare to that... I recently went to Dallas to asses some existing schools and yeah the ones from the 60's feel more like prisons but got to see 5 year old schools elementary schools and wow... they were full of color, spacious, clean, I was able to see all the art work those kids get to do, even in the old schools very inspiring and ingenious and this were all PUBLIC SCHOOLS ....
you see why I'm confused??? whats wrong then?? you went to college right? and for what I read in your blogs you are very smart at least thats my humble opinion so it seems to me that they (college teachers) did a really good job...
I think is unrealistic to expect school to teach us everything we need to know or that we think we need to know ( if that makes any sense)... my college teachers will tell me all the time school won't teach you all that is out there.
Anyway I don't think school is brain washing but it is true that I've heard (mainly in the news) how bad kids are coming out...
Balance Conventions with Self-Knowledge
— Apr 19, 2010
For a quick disclosure, I am a self-employed, 41-year old with an MBA, and I am an Adjunct Professor at two local colleges...
The problem with "modern" schools is that there is little or no emphasis on self-knowledge.
It was not until my graduate studies, in my late 30's, that I had the great fortune of having a professor who spent much time teaching self knowledge via the use of self-assessment tools, such as the Learning Styles Survey, Johari Window, and Myers-Briggs Typology.
I learned "how I learn" and that my personality type (INTP) is shared only by a small percentage of the broader population. At first I was angry that I had not been shown the path to self-knowledge sooner; but I was still happy that the world looked much more clear to me and was enabled to start my own business.
Now, as a father, an investment advisor, teacher and a writer, I can share the gift of self-knowledge with others.
As for any solutions to "fixing the problem" with modern schools, it is foolish to suggest an end to standardized teaching, unless the conventional classroom environment is broken apart. Think of food as a metaphor for thought and learning: The fast food restaurants of the world are much like public schools in that they must have a menu that is largely static and a standardized delivery system to service large amounts of people.
It is up to us as individuals to seek out our own tastes and cook our own food. It takes more time and we will make many mistakes but it is less expensive and more rewarding in the end. Most of all, it is the act of DOING that is the end -- not the end itself.
Conventions, therefore, are necessary evils but can be useful without damage to the self if the self is not covered by them. We must learn how to act in society but there must be balance with learning who we are as unique personalities. Schools, therefore, should make psychology, philosophy, and sociology permanent parts of the curriculum but also add classes that specifically teach self-awareness and self-knowledge.
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Hi Kent, I'm interested on
— Apr 19, 2010
Hi Kent,
I'm interested on the Self-knowledge method per se and personality types... could you recommend me some books or websites?
Thanks
Recommended Self-Knowledge Book & Links for Serch Monkey
— Apr 19, 2010
For personality types, I recommend "Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types" by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates. This book thoroughly explains the Jung Myers-Briggs Typology and all 16 of the personality types. The book also has several blank assessment tests in the back.
I've written many blog posts on the subject of self-knowledge with more links to self-assessment tools online. Here are the blog post titles with the direct URL:
Who Am I Part I: Emotional Intelligence: http://financialphilosopher.typepad.com/thefinancialphilosopher/2008/01/...
Who Am I Part II: Learn How You Learn: http://financialphilosopher.typepad.com/thefinancialphilosopher/2008/02/...
Man's Career Search for Meaning: http://financialphilosopher.typepad.com/thefinancialphilosopher/2009/11/...
Let me know if that helps!
Kent @ The Financial Philosopher
