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When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you want to expand someone's sense of what is possible, teach them a practical skill. I have no

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you want to expand someone's sense of what is possible, teach them a practical skill. I have no idea how to teach someone to dream. I can teach someone to look at a piece of lumber and see a jewellery box or a bird table or a guitar. I can teach someone to look at a pile of scrap electronics and see a headphone amplifier or an egg timer or a robot. I can teach someone to look at a group of bored people and see a theatre company or a choir or an expedition. IMO, we're seeing a generation of young people who want to change the world, but only know how to write essays and recite facts. There's a desperate lack of doing in the lives of our children - they have been taught by thousands of hours of schooling and after-schooling to be obedient followers. They're very good at being squeaky wheels, but they don't know how to make things happen. Their lives are bereft of making and doing, of unstructured and unsupervised play.

fny 10y ago
Ah "kids these days"...[0] I love to imagine what some older folk must've have said about "kids these days" back in the 60s and 70s. Probably a pile of useless fornicating, high-seeking hippies... But I digress. From my perspective, we're seeing this generation swoon over the dream of being doers and entrepreneurs. Isn't the lifeblood of nearly every startup young and hungry talent willing to work to "change the world" or make "the next big thing"? Isn't the average age of YC founders in the mid 20s? Aren't technology companies are often criticized for being agist? I often wonder about adults these days... [0]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/when-i-was-your-age-or-what-is-it-with-kids-these-days/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/when-...
- veddox 10y ago
  > Isn't the lifeblood of nearly every startup young and hungry talent willing to work to "change the world" or make "the next big thing"? What percentage of young adults work in a startup? I know we're on HN here, but don't forget there's a world outside Silicon Valley...
- jdietrich 10y ago
  I don't think that kids these days are awful. I think they're great - they're socially progressive, they're cultured, they have high aspirations and they work really hard. I think that successive generations have let them down, due to a culture of parenting that is dominated by fear. I'm not a naysayer or a nostalgic pessimist. I think that there are clear trends in society, some positive and some negative. It's obviously great news that we no longer consider it acceptable to beat children or to smoke during pregnancy. There is a clear trend in parenting and schooling towards more structure, more pressure and far less independence. We have seen a huge increase in educational attainment and college admission which is overwhelmingly a good thing, but the greater focus on academic study has come at the cost of other skills. For every twentysomething who founds a startup, there are dozens of baristas with liberal arts degrees. A lot of those baristas might dream of founding a startup, but very few of them have the skills, experience and confidence to do so. Research indicates that the average age of an entrepreneur is actually 40; most successful businesses are founded by people with an established career and a great deal of professional experience. High rates of youth unemployment and underemployment are likely to have a significant impact on innovation in ten or twenty years. http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anatomy-of-an-entrepreneur http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anat...
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Isn't "an opportunity to change the world" just a hook to get 20-somethings without families into working long hours?
- legostormtroopr 10y ago
  “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” ― Socrates
gluggymug 10y ago
The OA is talking a bit more specifically than just getting kids to play IMO. His title is Head of Innovation. Innovation is corporate-speak for actual company processes where they change things up like their business model, or their target customers or their product etc. I believe he is talking about teaching some of those techniques in an education environment. The attributes he mentions (relationships, curiosity, agility, creativity, empathy) are teachable skills in that context. The sort of lateral thinking exercises that Edward De Bono advocates or other brainstorming methods are used in the more kiddy version in alternative style schools like Montessori or Steiner schools. In those schools it is an active-learning, constructivist philosophy where kids have to cooperate with each other on projects and seek out the info rather than be fed info. It's not like practical skills aren't taught. Some are very hands-on. They might build a windmill or something. As they do, they learn all about physics and mechanics.

fny 10y ago

Ah "kids these days"...[0] I love to imagine what some older folk must've have said about "kids these days" back in the 60s and 70s. Probably a pile of useless fornicating, high-seeking hippies... But I digress. From my perspective, we're seeing this generation swoon over the dream of being doers and entrepreneurs. Isn't the lifeblood of nearly every startup young and hungry talent willing to work to "change the world" or make "the next big thing"? Isn't the average age of YC founders in the mid 20s? Aren't technology companies are often criticized for being agist? I often wonder about adults these days... [0]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/when-i-was-your-age-or-what-is-it-with-kids-these-days/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/when-...

veddox 10y ago
> Isn't the lifeblood of nearly every startup young and hungry talent willing to work to "change the world" or make "the next big thing"? What percentage of young adults work in a startup? I know we're on HN here, but don't forget there's a world outside Silicon Valley...
jdietrich 10y ago
I don't think that kids these days are awful. I think they're great - they're socially progressive, they're cultured, they have high aspirations and they work really hard. I think that successive generations have let them down, due to a culture of parenting that is dominated by fear. I'm not a naysayer or a nostalgic pessimist. I think that there are clear trends in society, some positive and some negative. It's obviously great news that we no longer consider it acceptable to beat children or to smoke during pregnancy. There is a clear trend in parenting and schooling towards more structure, more pressure and far less independence. We have seen a huge increase in educational attainment and college admission which is overwhelmingly a good thing, but the greater focus on academic study has come at the cost of other skills. For every twentysomething who founds a startup, there are dozens of baristas with liberal arts degrees. A lot of those baristas might dream of founding a startup, but very few of them have the skills, experience and confidence to do so. Research indicates that the average age of an entrepreneur is actually 40; most successful businesses are founded by people with an established career and a great deal of professional experience. High rates of youth unemployment and underemployment are likely to have a significant impact on innovation in ten or twenty years. http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anatomy-of-an-entrepreneur http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2010/05/the-anat...
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Isn't "an opportunity to change the world" just a hook to get 20-somethings without families into working long hours?
legostormtroopr 10y ago
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” ― Socrates

gluggymug 10y ago

The OA is talking a bit more specifically than just getting kids to play IMO. His title is Head of Innovation. Innovation is corporate-speak for actual company processes where they change things up like their business model, or their target customers or their product etc. I believe he is talking about teaching some of those techniques in an education environment. The attributes he mentions (relationships, curiosity, agility, creativity, empathy) are teachable skills in that context. The sort of lateral thinking exercises that Edward De Bono advocates or other brainstorming methods are used in the more kiddy version in alternative style schools like Montessori or Steiner schools. In those schools it is an active-learning, constructivist philosophy where kids have to cooperate with each other on projects and seek out the info rather than be fed info. It's not like practical skills aren't taught. Some are very hands-on. They might build a windmill or something. As they do, they learn all about physics and mechanics.