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>I hate the school systems hero worship of sign wielding protesters. The part that really irks me about this is that it incentivizes "activism" in high school

>I hate the school systems hero worship of sign wielding protesters. The part that really irks me about this is that it incentivizes "activism" in high school as a means to look good on college applications. There's a reason we don't let high-school kids vote. Likewise giving them an incentive to play the "think of the children" card on politicians is just an exercise in manipulating them. Basically nobody at age 18 has a reasonable world view because their life experience is basically limited to childhood, they only know some output of what the adults around them have fed them.

neilv 8y ago
When I was learning photojournalism (as a side skill), for practice, I used to attend lots of demonstrations in Boston, and the demonstrators always seemed to be sincere. The students (of which Boston has a ton) might have been attending different demonstrations: I mostly saw non-student adults. Occasionally, a demonstration coordinated by a particular activism group would seem transactional: people show up and assemble, media comes out to get what might air as a few seconds of video, people leave. But even those ones, the people seemed to be sincere. Regarding schools incentivizing "activism": that's frustrating, but not entirely new. Added to the widely-gamed college application checklist, long after "volunteering"? (I could never review college admissions applications. You can't even get mad at even the most insincere-seeming students for playing the game, since that was the game the schools put in front of them. The solution might be to not have it be a competition for scarce resources, since it no longer has to be.)
wwweston 8y ago
> Basically nobody at age 18 has a reasonable world view because their life experience is basically limited to childhood It's fair to criticize teens for limited experience. It's fair to assume a some portion of what they think they know is a reflection of the common wisdom of adults in their circle. It's fair to start from the assumption that this will often result in opinions that aren't very nuanced, systematic, and balanced. It's risky to assume this means teens have no meaningful experience, knowledge, or even expertise. And I'm at least a little surprised to see an opinion approaching that on a forum where no small number of participants started playing/working at creating software before they reached an age expressed in double-digits.

neilv 8y ago

When I was learning photojournalism (as a side skill), for practice, I used to attend lots of demonstrations in Boston, and the demonstrators always seemed to be sincere. The students (of which Boston has a ton) might have been attending different demonstrations: I mostly saw non-student adults. Occasionally, a demonstration coordinated by a particular activism group would seem transactional: people show up and assemble, media comes out to get what might air as a few seconds of video, people leave. But even those ones, the people seemed to be sincere. Regarding schools incentivizing "activism": that's frustrating, but not entirely new. Added to the widely-gamed college application checklist, long after "volunteering"? (I could never review college admissions applications. You can't even get mad at even the most insincere-seeming students for playing the game, since that was the game the schools put in front of them. The solution might be to not have it be a competition for scarce resources, since it no longer has to be.)

wwweston 8y ago

> Basically nobody at age 18 has a reasonable world view because their life experience is basically limited to childhood It's fair to criticize teens for limited experience. It's fair to assume a some portion of what they think they know is a reflection of the common wisdom of adults in their circle. It's fair to start from the assumption that this will often result in opinions that aren't very nuanced, systematic, and balanced. It's risky to assume this means teens have no meaningful experience, knowledge, or even expertise. And I'm at least a little surprised to see an opinion approaching that on a forum where no small number of participants started playing/working at creating software before they reached an age expressed in double-digits.