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First, I think you're disregarding a lot of healthy interaction social skills too. For instance, dating is hard when you don't know how to give or receive a com

First, I think you're disregarding a lot of healthy interaction social skills too. For instance, dating is hard when you don't know how to give or receive a compliment. Or how to tell if someone is interested in spending more time with you. But that aside... So what would you recommend? Seems like those skills, though you don't like them, are currently useful in college and the adult world as well. But often quite lessened! Adult friend relationships tend to be healthier than high school social games! And with the particular case of teenagers, it's often all they have. Tiny aspects of social standing are important because there is often nothing actually meaningful that they can contribute to or do with a near-term payoff. So it's either grind in the hopes of a payoff when you're 20-something and have graduated college, or play vicious games for short term social prizes, or both. I would definitely be in favor of trying to figure out how to make the late-teenage years more "meaningful" but I think tearing the rest of the system down is not realistic.

quacked 5y ago
I don't want to disregard any healthy interaction skills, just the notion that those can only be learned in school or daycare. I agree with everything else you say. The fact that teenagers only have a hyper-competitive useless social atmosphere is a quirk of the past 50 years, and hasn't been true at any other time in history. Compare the required responsibilites and daily life of a Pueblo 16-year-old in the pre-Spanish 1500s, or even a poor English 16-year-old in the early 1900s to those of a 16-year-old in school in the modern U.S. Each of the pre-modern lives are far less comfortable and more dangerous, but far more meaningful to those who own them. I don't mean to say that we should tear the system down, or that a modern 16-year-old should wish they were a Cornish coal miner during WWI. However, when the system is entirely made up of people who believe that the system is inevitable and the only way to live, meaning becomes very difficult to come by for the children it institutionalizes. For an individual child/teenager: - Friendships or at least informal apprenticeships with productive adults - Martial arts (those that are actually effective in the UFC, not flashy arts) - Creation of products and/or art - Strong musical tradition - Knowledge of one's lineage, ancestry, and family history

quacked 5y ago

I don't want to disregard any healthy interaction skills, just the notion that those can only be learned in school or daycare. I agree with everything else you say. The fact that teenagers only have a hyper-competitive useless social atmosphere is a quirk of the past 50 years, and hasn't been true at any other time in history. Compare the required responsibilites and daily life of a Pueblo 16-year-old in the pre-Spanish 1500s, or even a poor English 16-year-old in the early 1900s to those of a 16-year-old in school in the modern U.S. Each of the pre-modern lives are far less comfortable and more dangerous, but far more meaningful to those who own them. I don't mean to say that we should tear the system down, or that a modern 16-year-old should wish they were a Cornish coal miner during WWI. However, when the system is entirely made up of people who believe that the system is inevitable and the only way to live, meaning becomes very difficult to come by for the children it institutionalizes. For an individual child/teenager: - Friendships or at least informal apprenticeships with productive adults - Martial arts (those that are actually effective in the UFC, not flashy arts) - Creation of products and/or art - Strong musical tradition - Knowledge of one's lineage, ancestry, and family history