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> We pretend that children don’t need to see their parents working to learn what the real world looks like. That age-segregated schools full of hyper-local and

> We pretend that children don’t need to see their parents working to learn what the real world looks like. That age-segregated schools full of hyper-local and transient cultural pathologies are a sufficient role model. Our children enter the world having barely observed what the work of being an adult actually is, and then understandably struggle to reproduce it. Their entire lifetime of exposure to the economy and what it makes consists mainly of the media they consume, and so their conception of fulfilling careers is dominated by making video games and being in bands. Any ideas on how to solve this problem without going back to the world as it used to be (which is probably impossible anyway)?

c0nfused 6y ago
I have found that work from home can make a bunch of time up in most people's day. That makes it easier to both spend time with my kids and talk about what it is I am doing right now. I see many more professionals with their kids at the park these days too. Obviously, the current state of things is not likely to last but it seems like it might be a way closer to the goal
O_H_E 6y ago
I can personally relate to this. I am a university student and living the past few months with my dad working from home, has taught me quite a bit about money management, the workplace, how R&D jobs feel like, and much more that nobody ever thought to tell me about without asking.
jariel 6y ago
I personally don't quite agree with the thesis of the essay, but it is good, and this point is really insightful. Children have no idea what 'work' is, or why it's done, or even why they are obtaining and education - in my own experience I feel as though it took 20 years of 'actual work and deprogramming' for me to finally 'get it'. I think that kids having real jobs from an early age is a really good start - doesn't matter what. Sweeping up, flipping burgers, the 'sandwich cart guy/girl at the golf club'. This is a good start. There's a young kid at my local Chinese Food shop who's maybe 8 years old, and he works there, it's a 'family business' it seems absolutely and perfectly normal, 'healthy' in fact (without knowing all the details). I'm inclined to think this kid will be a little more mature for his age than otherwise. U Waterloo has 5 year Eng programs that focus on internships, only in hindsight to I realize how infinitely valuable internships are. I think these could be made much more open.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  How would you prevent an anarcho-capitalist devolution back into 19th century child labor?
  - jariel 6y ago
    Because we're an evolved society and nobody is going to be pulling their kids from school to have them work in dirty factories all day? And it's illegal? Kids helping out at the family business, the pet shelter, the retirement home, at summer camp, this is all within reason. I don't even think we need 'rules', just the notion that it's possibly a good thing to do. Parents can decide as they do for literally everything else. I should add - aside from 'work' - just 'doing a project' that involves a tiny bit of planning and preparation, seeing it through to completion, with all the little challenges - this is dramatically useful. Starting at the age of 8, it would be good if kids took 2hrs a day to work on something more 'long term' where they need to learn, plan, build, accomplish, witness the fruits of their labour. And lastly - the 'harvest'. Kids in most of North America used to take a little bit of time off of school in Autumn to go back to the farm for harvest. I honestly think this is where we should get our surplus labour from. 1/2 days in the field picking berries or whatever for a week or so, it's perfect for kids, maybe basic things for 10-year-olds, but absolutely teenagers can do almost anything including running machinery.
- jaclaz 6y ago
  Personally I have been very lucky, my father built architectural models, my mother ran a small (artisan) shirts/nightgowns factory, both my father's workshop and my mother's small factory were situated less than 1 km from home. As a kid, in the afternoon, after school and homework, I would go to either and learn something and try and help (doing something easy that I could do). As an example at my mother's there were some kind of dressing gowns that used buttons covered with the same fabric that were to be assembled with a small press. (think today of allowing a 10 year old kid to operate a small manual press) or at my father's there was sometimes the need to make trees (in scale) with some wire, glue and cotton or to sand down a piece of plyboard before painting it. I learned that work was something needed and that if you love your work (as my parents did) it is rarely heavy or tiring, that if there is a deadline, it must be met, that you need to talk to both customers and suppliers, that there are rules and bureaucarcy and you have to deal with them. I can see the difference in mentality against that of some of my cousins whose parents had (possibly "better") office jobs, their parents basically left in the morning and were not seen again till almost dinner time. They had no idea what their parents did, which kind of problems they had to deal with every day, they knew vaguely that they worked in a bank or in an office, that was all.
js8 6y ago
Just an idea, might be completely flawed. I would put together children in "interest groups", not by age, but by the field that they should (or are interested to) learn. There would be a defined curriculum in each of the fields, and each kid would have a certain level in each field, which would be certified by exams, and they would be encouraged to work towards those exams. (Say every half a year, you would get a level if you pass an exam.) There would be no marks, only levels, up to unattainable mastery. Within each interest group, children of different levels in that group would intermingle. The children with lower level of skill would respect (follow instructions of, do not bother, etc.) children with higher level of skill. On the other hand, the children with higher level of skill would have obligation to also mentor and help the children with lower level of skill to get to the next level, and not to be judgemental about one's skill level. Everybody would have an obligation to learn (or practice) and get to the another level. The whole operation would be partly supervised by adults, ideally people with the high level in the particular skills.
- entha_saava 6y ago
  That's hard in this anti intellectual, bureaucratic world.
  - mcny 6y ago
    > That's hard in this anti intellectual, bureaucratic world. I have a funny, off-topic, story. For some reason, we had twice as many students as usual in my grade which meant we would need to have two sections: A and B. Initially, the plan was to divide the class into two right down the middle by grades: top half in section A and bottom half in section B. Apparently, when the parents found out, they stopped by to request the school to "promote" their kid to section A. The school "promoted" all the students in proposed section B to section A and "demoted" all students in the proposed section A to section B, effectively just renaming A <-> B which apparently made everyone happy.

c0nfused 6y ago

I have found that work from home can make a bunch of time up in most people's day. That makes it easier to both spend time with my kids and talk about what it is I am doing right now. I see many more professionals with their kids at the park these days too. Obviously, the current state of things is not likely to last but it seems like it might be a way closer to the goal

O_H_E 6y ago

I can personally relate to this. I am a university student and living the past few months with my dad working from home, has taught me quite a bit about money management, the workplace, how R&D jobs feel like, and much more that nobody ever thought to tell me about without asking.

jariel 6y ago

I personally don't quite agree with the thesis of the essay, but it is good, and this point is really insightful. Children have no idea what 'work' is, or why it's done, or even why they are obtaining and education - in my own experience I feel as though it took 20 years of 'actual work and deprogramming' for me to finally 'get it'. I think that kids having real jobs from an early age is a really good start - doesn't matter what. Sweeping up, flipping burgers, the 'sandwich cart guy/girl at the golf club'. This is a good start. There's a young kid at my local Chinese Food shop who's maybe 8 years old, and he works there, it's a 'family business' it seems absolutely and perfectly normal, 'healthy' in fact (without knowing all the details). I'm inclined to think this kid will be a little more mature for his age than otherwise. U Waterloo has 5 year Eng programs that focus on internships, only in hindsight to I realize how infinitely valuable internships are. I think these could be made much more open.

PeterStuer 6y ago
How would you prevent an anarcho-capitalist devolution back into 19th century child labor?
- jariel 6y ago
  Because we're an evolved society and nobody is going to be pulling their kids from school to have them work in dirty factories all day? And it's illegal? Kids helping out at the family business, the pet shelter, the retirement home, at summer camp, this is all within reason. I don't even think we need 'rules', just the notion that it's possibly a good thing to do. Parents can decide as they do for literally everything else. I should add - aside from 'work' - just 'doing a project' that involves a tiny bit of planning and preparation, seeing it through to completion, with all the little challenges - this is dramatically useful. Starting at the age of 8, it would be good if kids took 2hrs a day to work on something more 'long term' where they need to learn, plan, build, accomplish, witness the fruits of their labour. And lastly - the 'harvest'. Kids in most of North America used to take a little bit of time off of school in Autumn to go back to the farm for harvest. I honestly think this is where we should get our surplus labour from. 1/2 days in the field picking berries or whatever for a week or so, it's perfect for kids, maybe basic things for 10-year-olds, but absolutely teenagers can do almost anything including running machinery.
jaclaz 6y ago
Personally I have been very lucky, my father built architectural models, my mother ran a small (artisan) shirts/nightgowns factory, both my father's workshop and my mother's small factory were situated less than 1 km from home. As a kid, in the afternoon, after school and homework, I would go to either and learn something and try and help (doing something easy that I could do). As an example at my mother's there were some kind of dressing gowns that used buttons covered with the same fabric that were to be assembled with a small press. (think today of allowing a 10 year old kid to operate a small manual press) or at my father's there was sometimes the need to make trees (in scale) with some wire, glue and cotton or to sand down a piece of plyboard before painting it. I learned that work was something needed and that if you love your work (as my parents did) it is rarely heavy or tiring, that if there is a deadline, it must be met, that you need to talk to both customers and suppliers, that there are rules and bureaucarcy and you have to deal with them. I can see the difference in mentality against that of some of my cousins whose parents had (possibly "better") office jobs, their parents basically left in the morning and were not seen again till almost dinner time. They had no idea what their parents did, which kind of problems they had to deal with every day, they knew vaguely that they worked in a bank or in an office, that was all.

js8 6y ago

Just an idea, might be completely flawed. I would put together children in "interest groups", not by age, but by the field that they should (or are interested to) learn. There would be a defined curriculum in each of the fields, and each kid would have a certain level in each field, which would be certified by exams, and they would be encouraged to work towards those exams. (Say every half a year, you would get a level if you pass an exam.) There would be no marks, only levels, up to unattainable mastery. Within each interest group, children of different levels in that group would intermingle. The children with lower level of skill would respect (follow instructions of, do not bother, etc.) children with higher level of skill. On the other hand, the children with higher level of skill would have obligation to also mentor and help the children with lower level of skill to get to the next level, and not to be judgemental about one's skill level. Everybody would have an obligation to learn (or practice) and get to the another level. The whole operation would be partly supervised by adults, ideally people with the high level in the particular skills.

entha_saava 6y ago
That's hard in this anti intellectual, bureaucratic world.
- mcny 6y ago
  > That's hard in this anti intellectual, bureaucratic world. I have a funny, off-topic, story. For some reason, we had twice as many students as usual in my grade which meant we would need to have two sections: A and B. Initially, the plan was to divide the class into two right down the middle by grades: top half in section A and bottom half in section B. Apparently, when the parents found out, they stopped by to request the school to "promote" their kid to section A. The school "promoted" all the students in proposed section B to section A and "demoted" all students in the proposed section A to section B, effectively just renaming A <-> B which apparently made everyone happy.