15 ms·

Let's End Adolescence

172 points by robg 18y ago

mnemonicsloth 18y ago
Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation... The fact is, most young people want to be challenged and given real responsibility. They want to be treated like young men and women, not old children. Where have we heard this before? http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Is this starting to become like "I, for one, welcome our new X overlords?" is on Slashdot? PG wrote everything. Let's take that as a given. Now can we move on? I'm not trying to be persnickety, but your comment adds absolutely nothing to the discussion and sounds like fanboy tripe. If PGs article was on here, we could talk about that. But it's not. AFAIK, every one of PG's articles has already appeared on here and we've already talked about it. So on with the new material, okay?
  - aswanson 18y ago
    Sorry, Dan, but the strange loop generated by what I am submitting here is irresistible. Cheers: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/12/the_guy.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/12/the_guy.php
    - bjelkeman-again 18y ago
      Thanks. That really threw me in a loop.
  - mnemonicsloth 18y ago
    You're not being persnickety. You're rushing to judgment because it gives you an excuse to put on a big show of pwning me-the-thoughtless-fanboy. "X and Y are the same" is a lesson we all learned on Sesame Street, and isn't much worth discussing. Rather than give some kind of credit to PG for anticipating NG, I wanted to point out how weird it is for the two of them to be agreeing. Gingrich is respectful of tradition and has a politician's instincts for rationalization and euphemism. Graham has said (along with everything else) that groups of people are inherently dumb and lazy, and is almost contemptuously truthful. There's plenty of real intellectual content in there if you take the time to dig for it, and much of it is cool and subversive...
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Gatto has a lot to say about this in UHoAE as well. My own thinking is that it is impossible to end adolescence because American society is structured around competition, and competition depends on measurement. And because there's no good theory on what can verse can't be measured, it's too easy for the proponents of adolescence to put some numbers on what they're selling. And because these metrics make the benefits of adolescence seem more salient than the benefits of anything else, adolescence will always beat out every other option, short of some radical philosophical shift in society, which is beyond the scope of this movement.
  - thomasmallen 18y ago
    * Who are these proponents? * What are the numbers? What are they selling? * What benefits? What would "anything else" be? * Is there anything to take home from that drawn-out paragraph? Sounds like a bullshit theory to me.
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      "Who are these proponents?" Schools, colleges, associated faculty and staff, parents, politicians, employers, etc. "What are the numbers? What are they selling?" Degrees, GPA, US News rank, X vs educational attainment (e.g. future earnings potential), etc. "What benefits?" The story of school. That is, what it means to be well educated/qualified is having a degree, having gone to a good school, having gotten a good GPA, etc. The social currency these things bring is all tied up with the story of school, or its foundational myth, or whatever you want to call it. By going through the system you earn the right to invoke the story. "What would "anything else" be?" Anything else. As it stands the only way to renounce adolescence is to become sanyasi sankalpa, which isn't a very good option. "Sounds like a bullshit theory to me." Maybe it's a bullshit theory, maybe it's the most poignant observation about western civ ever made, but you're smart so figure it out for yourself, I'm not here to play Bodhisattva.
      - thomasmallen 18y ago
        OK, good details, now it doesn't sound like so much of a bullshit theory to me. You should have included these details in the first place, I think.
- bmj 18y ago
  Or maybe Ivan Illich? http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.h...
- crabapple 18y ago
  yeah nice example...and how long did he stay in college?
peakok 18y ago
It is naive to assume that "adolescence" was a concept invented out of the blue, then deliberately experimented by some politics, it never works this way. The opposite is true : at some point we needed a word to describe a change in society, and a new cultural phenomenon that didn't exist before. Then was born the concept of adolescence and the teenager, wich is a worldwide phenomenom in Occident and other parts of the world. Necessity is the mother of all virtues. People responsabilise when there is a need for it, especially when there is no other choice. Should the economic crisis worsen and make our life tougher, you'll see a lot of young people do whatever it takes to support their family and take a more serious stance on life and politics. Some people are afraid that young people cannot responsabilise because of their education. I would argue that the same people underestimate (1) the potential of the young people, wich fuels the problem, and (2) underestimate the greatest educator of all : necessity.
- nihilocrat 18y ago
  Thus says the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/ http://www.etymonline.com/): teenage 1921, formed from -teen as a separate word + age; derived noun teenager is from 1941 (the earlier word for this was teener, attested in Anmer.Eng. from 1894). Teen-aged (adj.) is from 1952; shortened form teen is from 1951 (though this had been used as a noun to mean "teen-aged person" in 1818). Teeny-bopper is recorded from 1966, from teen but also felt as infl. by teeny. For second element, see bop. Couldn't find the word "adolescence", unfortunately. Based on this, you could argue that the first "teenagers" showed up as early as 1894 or as late as 1941.
  - whughes 18y ago
    Adolescence is from antiquity, but the meaning has diluted to become the same thing as 'teenagerhood' recently, if I recall correctly. It was more like being a 'young man' prior to that.
- bokonist 18y ago
  It wasn't invented out of the blue, but it was an evolved creation of politics. In classic democratic fashion, a lot of factions were pushing their own agenda that ended up making the country as a whole worse off. The education establishment has continually upped the drop out age. Labor unions ( in alliance with wealthy parents) pushed for stricter child labor laws to reduce competition for jobs. Aristocratic progressives wanted an institution to indoctrinate immigrants in the American way of live. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income. Since colleges require a high school diploma, this put teenagers in an eight year holding pattern, waiting for a piece of paper. The result of this has been every bit as disastrous as Newt claims.
tdavis 18y ago
While I wholeheartedly agree that there are many things wrong with "kids these days," completely abolishing adolescence would... what's a good word here... suck! Look, I did my fair share of dumb stuff when I was younger, most of which was done in the name of boredom. But what's the alternative here? "Happy 13th birthday, son, now go get a job!"? If high STD and drug use rates tell us anything, it's that these young people are, on average, too immature to assume adult roles. I adore the feelings of achievement that being an entrepreneur/adult have brought me, but at the same time I recognize the fact that "being a kid" wasn't as bad the article makes it out to be. I spent most of my time playing video games, hanging out with friends and, yes, doing drugs! OMG! But you know what, at the end of the day, it was still fun. I think we as a society should do everything in our power to encourage young people to focus on school so that they don't get dragged down into the worlds of drug addiction, poverty, etc. However, the reason I had so much time to dick around during my adolescence/teenage years was mainly because school was far too easy and not engaging enough. The entire schooling system is not nearly as progressive as it needs to be. Furthermore, there are not nearly enough reasons to excel at it. Working hard in high school just means you can get into a good college where you have to work even harder (and, unless you really excel or are financially secure, take a long-term monetary hit for the privilege) and the reality is that where one attended college is rarely relevant today. School should be designed to provide useful knowledge instead of information that is merely cataloged, regurgitated, and forgotten. It should encourage and enable young people to find something they are passionate about and learn relevant things about that and gain useful experience in the process. The only classes that I worked hard to excel in and go beyond the bare minimum were programming and writing courses. It should come as no surprise that these are the two topics I am most passionate about to this day.
- omouse 18y ago
  If high STD and drug use rates tell us anything, it's that these young people are, on average, too immature to assume adult roles. Or that they have nothing better to do?
  - josefresco 18y ago
    Sex and drugs are not activities exclusive to adults (nor should they be). Kids DO have better things to do, and for them (as well as adults) it's usually sex/drugs/rock&roll that are the 'better things'.
nir 18y ago
The 3 stage process of childhood - adolescence - adulthood is already irrelevant in many affluent Western countries, but what was removed isn't adolescence but adulthood. Many 40 year olds manage their lives as teenagers (look at the low birth rate in western Europe, or high divorce rate in the US) and vice versa - teenagers build $15b (if you believe it ;)) companies.
- unalone 18y ago
  I don't think it's fair to assume specific phases of life whatsoever: people don't automatically grow up. Some people seem to skip the adolescence phase and go right to adulthood, for better or for worse. However, it IS fair to say that society reacts to people of certain ages as if the sheer fact of getting older meant instant change in mood and personality. And that's harmful.
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    maturity has little to do with age and everything to do with responsibility. I remember of hearing about a couple who adopted an orphan from Russia. the kid made people uncomfortable because he acted like an adult. Why? he was the oldest kid at his orphanage and had been looking out for younger kids for years.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I agree completely.
    - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
      The saying my mother used when I was growing up was that "a boy becomes a man when a man is required."
- tomjen 18y ago
  I don't believe that a low birth rate says anything about when people grow up. If it did, teenage mothers would be the most responsible people in society.
Dilpil 18y ago
The real purpose of high school is keeping the roving hordes of teenagers off the street. Teenagers have no judgement (I certainly didn't), and we would like to have some method of keeping them occupied. Unfortunately, where before that method involved actual learning, nowadays schools are basically just low security prisons. Furthermore, Newt is completely off when he claims that all adolescents want more responsibility. This is simply untrue. A small fraction of adolescents want more responsibility, the rest want to hang out with their friends all day and do nothing. Which is actually pretty close to high school.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  > A small fraction of adolescents want more responsibility It's a question of the meaning of "want." I think a small fraction of adolescents can articulate that they "want" meaningful responsibility and structure, or make any efforts to get it.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I think that lots of adolescents honestly do not want to do anything. They prefer having no responsibilities whatsoever. I thought it was otherwise: that people who didn't want to work or improve or learn were people that didn't have a good method of doing so, that they were restricted by the system. Long story short, I found out that's radically not the truth. Some people are a little bit icky inside.
    - wensing 18y ago
      I think that lots of adolescents honestly do not want to do anything. They prefer having no responsibilities whatsoever. That's because you can't start with adolescence. You have to start increasing responsibility from roughly age 2. Get them used to it, reward it, show them the connection between increased responsibility and increased choice and freedom. Then they'll want it. The problem with most adolescents is the 12 years prior.
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    I've always found "want" to be an interesting word in English. You can really want to be the kind of person who gets up and goes to the gym regularly. And you can also simultaneously want to sit motionless on your sofa and passively watch dumb TV programs, even though those things are totally incompatible. I suspect it may be similar with figuring out whether teenagers really "want" to be mature, responsible, and productive individuals.
Tichy 18y ago
Why stop there - let's remove individuality altogether. With a proper mix of drugs, children could absorb the lessons at school at a much faster rate, and could take the role they are destined for with near 100% accuracy. Unwanted and misleading desires could be done away with. Imagine the benefits for society if kids were 100% docile and controllable.</irony>
- unalone 18y ago
  Yeah. Because school is ABSOLUTELY a good way to promote individuality and unique thinking. Because most teachers DON'T push for students to adapt to a single way of thinking because it makes them easy to manage. Because students DON'T judge students for individuality, creating a lopsided social ladder that lasts easily into college. </unnecessary tag>
  - Tichy 18y ago
    But they are not good enough, they did not succeed in quelling adolescent behavior.
    - etal 18y ago
      Adolescent behavior is a pretty trivial threat to the status quo. Most of the lashing out is justified by their acceptance of the idea that they'll have to be working stiffs later.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I don't think that the adolescent phase is one of individuality. Quite the opposite. And while I don't completely agree with this article, I do think that a system that treats adolescents like adults would be an improvement. Not one that makes them work and leave school, mind you. Just one that respects them aging. A part of me feels that if we let teachers swear in front of students, let them act like people than act completely neutral, and start teaching them about how to solve their own problems, we'd find that a lot of the problems in modern society would just vanish. Every instance in my life that I've felt like rebelling against a system was an instance in my life when I was treated like an adolescent per se. And that happened very rarely: I was lucky enough to have teachers that usually took the time to treat me like an adult. Whenever I see a student in college getting violently drunk and acting like an ass, I would place money on that person originating by acting against some authority figure. (Indeed, I have friends whose families let them drink, and none of those kids are alcoholic whatsoever. I wouldn't call it a formal study, but I think trends say that kids get into stuff like that when they associate that with being grown up.)
frisco 18y ago
One thing that continually throws me is the whole, "more school, especially more college!" idea. The skills that have actually put me in interesting situations, like serious brain machine interface research or a startup doing quantitative methods for human resources, had nothing to do with school. At least for me, I'd have been much better suited for an "apprenticeship" rather than having just having to tolerate classes as a distraction to the lab, where I learned about Kalman filters and intricacies of neuronal tuning in a kind of learn-it-by-yesterday-as-needed setup from the people who were actually writing the papers. Given the amount of ADD we have as a culture, training hackers with an emphasis on "you as an individual can create things that have the potential to become forces of nature with only a cheap computer and some knowledge" and deep familiarity with the internet (irc? google-fu?) seems to be the best way to graduate world class engineers. You won't get middle American teenagers to sit down and study like Chinese students will; but that's fine. Our hackers will end up just as knowledgeable as theirs, and maybe more creative. EDIT: One more thing: we need to drill home that "post things to share with your friends for free!" is neither a business model nor a KILLERAPP!!111oneoneone. We need to inspire kids to go after the next big problems, and not just fill them up with hype and dreams, but actually give them the technical abilities to do it.
- unalone 18y ago
  You won't get middle American teenagers to sit down and study like Chinese students will; but that's fine. Our hackers will end up just as knowledgeable as theirs, and maybe more creative. I couldn't agree more. Our national drive to rebel against things and disobey orders is one of the best, if one of the most frustrating, things we've got going for us. We should encourage people to do things their own way, to try thinking out of the box. Even if it doesn't work, any time you try to do things differently you'll learn something, even if that thing is "what not to do next time."
- shard 18y ago
  Sure, American hackers will be just as knowledgeable as Chinese hackers, but if in general the Chinese population becomes more learned (which is happening at a rapid pace as China gets closer to being a first world nation), we would have disadvantages that they don't have, such as the anti-intellectual attitude that exists in many parts of the US.
ChaitanyaSai 18y ago
If Newt Gingrich says this, I have to wonder if it is because Republican think tanks have come to the conclusion that the allure of Democratic ideals are too irresistible for school/university inhabiting kids, and they must be converted to tax paying realists much earlier.
- Dilpil 18y ago
  The reason republicans so frequently tout this line is because they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of education. Newt and company believe that education is essentially career training, and as such cannot fathom why kids need to be learning things like calculus and biology. The real purpose of education is to turn people into intellectuals. Industry does not want to simply hire people who know exactly how to do the job. Industry wants to hire people who are intellectual, and they do this by hiring college grads. Now certainly the value of a diploma as a measure of intellectual curiosity has gone down dramatically, but I believe this was the original reason.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    > Now certainly the value of a diploma as a measure of intellectual curiosity has gone down dramatically, but I believe this was the original reason. I don't think this was ever true. You can read about the European universities centuries ago and even back then they were about getting the children of the rich to socialize and drink a lot. More recently Jefferson said his time at William & Mary was waste of time, mostly drinking and riding and such. In the same period teenagers like Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Thomas Paine self educated to high levels of sophistication while working full time. In the case of John Paul Jones he was a ship hand from age 13 on at sea for months at a time, for crying out loud. I really think the institutions of higher education have historically boiled down to the library. Books were extremely expensive and it made sense to collect them in one place for common use. To be usefully educated about anything now is a lifelong process. This idea that there's something special about four years of the much longer process is a bit silly.
    - unalone 18y ago
pragmatic 18y ago
Why isn't this man (Newt) president?
- unalone 18y ago
  Because he's bigoted and intolerant when it comes to many other issues.
dpatru 18y ago
A long time ago I listened to "The Bell Curve" on tape. One of valuable ideas I got from the book was that we should strive to create a valuable place for everyone in society. Everyone, whether young or old, intelligent or not, should feel that they are contributing something of value. No one should feel that they have nothing to give and that society would be better off without them. Furthermore, we should encourage everyone to give their best to society. Thus, if the best effort a man with an IQ of 80 can do is sweep the streets, then we should give him job as a streetsweeper and not replace him with a robot. To me, this idea, that everyone should have a valuable place is society, explains what's wrong with adolescence. We as a society do not allow adolescents (young adults) a valuable place in society; we should be encouraging them to do the most useful work they can do; instead we discourage them. Sure, there is encouragement for being a scholar and for excelling in sports, but only a few adults are gifted in those areas: those few who will later go on to be teachers, professors, writers, and professional sports players. The rest of them are forced to do work which they are not good at, which they don't value, and which society doesn't value. Is it any wonder they become bored and turn to other things? A better system is described in an old book I recently re-read, "Farmer Boy" (http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Little-House-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/0064400034 http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Little-House-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/...), not long ago which describes the life of a boy on a farm in New York in the 19th century. He was given as much work and responsibility on the farm as he could handle and he grew to the challenges. At school he learned to read and write and do arithmetic, and at home on the farm he learned to do useful work, negotiate, and spend wisely. When he was about ten or eleven, a wagon-maker offered to apprentice him. In return for several years of work, the boy would get room and board and training in the whole business of wagon-making with the likelihood that at the end of the period, he would buy the business which employed about 50 men. His father preferred that the boy become a farmer like he was, but he let the boy decide, saying to his mother, "We can keep him here on the farm by law til he's twenty-one, but he won't do any good if he's wanting to go." Such a system worked very well in the past because it efficiently transitioned young people from a state of dependence on their parents to independence and it's accompanying responsibilities. A possible problem with that system is that it offered young people few opportunities beyond what was available to their parents. However, even then adults had a lot of opportunity to improve their situations by working harder at their jobs and by educating themselves. Today, there are many more opportunities. The job market is global: if you're not getting paid what you're worth, it's easier than any other time in history to find someone who will pay you more. Educational opportunities abound: books are relatively cheap, there are lots of libraries where you can read for cheap or for free, the Internet has lots of educational resources, and there are many institutions offering formal education. In addition, the number of work hours needed to survive is smaller than ever. So the argument that young adults need to be restrained from working and confined to public schools for several years because they won't have an opportunity to educate themselves later is unconvincing.
vladimir 18y ago
I think if going to school will be money-making profession, it will encourage corruption in the system of education.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  So profit causes corruption?
  - unalone 18y ago
    It does if profit becomes a primary rather than a secondary motive. If you teach students "Learn to make things that people want," that would be fine. If you teach "Make money" and leave it at that, things would corrupt. Similarly, anything that's left open to profit will corrupt. Look at the difference between Fox News and PBS. In some cases, not having to worry about money lets you be uncompromising in your delivery. I think schools would work the same way.
qaexl 18y ago
I agree with Newt Gingrich's assessment of the problem. However, I don't like this solution, particularly within the context of http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_col... (warning, very long article) and http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=203... Gingrich is right in that the institution is a failure. However, his proposed solutions merely reinforces those institution. A big part of the problem comes from the shift in meaning of the words "teachers", "students", "homework", "responsibility", etc. As the author from the Wharton article says: "Consider this one example from my recent experience. I attended a conference of school counselors, where the latest ideas in the realm of student counseling were being presented. I went to a session on the development of self-discipline and responsibility, wondering what these concepts mean to people embedded in traditional schooling. To me, self-discipline means the ability to pursue one's goals without outside coercion; responsibility means taking appropriate action on one's own initiative, without being goaded by others. To the people presenting the session, both concepts had to do solely with the child's ability to do his or her assigned class work. They explained that a guidance counselor's proper function was to get students to understand that responsible behavior meant doing their homework in a timely and effective manner, as prescribed, and self-discipline meant the determination to get that homework done. George Orwell was winking in the back of the room." I just thought of an alternative solution, one that does not necessarily require a lot of political clout. The solution is something parents can implement directly without having to lobby for legislation. Simply, the parents has their kids pass their GED by the time they are 13. They may be required by different laws to also pass the different standardization tests, but depending on the circumstances, studying for the material in the GED should be enough. This can probably be done over the age normally reserved for middle school. A 13-year-old with a high school diploma (via GED) has a lot more social clout within the adult world than a middle-school kid. He may not be legally able to vote, or drive, or smoke, or drink, and he'd get in trouble with underage-sex laws. However, he would not be considered a high-school dropout. The options open up from there. The parents probably should choose an apprenticeship, whether that be something as humble as a janitor, or something more aspiring such as a researcher, a programmer, an entreprenuer, a soldier, a fireman, etc. A more traditional college track would still available.
time_management 18y ago
So-called "adolescence" has three stages: middle and high school, college, and the "failure to launch" years between 22 and 28-35, when traditionally adult accomplishments and responsibilities (homeownership, responsibly having kids, career and financial independence) are essentially out of reach for all but the very wealthy. The first two stages are an unnecessary waste for most people, since they end up going through a lot more schooling than is useful for them, and could be abolished. For the third stage, I really don't see an easy fix, because we're talking about an extremely deep social problem. Closing the high schools and the mediocre colleges is only going to dump people into the "failure to launch" period early and prolong it, possibly to an even later age than now.
joubert 18y ago
Is Newt happy to lower the age of consent to 12?
DTrejo 18y ago
I feel like many of the top comments here don't address the main point of the article: the US education system needs to be made more efficient. Instead there are -arguments about semantics -Republican VS Democrat Only lower down, in the less pointed-to comments, is there any meat.
swombat 18y ago
I discarded this guy's argument once I read this paragraph: And experiments such as the one my daughter, Jackie Cushman, is running in Atlanta—where poor children are paid the equivalent of working in a fast-food restaurant to study and do their homework—are examples of a more dynamic future. How is being paid to study and do homework an example of early adulthood? One huge difference between adults and non-adults is adults tend to grab every opportunity to improve their skills, and understand that those don't come that often. This article started with an interesting (if incendiary) premise, but then the author showed that he has poor logical skills. Perhaps he should go back to school himself. In short, this article is a hodge-podge of potentially interesting half-ideas and downright nefarious illogical conclusions.
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  "This guy" is Newt Gingrich, btw.
  - swombat 18y ago
    Being famous doesn't preclude being illogical.
    - JoelSutherland 18y ago
      No, but his authorship gives this article a fascinating context.
- JesseAldridge 18y ago
  You discarded all of it because you didn't like that one part? This type of behavior always annoys me. There are lots of interesting and important thoughts here. I agree that these ideas need to be closely examined and refined a great deal before being put into practice -- but I'm not just going to shout "FAIL" -- because while that may be gratifying to the ego, it is utterly counter-productive.
  - swombat 18y ago
gills 18y ago
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." but in this case, replace 'hell' with 'serfdom.'
petergroverman 18y ago
Well Written... I find myself in complete agreement.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
wumi 18y ago
we've traded focus & specialization for broad generalized learning in the hopes of producing 'well rounded' individuals (at least officially). While great in theory, in practice it fattens the coffers of our nation's largest (private) universities & secondary education systems. i.e. apprenticeship v. general education fact: public universities will increase tuition when the number of students graduating with degrees in <4 years increases.
rgrieselhuber 18y ago
Given the author's political leanings, I couldn't help wondering if this was a veiled argument for bringing back child labor. :-)
dc2k08 18y ago
they take away a quarter of my life (av age of death 75) holding me back and forcing me to learn for tests things that i dont want to know. i like volcanoes. i know how they work. i dont need to be tested on their intricities. finally i get a chance at a college education and choose something that i hope better gels. if it doesnt its back to step one. if i succeed, im most likely stuck in a 9-6'er at a job that will eventually bore me, turning the cogs for the economy in the dream i am supposed to have. the more money i make, the more things cost. meanwhile the politicians take summers off and long breaks, pay themselves handsomely and imagine that this is fair. they wonder why i am not happily churning out kids for them to support their economy and further wedge myself in their dream. i'll keep pissing about thanks.
- crabapple 18y ago
  they take away a quarter of my life (av age of death 75) holding me back and forcing me to learn for tests things that i dont want to know. then drop the fuck out! go work at ford. see you in twenty years.
bootload 18y ago
"... Polling and focus groups, including participation as a permanent member of an ongoing polling project ..." So is this a Sub for these companies to target & market stuff? ~ http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/our_members http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/our_members
davidw 18y ago
Let's End Politics Stories on Hacker News.
- anthonyrubin 18y ago
  While I generally agree, this is the sort of political article that is worth discussing in this forum.
  - davidw 18y ago
    I think it's got to be all or nothing, and I would vastly prefer nothing.
jhancock 18y ago
I don't think adolescence is a social experiment. Its a part of our biology; some more so than others. The article is solid in regards to stating problems with our youth. Fixing our social and economic structures is a very tough process. The article draws rapid conclusions from its anecdotes. The U.S.'s social problems can't be summed up or resolved by such simplistic ideology.
crabapple 18y ago
pure claptrap. if newt was less career-minded like he is proposing, he could have taken a history class and looked at mortality rates in the eighteenth century to realize why benjamin franklin was working at 13. oh and aren't these alvin-tofler-acolytes the ones telling us we will change careers three times? that flexibility requires intellectual flexibility...you aren't going to have that if you mainline people into one job at 13. so what is it newt? and his "stats" on rising teen pregnancy, drug use, stds??? not only bogus but 100% wrong. newt is just a gruff dick who never smoked a bowl in college, never got a drunk grope from a gorgeous girl way out of his league, never woke up on the front lawn of the dorm still half wasted...and he wants to make sure you never have fun too! college was the time of my life! i got a degree and learned a lot...but also had more FUN with booze and women than i did before or since? WHY IS THIS TO BE AVOIDED????
- dpatru 18y ago
  Why should working people be forced to finance this?
danielhodgins 18y ago
It's all about responsibility. The guy/girl who has been working and starting companies is bound to be more responsible and accountable than their peers who are busy getting laid and partying. I totally agree that making adolescents more accountable would bring out the best in people and reduce social problems in that age group.
- symptic 18y ago
  I wasn't aware entrepreneurs don't get laid. ;P
Nerdlinger 18y ago
I don't look down on people who work with their hands. At the same time, though, I think that the power to create original things is the best power we've got. To be fair, few people ever do this, regardless of position. If you look at hackers as a whole, we're no better. But at least we're sexy objects.
AndrewWarner 18y ago
I'll speak for myself and say that I spent my teenage years sure that I could do so much more. Some of my best years were wasted listening to other teenagers tell me teir bad drinking stories. Boooo
symptic 18y ago
I think the problem comes from a certain form of parental neglect. I'm only 22 and have no children, but it seems to me like given our greater disposable incomes, a lot of parents think it is easier to raise kids by throwing money at their development rather than time. You can't raise children on the macro-scale. You raise them at the micro-levels.

172 points by robg 18y ago

Adolescence was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. But it has degenerated into a process of enforced boredom and age segregation... The fact is, most young people want to be challenged and given real responsibility. They want to be treated like young men and women, not old children. Where have we heard this before? http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Is this starting to become like "I, for one, welcome our new X overlords?" is on Slashdot? PG wrote everything. Let's take that as a given. Now can we move on? I'm not trying to be persnickety, but your comment adds absolutely nothing to the discussion and sounds like fanboy tripe. If PGs article was on here, we could talk about that. But it's not. AFAIK, every one of PG's articles has already appeared on here and we've already talked about it. So on with the new material, okay?
- aswanson 18y ago
  Sorry, Dan, but the strange loop generated by what I am submitting here is irresistible. Cheers: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/12/the_guy.php http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/12/the_guy.php
  - bjelkeman-again 18y ago
    Thanks. That really threw me in a loop.
- mnemonicsloth 18y ago
  You're not being persnickety. You're rushing to judgment because it gives you an excuse to put on a big show of pwning me-the-thoughtless-fanboy. "X and Y are the same" is a lesson we all learned on Sesame Street, and isn't much worth discussing. Rather than give some kind of credit to PG for anticipating NG, I wanted to point out how weird it is for the two of them to be agreeing. Gingrich is respectful of tradition and has a politician's instincts for rationalization and euphemism. Graham has said (along with everything else) that groups of people are inherently dumb and lazy, and is almost contemptuously truthful. There's plenty of real intellectual content in there if you take the time to dig for it, and much of it is cool and subversive...
Alex3917 18y ago
Gatto has a lot to say about this in UHoAE as well. My own thinking is that it is impossible to end adolescence because American society is structured around competition, and competition depends on measurement. And because there's no good theory on what can verse can't be measured, it's too easy for the proponents of adolescence to put some numbers on what they're selling. And because these metrics make the benefits of adolescence seem more salient than the benefits of anything else, adolescence will always beat out every other option, short of some radical philosophical shift in society, which is beyond the scope of this movement.
- thomasmallen 18y ago
  * Who are these proponents? * What are the numbers? What are they selling? * What benefits? What would "anything else" be? * Is there anything to take home from that drawn-out paragraph? Sounds like a bullshit theory to me.
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    "Who are these proponents?" Schools, colleges, associated faculty and staff, parents, politicians, employers, etc. "What are the numbers? What are they selling?" Degrees, GPA, US News rank, X vs educational attainment (e.g. future earnings potential), etc. "What benefits?" The story of school. That is, what it means to be well educated/qualified is having a degree, having gone to a good school, having gotten a good GPA, etc. The social currency these things bring is all tied up with the story of school, or its foundational myth, or whatever you want to call it. By going through the system you earn the right to invoke the story. "What would "anything else" be?" Anything else. As it stands the only way to renounce adolescence is to become sanyasi sankalpa, which isn't a very good option. "Sounds like a bullshit theory to me." Maybe it's a bullshit theory, maybe it's the most poignant observation about western civ ever made, but you're smart so figure it out for yourself, I'm not here to play Bodhisattva.
    - thomasmallen 18y ago
      OK, good details, now it doesn't sound like so much of a bullshit theory to me. You should have included these details in the first place, I think.
bmj 18y ago
Or maybe Ivan Illich? http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.html http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/intro.h...
crabapple 18y ago
yeah nice example...and how long did he stay in college?

peakok 18y ago

It is naive to assume that "adolescence" was a concept invented out of the blue, then deliberately experimented by some politics, it never works this way. The opposite is true : at some point we needed a word to describe a change in society, and a new cultural phenomenon that didn't exist before. Then was born the concept of adolescence and the teenager, wich is a worldwide phenomenom in Occident and other parts of the world. Necessity is the mother of all virtues. People responsabilise when there is a need for it, especially when there is no other choice. Should the economic crisis worsen and make our life tougher, you'll see a lot of young people do whatever it takes to support their family and take a more serious stance on life and politics. Some people are afraid that young people cannot responsabilise because of their education. I would argue that the same people underestimate (1) the potential of the young people, wich fuels the problem, and (2) underestimate the greatest educator of all : necessity.

nihilocrat 18y ago
Thus says the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/ http://www.etymonline.com/): teenage 1921, formed from -teen as a separate word + age; derived noun teenager is from 1941 (the earlier word for this was teener, attested in Anmer.Eng. from 1894). Teen-aged (adj.) is from 1952; shortened form teen is from 1951 (though this had been used as a noun to mean "teen-aged person" in 1818). Teeny-bopper is recorded from 1966, from teen but also felt as infl. by teeny. For second element, see bop. Couldn't find the word "adolescence", unfortunately. Based on this, you could argue that the first "teenagers" showed up as early as 1894 or as late as 1941.
- whughes 18y ago
  Adolescence is from antiquity, but the meaning has diluted to become the same thing as 'teenagerhood' recently, if I recall correctly. It was more like being a 'young man' prior to that.
bokonist 18y ago
It wasn't invented out of the blue, but it was an evolved creation of politics. In classic democratic fashion, a lot of factions were pushing their own agenda that ended up making the country as a whole worse off. The education establishment has continually upped the drop out age. Labor unions ( in alliance with wealthy parents) pushed for stricter child labor laws to reduce competition for jobs. Aristocratic progressives wanted an institution to indoctrinate immigrants in the American way of live. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income. Since colleges require a high school diploma, this put teenagers in an eight year holding pattern, waiting for a piece of paper. The result of this has been every bit as disastrous as Newt claims.

tdavis 18y ago

While I wholeheartedly agree that there are many things wrong with "kids these days," completely abolishing adolescence would... what's a good word here... suck! Look, I did my fair share of dumb stuff when I was younger, most of which was done in the name of boredom. But what's the alternative here? "Happy 13th birthday, son, now go get a job!"? If high STD and drug use rates tell us anything, it's that these young people are, on average, too immature to assume adult roles. I adore the feelings of achievement that being an entrepreneur/adult have brought me, but at the same time I recognize the fact that "being a kid" wasn't as bad the article makes it out to be. I spent most of my time playing video games, hanging out with friends and, yes, doing drugs! OMG! But you know what, at the end of the day, it was still fun. I think we as a society should do everything in our power to encourage young people to focus on school so that they don't get dragged down into the worlds of drug addiction, poverty, etc. However, the reason I had so much time to dick around during my adolescence/teenage years was mainly because school was far too easy and not engaging enough. The entire schooling system is not nearly as progressive as it needs to be. Furthermore, there are not nearly enough reasons to excel at it. Working hard in high school just means you can get into a good college where you have to work even harder (and, unless you really excel or are financially secure, take a long-term monetary hit for the privilege) and the reality is that where one attended college is rarely relevant today. School should be designed to provide useful knowledge instead of information that is merely cataloged, regurgitated, and forgotten. It should encourage and enable young people to find something they are passionate about and learn relevant things about that and gain useful experience in the process. The only classes that I worked hard to excel in and go beyond the bare minimum were programming and writing courses. It should come as no surprise that these are the two topics I am most passionate about to this day.

omouse 18y ago
If high STD and drug use rates tell us anything, it's that these young people are, on average, too immature to assume adult roles. Or that they have nothing better to do?
- josefresco 18y ago
  Sex and drugs are not activities exclusive to adults (nor should they be). Kids DO have better things to do, and for them (as well as adults) it's usually sex/drugs/rock&roll that are the 'better things'.

nir 18y ago

The 3 stage process of childhood - adolescence - adulthood is already irrelevant in many affluent Western countries, but what was removed isn't adolescence but adulthood. Many 40 year olds manage their lives as teenagers (look at the low birth rate in western Europe, or high divorce rate in the US) and vice versa - teenagers build $15b (if you believe it ;)) companies.

unalone 18y ago
I don't think it's fair to assume specific phases of life whatsoever: people don't automatically grow up. Some people seem to skip the adolescence phase and go right to adulthood, for better or for worse. However, it IS fair to say that society reacts to people of certain ages as if the sheer fact of getting older meant instant change in mood and personality. And that's harmful.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  maturity has little to do with age and everything to do with responsibility. I remember of hearing about a couple who adopted an orphan from Russia. the kid made people uncomfortable because he acted like an adult. Why? he was the oldest kid at his orphanage and had been looking out for younger kids for years.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I agree completely.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    The saying my mother used when I was growing up was that "a boy becomes a man when a man is required."
tomjen 18y ago
I don't believe that a low birth rate says anything about when people grow up. If it did, teenage mothers would be the most responsible people in society.

Dilpil 18y ago

The real purpose of high school is keeping the roving hordes of teenagers off the street. Teenagers have no judgement (I certainly didn't), and we would like to have some method of keeping them occupied. Unfortunately, where before that method involved actual learning, nowadays schools are basically just low security prisons. Furthermore, Newt is completely off when he claims that all adolescents want more responsibility. This is simply untrue. A small fraction of adolescents want more responsibility, the rest want to hang out with their friends all day and do nothing. Which is actually pretty close to high school.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
> A small fraction of adolescents want more responsibility It's a question of the meaning of "want." I think a small fraction of adolescents can articulate that they "want" meaningful responsibility and structure, or make any efforts to get it.
- unalone 18y ago
  I think that lots of adolescents honestly do not want to do anything. They prefer having no responsibilities whatsoever. I thought it was otherwise: that people who didn't want to work or improve or learn were people that didn't have a good method of doing so, that they were restricted by the system. Long story short, I found out that's radically not the truth. Some people are a little bit icky inside.
  - wensing 18y ago
    I think that lots of adolescents honestly do not want to do anything. They prefer having no responsibilities whatsoever. That's because you can't start with adolescence. You have to start increasing responsibility from roughly age 2. Get them used to it, reward it, show them the connection between increased responsibility and increased choice and freedom. Then they'll want it. The problem with most adolescents is the 12 years prior.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  I've always found "want" to be an interesting word in English. You can really want to be the kind of person who gets up and goes to the gym regularly. And you can also simultaneously want to sit motionless on your sofa and passively watch dumb TV programs, even though those things are totally incompatible. I suspect it may be similar with figuring out whether teenagers really "want" to be mature, responsible, and productive individuals.

Tichy 18y ago

Why stop there - let's remove individuality altogether. With a proper mix of drugs, children could absorb the lessons at school at a much faster rate, and could take the role they are destined for with near 100% accuracy. Unwanted and misleading desires could be done away with. Imagine the benefits for society if kids were 100% docile and controllable.</irony>

unalone 18y ago
Yeah. Because school is ABSOLUTELY a good way to promote individuality and unique thinking. Because most teachers DON'T push for students to adapt to a single way of thinking because it makes them easy to manage. Because students DON'T judge students for individuality, creating a lopsided social ladder that lasts easily into college. </unnecessary tag>
- Tichy 18y ago
  But they are not good enough, they did not succeed in quelling adolescent behavior.
  - etal 18y ago
    Adolescent behavior is a pretty trivial threat to the status quo. Most of the lashing out is justified by their acceptance of the idea that they'll have to be working stiffs later.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I don't think that the adolescent phase is one of individuality. Quite the opposite. And while I don't completely agree with this article, I do think that a system that treats adolescents like adults would be an improvement. Not one that makes them work and leave school, mind you. Just one that respects them aging. A part of me feels that if we let teachers swear in front of students, let them act like people than act completely neutral, and start teaching them about how to solve their own problems, we'd find that a lot of the problems in modern society would just vanish. Every instance in my life that I've felt like rebelling against a system was an instance in my life when I was treated like an adolescent per se. And that happened very rarely: I was lucky enough to have teachers that usually took the time to treat me like an adult. Whenever I see a student in college getting violently drunk and acting like an ass, I would place money on that person originating by acting against some authority figure. (Indeed, I have friends whose families let them drink, and none of those kids are alcoholic whatsoever. I wouldn't call it a formal study, but I think trends say that kids get into stuff like that when they associate that with being grown up.)

frisco 18y ago

One thing that continually throws me is the whole, "more school, especially more college!" idea. The skills that have actually put me in interesting situations, like serious brain machine interface research or a startup doing quantitative methods for human resources, had nothing to do with school. At least for me, I'd have been much better suited for an "apprenticeship" rather than having just having to tolerate classes as a distraction to the lab, where I learned about Kalman filters and intricacies of neuronal tuning in a kind of learn-it-by-yesterday-as-needed setup from the people who were actually writing the papers. Given the amount of ADD we have as a culture, training hackers with an emphasis on "you as an individual can create things that have the potential to become forces of nature with only a cheap computer and some knowledge" and deep familiarity with the internet (irc? google-fu?) seems to be the best way to graduate world class engineers. You won't get middle American teenagers to sit down and study like Chinese students will; but that's fine. Our hackers will end up just as knowledgeable as theirs, and maybe more creative. EDIT: One more thing: we need to drill home that "post things to share with your friends for free!" is neither a business model nor a KILLERAPP!!111oneoneone. We need to inspire kids to go after the next big problems, and not just fill them up with hype and dreams, but actually give them the technical abilities to do it.

unalone 18y ago
You won't get middle American teenagers to sit down and study like Chinese students will; but that's fine. Our hackers will end up just as knowledgeable as theirs, and maybe more creative. I couldn't agree more. Our national drive to rebel against things and disobey orders is one of the best, if one of the most frustrating, things we've got going for us. We should encourage people to do things their own way, to try thinking out of the box. Even if it doesn't work, any time you try to do things differently you'll learn something, even if that thing is "what not to do next time."
shard 18y ago
Sure, American hackers will be just as knowledgeable as Chinese hackers, but if in general the Chinese population becomes more learned (which is happening at a rapid pace as China gets closer to being a first world nation), we would have disadvantages that they don't have, such as the anti-intellectual attitude that exists in many parts of the US.

ChaitanyaSai 18y ago

If Newt Gingrich says this, I have to wonder if it is because Republican think tanks have come to the conclusion that the allure of Democratic ideals are too irresistible for school/university inhabiting kids, and they must be converted to tax paying realists much earlier.

Dilpil 18y ago
The reason republicans so frequently tout this line is because they fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of education. Newt and company believe that education is essentially career training, and as such cannot fathom why kids need to be learning things like calculus and biology. The real purpose of education is to turn people into intellectuals. Industry does not want to simply hire people who know exactly how to do the job. Industry wants to hire people who are intellectual, and they do this by hiring college grads. Now certainly the value of a diploma as a measure of intellectual curiosity has gone down dramatically, but I believe this was the original reason.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  > Now certainly the value of a diploma as a measure of intellectual curiosity has gone down dramatically, but I believe this was the original reason. I don't think this was ever true. You can read about the European universities centuries ago and even back then they were about getting the children of the rich to socialize and drink a lot. More recently Jefferson said his time at William & Mary was waste of time, mostly drinking and riding and such. In the same period teenagers like Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Thomas Paine self educated to high levels of sophistication while working full time. In the case of John Paul Jones he was a ship hand from age 13 on at sea for months at a time, for crying out loud. I really think the institutions of higher education have historically boiled down to the library. Books were extremely expensive and it made sense to collect them in one place for common use. To be usefully educated about anything now is a lifelong process. This idea that there's something special about four years of the much longer process is a bit silly.
  - unalone 18y ago

pragmatic 18y ago

Why isn't this man (Newt) president?

unalone 18y ago
Because he's bigoted and intolerant when it comes to many other issues.

dpatru 18y ago

A long time ago I listened to "The Bell Curve" on tape. One of valuable ideas I got from the book was that we should strive to create a valuable place for everyone in society. Everyone, whether young or old, intelligent or not, should feel that they are contributing something of value. No one should feel that they have nothing to give and that society would be better off without them. Furthermore, we should encourage everyone to give their best to society. Thus, if the best effort a man with an IQ of 80 can do is sweep the streets, then we should give him job as a streetsweeper and not replace him with a robot. To me, this idea, that everyone should have a valuable place is society, explains what's wrong with adolescence. We as a society do not allow adolescents (young adults) a valuable place in society; we should be encouraging them to do the most useful work they can do; instead we discourage them. Sure, there is encouragement for being a scholar and for excelling in sports, but only a few adults are gifted in those areas: those few who will later go on to be teachers, professors, writers, and professional sports players. The rest of them are forced to do work which they are not good at, which they don't value, and which society doesn't value. Is it any wonder they become bored and turn to other things? A better system is described in an old book I recently re-read, "Farmer Boy" (http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Little-House-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/0064400034 http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Little-House-Ingalls-Wilder/dp/...), not long ago which describes the life of a boy on a farm in New York in the 19th century. He was given as much work and responsibility on the farm as he could handle and he grew to the challenges. At school he learned to read and write and do arithmetic, and at home on the farm he learned to do useful work, negotiate, and spend wisely. When he was about ten or eleven, a wagon-maker offered to apprentice him. In return for several years of work, the boy would get room and board and training in the whole business of wagon-making with the likelihood that at the end of the period, he would buy the business which employed about 50 men. His father preferred that the boy become a farmer like he was, but he let the boy decide, saying to his mother, "We can keep him here on the farm by law til he's twenty-one, but he won't do any good if he's wanting to go." Such a system worked very well in the past because it efficiently transitioned young people from a state of dependence on their parents to independence and it's accompanying responsibilities. A possible problem with that system is that it offered young people few opportunities beyond what was available to their parents. However, even then adults had a lot of opportunity to improve their situations by working harder at their jobs and by educating themselves. Today, there are many more opportunities. The job market is global: if you're not getting paid what you're worth, it's easier than any other time in history to find someone who will pay you more. Educational opportunities abound: books are relatively cheap, there are lots of libraries where you can read for cheap or for free, the Internet has lots of educational resources, and there are many institutions offering formal education. In addition, the number of work hours needed to survive is smaller than ever. So the argument that young adults need to be restrained from working and confined to public schools for several years because they won't have an opportunity to educate themselves later is unconvincing.

vladimir 18y ago

I think if going to school will be money-making profession, it will encourage corruption in the system of education.

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
So profit causes corruption?
- unalone 18y ago
  It does if profit becomes a primary rather than a secondary motive. If you teach students "Learn to make things that people want," that would be fine. If you teach "Make money" and leave it at that, things would corrupt. Similarly, anything that's left open to profit will corrupt. Look at the difference between Fox News and PBS. In some cases, not having to worry about money lets you be uncompromising in your delivery. I think schools would work the same way.

qaexl 18y ago

I agree with Newt Gingrich's assessment of the problem. However, I don't like this solution, particularly within the context of http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_col... (warning, very long article) and http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2032 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=203... Gingrich is right in that the institution is a failure. However, his proposed solutions merely reinforces those institution. A big part of the problem comes from the shift in meaning of the words "teachers", "students", "homework", "responsibility", etc. As the author from the Wharton article says: "Consider this one example from my recent experience. I attended a conference of school counselors, where the latest ideas in the realm of student counseling were being presented. I went to a session on the development of self-discipline and responsibility, wondering what these concepts mean to people embedded in traditional schooling. To me, self-discipline means the ability to pursue one's goals without outside coercion; responsibility means taking appropriate action on one's own initiative, without being goaded by others. To the people presenting the session, both concepts had to do solely with the child's ability to do his or her assigned class work. They explained that a guidance counselor's proper function was to get students to understand that responsible behavior meant doing their homework in a timely and effective manner, as prescribed, and self-discipline meant the determination to get that homework done. George Orwell was winking in the back of the room." I just thought of an alternative solution, one that does not necessarily require a lot of political clout. The solution is something parents can implement directly without having to lobby for legislation. Simply, the parents has their kids pass their GED by the time they are 13. They may be required by different laws to also pass the different standardization tests, but depending on the circumstances, studying for the material in the GED should be enough. This can probably be done over the age normally reserved for middle school. A 13-year-old with a high school diploma (via GED) has a lot more social clout within the adult world than a middle-school kid. He may not be legally able to vote, or drive, or smoke, or drink, and he'd get in trouble with underage-sex laws. However, he would not be considered a high-school dropout. The options open up from there. The parents probably should choose an apprenticeship, whether that be something as humble as a janitor, or something more aspiring such as a researcher, a programmer, an entreprenuer, a soldier, a fireman, etc. A more traditional college track would still available.

time_management 18y ago

So-called "adolescence" has three stages: middle and high school, college, and the "failure to launch" years between 22 and 28-35, when traditionally adult accomplishments and responsibilities (homeownership, responsibly having kids, career and financial independence) are essentially out of reach for all but the very wealthy. The first two stages are an unnecessary waste for most people, since they end up going through a lot more schooling than is useful for them, and could be abolished. For the third stage, I really don't see an easy fix, because we're talking about an extremely deep social problem. Closing the high schools and the mediocre colleges is only going to dump people into the "failure to launch" period early and prolong it, possibly to an even later age than now.

joubert 18y ago

Is Newt happy to lower the age of consent to 12?

DTrejo 18y ago

I feel like many of the top comments here don't address the main point of the article: the US education system needs to be made more efficient. Instead there are -arguments about semantics -Republican VS Democrat Only lower down, in the less pointed-to comments, is there any meat.

swombat 18y ago

I discarded this guy's argument once I read this paragraph: And experiments such as the one my daughter, Jackie Cushman, is running in Atlanta—where poor children are paid the equivalent of working in a fast-food restaurant to study and do their homework—are examples of a more dynamic future. How is being paid to study and do homework an example of early adulthood? One huge difference between adults and non-adults is adults tend to grab every opportunity to improve their skills, and understand that those don't come that often. This article started with an interesting (if incendiary) premise, but then the author showed that he has poor logical skills. Perhaps he should go back to school himself. In short, this article is a hodge-podge of potentially interesting half-ideas and downright nefarious illogical conclusions.

tlrobinson 18y ago
"This guy" is Newt Gingrich, btw.
- swombat 18y ago
  Being famous doesn't preclude being illogical.
  - JoelSutherland 18y ago
    No, but his authorship gives this article a fascinating context.
JesseAldridge 18y ago
You discarded all of it because you didn't like that one part? This type of behavior always annoys me. There are lots of interesting and important thoughts here. I agree that these ideas need to be closely examined and refined a great deal before being put into practice -- but I'm not just going to shout "FAIL" -- because while that may be gratifying to the ego, it is utterly counter-productive.
- swombat 18y ago

gills 18y ago

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." but in this case, replace 'hell' with 'serfdom.'

petergroverman 18y ago

Well Written... I find myself in complete agreement.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

wumi 18y ago

we've traded focus & specialization for broad generalized learning in the hopes of producing 'well rounded' individuals (at least officially). While great in theory, in practice it fattens the coffers of our nation's largest (private) universities & secondary education systems. i.e. apprenticeship v. general education fact: public universities will increase tuition when the number of students graduating with degrees in <4 years increases.

rgrieselhuber 18y ago

Given the author's political leanings, I couldn't help wondering if this was a veiled argument for bringing back child labor. :-)

dc2k08 18y ago

they take away a quarter of my life (av age of death 75) holding me back and forcing me to learn for tests things that i dont want to know. i like volcanoes. i know how they work. i dont need to be tested on their intricities. finally i get a chance at a college education and choose something that i hope better gels. if it doesnt its back to step one. if i succeed, im most likely stuck in a 9-6'er at a job that will eventually bore me, turning the cogs for the economy in the dream i am supposed to have. the more money i make, the more things cost. meanwhile the politicians take summers off and long breaks, pay themselves handsomely and imagine that this is fair. they wonder why i am not happily churning out kids for them to support their economy and further wedge myself in their dream. i'll keep pissing about thanks.

crabapple 18y ago
they take away a quarter of my life (av age of death 75) holding me back and forcing me to learn for tests things that i dont want to know. then drop the fuck out! go work at ford. see you in twenty years.

bootload 18y ago

"... Polling and focus groups, including participation as a permanent member of an ongoing polling project ..." So is this a Sub for these companies to target & market stuff? ~ http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/our_members http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/our_members

davidw 18y ago

Let's End Politics Stories on Hacker News.

anthonyrubin 18y ago
While I generally agree, this is the sort of political article that is worth discussing in this forum.
- davidw 18y ago
  I think it's got to be all or nothing, and I would vastly prefer nothing.

jhancock 18y ago

I don't think adolescence is a social experiment. Its a part of our biology; some more so than others. The article is solid in regards to stating problems with our youth. Fixing our social and economic structures is a very tough process. The article draws rapid conclusions from its anecdotes. The U.S.'s social problems can't be summed up or resolved by such simplistic ideology.

crabapple 18y ago

pure claptrap. if newt was less career-minded like he is proposing, he could have taken a history class and looked at mortality rates in the eighteenth century to realize why benjamin franklin was working at 13. oh and aren't these alvin-tofler-acolytes the ones telling us we will change careers three times? that flexibility requires intellectual flexibility...you aren't going to have that if you mainline people into one job at 13. so what is it newt? and his "stats" on rising teen pregnancy, drug use, stds??? not only bogus but 100% wrong. newt is just a gruff dick who never smoked a bowl in college, never got a drunk grope from a gorgeous girl way out of his league, never woke up on the front lawn of the dorm still half wasted...and he wants to make sure you never have fun too! college was the time of my life! i got a degree and learned a lot...but also had more FUN with booze and women than i did before or since? WHY IS THIS TO BE AVOIDED????

dpatru 18y ago
Why should working people be forced to finance this?

danielhodgins 18y ago

It's all about responsibility. The guy/girl who has been working and starting companies is bound to be more responsible and accountable than their peers who are busy getting laid and partying. I totally agree that making adolescents more accountable would bring out the best in people and reduce social problems in that age group.

symptic 18y ago
I wasn't aware entrepreneurs don't get laid. ;P

Nerdlinger 18y ago

I don't look down on people who work with their hands. At the same time, though, I think that the power to create original things is the best power we've got. To be fair, few people ever do this, regardless of position. If you look at hackers as a whole, we're no better. But at least we're sexy objects.

AndrewWarner 18y ago

I'll speak for myself and say that I spent my teenage years sure that I could do so much more. Some of my best years were wasted listening to other teenagers tell me teir bad drinking stories. Boooo

symptic 18y ago

I think the problem comes from a certain form of parental neglect. I'm only 22 and have no children, but it seems to me like given our greater disposable incomes, a lot of parents think it is easier to raise kids by throwing money at their development rather than time. You can't raise children on the macro-scale. You raise them at the micro-levels.