"We've invented adolescence, and stretched it out too far" says psychologist

[b etor]

the majority of 14 yr olds i kno would NOT be able to handle all of that.

i feel like an adult! but i kno i'm not one.

[Jon Miller]

That is because they have been encouraged to think that they are a kid. They have been encouraged to do pointless play (or even TV watching).

JM

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi That's not the point I was trying to make, because there is a minimum wage, the employers do as much as they can to ensure that they get the value out of the wage that they are paying. If the marginal utility of the worker is less then the wage, then they aren't going to hire the worker.

The point is that employers are already paying more than minimum wage for menial jobs in many cases. For example, I earned $7.50 an hour a few years ago working at a convenience store (and I was in a fairly rural area in Virginia, not in N.Y.C. or L.A.). Similarly, low level jobs in Northern Virginia pay more than minimum wage. Your argument is predicated on the assumption that all employers would hire more people if it weren't for minimum wage. Since the minimum wage doesn't seem to be a factor in hiring decisions for even the most menial jobs, getting rid of the minimum wage wouldn't result in a dramatic increase in teen employment (at least in Virginia).

The anti-minimum wage argument seems irrelevant when discussing the attitudes that teens and early twenty somethings have towards getting a job. The jobs are there already, despite there being a minimum wage. The kids aren't taking them. If they're not taking them now, why would they take them if they paid less? Hence the basis argument that illegal immigrants do the work Americans won't do. IMO, teens are being conditioned that low-level work is beneath Americans. If anything, lowering the minimum wage would make that even worse

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
The central goal is to treat 'teenagers' as young adults. This can't happen without the ability to be independent financially. As such, they can't be doing highschool at this time.

It seems the reasonable age for this would be 14.

This is where we disagree. I think that 14 is too young, even with an accelerated education. 16 is the youngest that I would go, and even then I'm a bit leery.

[Jon Miller]

I have great grandparents who came to america, married, at ages 13 and 14 to make a new life together (my most recent immigrant ancestors).

14 is not too young. It has been the standard age through out most of earth's history. (to be considered a young adult)

JM
(I am willing to bet that they were more responsible at that time than I am now)

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Required education:
Reading
Writing
Arithematic
Some experience with History, Science, etc

If you just look at how we do school, and the months of summer, you can see that by teaching it how we do now, but having school all year, that we can teach everything we do in 12 years now in 9. This is with no changes, but no summer vacation.

And what I'm saying is, if you continue to teach the way we teach now, a year-round schedule will be counterproductive and you can't just say that the same number of months will work.

For the record, this is not a child/adult thing. Adults need more vacation time than they currently get in the US to remain productive as well. (Quite a bit of literature on that one, by the way.) Putting a child on an adult schedule won't work any better.

How can a 8 yearold who can't even multiply do something as an apprentice? Something where they learn something, not just sweep the floors.

a) Sweeping floors is learning something too, unless you keep doing it for thirty years. A couple of months might be useful.

b) Go back to my 18th century cobbler...are you saying there is no part of any job that can be handled by somebody without the education to do the entire job? That's what being an apprentice means.

That is 8 yearolds with 12 yearolds. There is the social developement issue. I am not suggesting this. I am saying that the ability to read and write at a 6th grade level is very doable by an 8 yearold.

Yes, it is. But how are you going to teach vastly disparate curricula to a group of kids that are all sitting in the same classroom? It would be a pretty good situation, but is not feasible even at a 50% budget increase (never mind going year round...)

Koyaan, you definitely seem nostalgic for how you think your childhood should have gone.

...I hate to admit it, but my summer after my freshman year I did nothing productive...
... If I had had a lot less leisure I would have been a lot more successful... For one thing, the bad habits have continued to bother me....
...I didn't know a single child who used their summers productively. Ever....

...project much there, Jon? While I am occasionally nostalgic for teenage years that didn't happen, it has far more to do with my father's failed bone marrow transplant than my educational upbringing, which was quite good for the resources available to us.

The central goal is to treat 'teenagers' as young adults. This can't happen without the ability to be independent financially.

Why not? Is that really what defines adulthood to you, the ability to make money?

When they are treated like an adult, they will act like an adult

Yes. Exactly. And they will not be treated as adults during your massively structured educational experience. They will be treated as cattle. If they are treated as cattle during the first 14 years of their life, how do you expect them to act as human adults at 15?

it seems that you wish to continue to encourage non-educational play,

It seems that you have a dangerously narrow definition of 'educational'.

[Jon Miller]

How can you be independent and act like an adult if someone else is taking care of all your needs.

How am I treating them like cattle? I am giving them structure of 11ish hours of the day. Adults traditionally have structure 9+ hours a day also. I really dont' see why you want kids to just screw around. It is a waste, and not natural.

Back in hunter gatherer societies, you might think taht things were unstructured, but they weren't really. The kids were expected to help around a lot of the time (structured!). Additionally, when the kids weren' texpected to help, they were expected to take part in hunting/fighting/child care type games (semi-structured!). Once more, there is plenty of time in a 11 hour school day for structureless time, a good 4 hours at least. This is much more structureless time then kids have had throughout most of their history.

Kids needed to be guided. This was true 500 years ago, and is true today. 500 years ago they were guided by their parents or older kids. We have a greater vareity of things we need to teach today, additionally, in order to do our adult jobs we can't have kids underfoot. As such, we have other adults teach them (skills), rather than us parents and and the older children.

I think that you are considering activities that are no longer needed to be educational. Actually, I don't really understand what you are wanting 8 yearold kids to be doing. You never made clear to me what you thought that they would be doing during this structureless play time (I already told you what they have been doing, they have been watching TV or playing video games or experimenting with drugs).

Even in small schoold there are many different classrooms for the same age group. And you can mix classes within a couple years of eachother. There should be no issue in any school larger than 300 people with having people being able to advance more on their pace rather then being held back as a class. (with a few more teachers)

We need to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to a decent level before they are 14 so that they can be independent afterwards. Having people become interns at age 8 won't help acheive this for most people.

While I agree that how we teach now has serious problems, it will still work to give most people a decent education in 9 years rather then 12 if we teach during the summer months. I really don't see what you don't understand about this. You do know that it is proven that a large portion of what was learned during the previous year is forgotten during the summer? During all that structureless play time that you consider so valuable?

The issue with adults in America is that they work for 60ish hours a week. I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting 40ish hours a week, with 15 more hours a week of structured recreation. I am really not understanding your difficulty to understand this point.

JM

[Pekka]

I think there is multiple forces at play.

First of all, we always compare things with our own image. OK, that's why I sometimes say "that tells more about you than me". Because it's true. So basically when I think about it, I see myself as a 20 year old and now think "Jeesh, I wasn't that smart then" and look at other 20 year olds and think they are kids, as I see the same naive thinking in them.

But it's really me thinking myself as better now. It's just accumulated experience, that's all. It's just more theories, more knowledge, more perspective. A 20 year old is still as much adult as I am, a young adult. So for me to judge a person based on what I feel about myself is deceptive as a view of 20 year olds by nature. This is difficult for some to understand or accept, but I've accepted this a long time ago.

So this is a way to set barriers and claim experience against lack of experience. But a 40 year old is much more experienced than I am. How do I view 40 year olds right now? I don't. I don't know all 40 year olds. There are tons of intelligent 40 year olds, and there are plain dumb ones that I could beat in any given game or domain of knowledge. So why does their experience in screwing things up override my lack of the same? Of course it doesn't do that really.

18 year old is a young adult to me, if I have to draw a single age. A lot of them aren't mature, but what the hell, I'm not mature either. I'm just more experienced in certain things that we value more. But what we value more is just a symptom of our society that prioritizes things that supports that very system, be it capitalism, socialism, what ever it is, we value certain things more as general society, and those who fit in it are the ones to be respected.

I think they key is that those who disagree with it aren't respected the same. Most of us don't actually do things we value. We just value and keep talking, but we don't actually do them ourselves. But we think we're good guys because we kind of agree with it, so the notion is that we reject those who disagree.

Those who disagree are often younger than us, there's the rebellion against the adult world, they aren't indoctrinated perfectly as of yet. There's lots of hope that we killed already. Everyone of us was some kind of an idealist and thought why certain things are done the way they are, because it's not the best way and it's just something we've submitted ourselves doing because "that's the way it's done". Everyone else has fool's hope, that is they are naive and that is because they either lack the experience or are stupid, or both.

But how do you really justify that position? If we really think about the adult world, it's just indoctrination to the system that is the society and its functions. Who said this is the way it should be? This is what young minds don't get so the question it whereas we kind of think that's a load of bollocks, that's what I used to think as a youngster but then I "grew up". Thus rebellion against the adult world.

Of course it's all individual, the maturity level, the ages can vary a lot. But we don't like kids who ACT like adults either, now do we? They are irritating. And that's because we know they aren't real, they are just acting like that, and there's time to stop it adn when it's kind of attached to the young personality, it's just weird and we hate it, it's fake and irritating.

So we leave no options for younger ones really. They are either irritating or stupid. Sometimes, many times in fact it's true, but not always and definitely not by default. And when you can't have the perspective to evaluate the message or idea of someone who isn't your age or generation objectively but let that little attribute throw you off, well again.. it says more about that person than the one with ideas.

[Wiglaf]

In recent surveys I've found that American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
How can you be independent and act like an adult if someone else is taking care of all your needs.

Amazingly, shocking, unbelievably, some people believe that not all of a person's needs are financial. I happen to be one of them.

How am I treating them like cattle?

I am giving them structure of 11ish hours of the day.

I really dont' see why you want kids to just screw around. It is a waste, and not natural.

I don't want them to just screw around all the time (though it's not bad sometimes.) Why do you think that the only alternatives are either wasting time or participating in an organized, scheduled event? (see projecting above, perhaps?)

Back in hunter gatherer societies, you might think taht things were unstructured, but they weren't really. The kids were expected to help around a lot of the time (structured!).

Not structured! They were given tasks, shown how to do them the first couple of times, and then just expected to do them on their own. They didn't have adults standing over them with whips making sure they did their jobs. (That didn't come until industrialization.)

Additionally, when the kids weren' texpected to help, they were expected to take part in hunting/fighting/child care type games (semi-structured!).

Rarely structured in the time management sense. They were usually expected to conform to sociological norms in these activities, but specific implementation details were generally left to the kids. They were not told to study their herb identification from 3-3:45PM every day.

Kids needed to be guided. This was true 500 years ago, and is true today. 500 years ago they were guided by their parents or older kids. We have a greater vareity of things we need to teach today, additionally, in order to do our adult jobs we can't have kids underfoot. As such, we have other adults teach them (skills), rather than us parents and and the older children.

500 years ago they were not under constant supervision and surveillance (well, mostly.) They were guided by pointing them in a direction and telling them to go, not by being walked there by an adult.

I think that you are considering activities that are no longer needed to be educational. Actually, I don't really understand what you are wanting 8 yearold kids to be doing. You never made clear to me what you thought that they would be doing during this structureless play time (I already told you what they have been doing, they have been watching TV or playing video games or experimenting with drugs).

I have told you what they'd be doing. Sometimes they'd be interacting with other kids in an unstructured environment. Sometimes they'd be expected to attain certain goals, checked on by their parents upon completion (chores, or academics, or whatever...doesn't really matter what it is, the important part is setting a goal and attaining it.) Yes, maybe sometimes they'd watch junk tv...if so, so be it, that's their decision, as long as they do the other things they're expected to do.

Even in small schoold there are many different classrooms for the same age group. And you can mix classes within a couple years of eachother. There should be no issue in any school larger than 300 people with having people being able to advance more on their pace rather then being held back as a class. (with a few more teachers)

I agree, there shouldn't be. Alas, reality does not always conform to our wishes. We had ability-based classes when I was in middle school...the difference between the slowest person in the top class and the slowest person in the bottom class wasn't enough to make it worthwhile, and it ended up being socially damaging to most of the students on top of failing to meet its expected goals and outcomes.

We need to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to a decent level before they are 14 so that they can be independent afterwards. Having people become interns at age 8 won't help acheive this for most people.

I wouldn't start in until high school myself, but in any case, I was just saying that such a system would have better results than the one you're proposing, not that it was a cure-all.

While I agree that how we teach now has serious problems, it will still work to give most people a decent education in 9 years rather then 12 if we teach during the summer months. I really don't see what you don't understand about this. You do know that it is proven that a large portion of what was learned during the previous year is forgotten during the summer? During all that structureless play time that you consider so valuable?

Yes. You do know that it has been proven that what is learned at the beginning of a semester is often forgotten by the end of it? It's based on continuity of use for a given bit of information, not just continuity of education in general. And in any case, I've already said that a year-round curriculum wouldn't be bad if it is taught much differently than the current system. I just wouldn't make it as long (either in weeks in session or hours per day) as you propose.

The issue with adults in America is that they work for 60ish hours a week. I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting 40ish hours a week, with 15 more hours a week of structured recreation. I am really not understanding your difficulty to understand this point.

Perhaps because structured recreation is not the same thing as unstructured time? You're suggesting 55hrs/wk of structured time. I don't care what you're doing in those 55hrs/wk, you can make them all play tag for all I care, it is not the same as unstructured time in which a child has to make decisions and learn to function as an independent human being.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi


Amazingly, shocking, unbelievably, some people believe that not all of a person's needs are financial. I happen to be one of them.

That doesn't answer my question. How can you be an adult (in a capitalist society) without being financially indepedent?

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi

I don't want them to just screw around all the time (though it's not bad sometimes.) Why do you think that the only alternatives are either wasting time or participating in an organized, scheduled event? (see projecting above, perhaps?)

Evidence. Not just my own.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi



Not structured! They were given tasks, shown how to do them the first couple of times, and then just expected to do them on their own. They didn't have adults standing over them with whips making sure they did their jobs. (That didn't come until industrialization.)

Rarely structured in the time management sense. They were usually expected to conform to sociological norms in these activities, but specific implementation details were generally left to the kids. They were not told to study their herb identification from 3-3:45PM every day.


500 years ago they were not under constant supervision and surveillance (well, mostly.) They were guided by pointing them in a direction and telling them to go, not by being walked there by an adult.

When we have a greater number of activities going on, things need to be structured. When there are a limited number of activities, if they decide to look at herbs at 3 or at 7 they can still do it. On the other hand, if they want to learn how to read, the teacher is only available between 3 and 3:55.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Koyaanisqatsi


I have told you what they'd be doing. Sometimes they'd be interacting with other kids in an unstructured environment. Sometimes they'd be expected to attain certain goals, checked on by their parents upon completion (chores, or academics, or whatever...doesn't really matter what it is, the important part is setting a goal and attaining it.) Yes, maybe sometimes they'd watch junk tv...if so, so be it, that's their decision, as long as they do the other things they're expected to do.

I agree, there shouldn't be. Alas, reality does not always conform to our wishes. We had ability-based classes when I was in middle school...the difference between the slowest person in the top class and the slowest person in the bottom class wasn't enough to make it worthwhile, and it ended up being socially damaging to most of the students on top of failing to meet its expected goals and outcomes.

You are saying that 4 hours isn't enough time to work towards goals, etc? Even watch some (not a ton) of TV? They should be spending some time studying anyways, why not set time aside during school for them to do that if they wish? How is that negative? (THey could also read or recreate or the like, I Guess).

Umm, reality does conform to my concept. There are excamples of it done right, like it Kuci's highschool/etc. THe fact that it sometimes hasn't been implemented right isn't a failure of the idea, rather the application. And you haven't clearly said why it was socially damaging? A essay on why the current delayed educational system, caused it part by people giving plenty of time to play, is socially damaging has already been presented.

JM

[Ben Kenobi]

How can you be an adult (in a capitalist society) without being financially indepedent?

There are plenty of adults who aren't financially independent.

In fact, the model for most of the world, up until very recently is that you never were expected to be financially independent. You lived in your parents home and then you got married and moved out. So you would always be supported or supporting someone else.

Having 20 years where you are neither with your folks nor married was pretty much unheard of.