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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

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.

peakok 18y ago
You give too much power to politics. I think that the dramatic increase of productivity and the creation of much more wealth in the post-industrial society is the main factor in the emergence of the "adolescent". Suddenly families didn't spend their whole budget on food, housing, and they had a lot more of free time to do something else than satisfying their basic needs. They sent their childs to education because they could afford it, and it made them happy to do so. You'll notice that it also allowed the society of services to emerge, and we wouldn't have this discussion on Hacker News if we had to work 12 hours a day just to satisfy our basic needs. Overall, I don't share your opinion that the country is a "whole worse off" now. We only face different challenges because our fathers did their job in their own time.
- bokonist 18y ago
  Technology and politics can move in opposite directions. Technology is far, far better. The political situation is much worse. Overall, life is far better. Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if we had the same growth of technology but without the decline in the political system. I suspect though, if we could glimpse into this alternate world it would blow us away.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I don't know. I'm almost certain we'd lose something in that alternate world as well. In particular, we'd lose a tolerance for the diversity of the world. College is tremendous for that: it's the one thing it's tremendous for. You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world. Without that, if you're born and raised in a suburb then there's a good chance you never realize what you're missing out on.
    - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
      > You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world I would argue the exact opposite. The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. The statistics show we have a society of increasing class stratification; people never marry down anymore, for example. College and credentialism is also reinforcing an elitist attitude to manual labor. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." We're getting MORE social division, not less. And let's not kid ourselves about the real level of diversity in colleges. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.
      - unalone 18y ago
        The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. It depends on the college that you go to. Some colleges don't let anybody of less-than-middle class in. people never marry down anymore, for example. You'll have to clarify this a bit more. People marrying down wasn't ever common, to my knowledge. And, this is my biased and bigoted opinion, but people in similar classes often have the same values, and this is why cross-classing never works so well. For instance, I tend to be attracted to people who are very logical and very expressive. I find myself attracted to the gap right in between programmers and actresses, because that's where people share similar values to myself. That might be shown as a sign of bias on my part, and it is, but it's a bias that can't be fixed, because elsewhere people and I are less compatible. I'd assume the same to be true across social boarders: people who go to certain places in society all have similar traits. Forgive me if I sound ignorant: I'm not at all knowledgeable in this field. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." 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. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college. True. But I was talking more about people based on location. People of similar classes and skin color will be radically different based on where they come from. And some people never realize that until they get to college. It's not a huge change, not as huge as it could be, but it's a change and I'd argue that it's good for most college students.
jacobolus 18y ago
> 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 [sic]. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income. Please provide citations of serious studies of these trends you talk about; this analysis seems facile and frankly misleading, even as a first-order approximation, but I’m not an expert so I’d be glad to be convinced otherwise. In particular, “indoctrination” of immigrants is going to be hard to establish as a primary goal of the education system, and the benefits of credential laws and the technical training institutions that go along with them in fields such as medicine, engineering, and so forth are hard to overstate.
- bokonist 18y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of this came from books and articles I read years ago. "Indoctrination" is a bit of a loaded word, perhaps I should have said "assimilation" or "acculturation". But it was definitely a major factor. I remember reading a long paper about the movement establishing universal high school in New Haven in the early 1900's. It all revolved around dealing with the massive flows of immigrants who had no grounding in American civic culture. As for credentialing laws, pretty much all professions rely on some level of book knowledge plus on the job training. The book knowledge can be provided for by reading books and passing an exam. You don't need to attend three years of law school in person to become a great lawyer. Nor do you need four years of university to be a great engineer. The architecture profession seems to have been much better off without any degree requirements. Just compare the architecture of the 1800's to that of the past few decades. 30% of jobs in the U.S. economy now have legal credentialing requirements. That includes everything from hair dresser to interior designer. Even jobs like parole officer now require a four year college degree. We're essentially recreating the old guild system, which stifles economic growth. I don't think it's any accident that the most dynamic sectors of the economy - software, consumer electronics, movies - have virtually no licensing requirements.
  - jacobolus 18y ago
    For some things (e.g. the hair dressing you mentioned), I concede that licensing requirements are unnecessary, and their use should be reexamined. For others (public defenders, surgeons, structural engineers, etc.) such licensing and formal training is in my opinion critically important. To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading. What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees? Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?

peakok 18y ago

You give too much power to politics. I think that the dramatic increase of productivity and the creation of much more wealth in the post-industrial society is the main factor in the emergence of the "adolescent". Suddenly families didn't spend their whole budget on food, housing, and they had a lot more of free time to do something else than satisfying their basic needs. They sent their childs to education because they could afford it, and it made them happy to do so. You'll notice that it also allowed the society of services to emerge, and we wouldn't have this discussion on Hacker News if we had to work 12 hours a day just to satisfy our basic needs. Overall, I don't share your opinion that the country is a "whole worse off" now. We only face different challenges because our fathers did their job in their own time.

bokonist 18y ago
Technology and politics can move in opposite directions. Technology is far, far better. The political situation is much worse. Overall, life is far better. Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if we had the same growth of technology but without the decline in the political system. I suspect though, if we could glimpse into this alternate world it would blow us away.
- unalone 18y ago
  I don't know. I'm almost certain we'd lose something in that alternate world as well. In particular, we'd lose a tolerance for the diversity of the world. College is tremendous for that: it's the one thing it's tremendous for. You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world. Without that, if you're born and raised in a suburb then there's a good chance you never realize what you're missing out on.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    > You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world I would argue the exact opposite. The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. The statistics show we have a society of increasing class stratification; people never marry down anymore, for example. College and credentialism is also reinforcing an elitist attitude to manual labor. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." We're getting MORE social division, not less. And let's not kid ourselves about the real level of diversity in colleges. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.
    - unalone 18y ago
      The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. It depends on the college that you go to. Some colleges don't let anybody of less-than-middle class in. people never marry down anymore, for example. You'll have to clarify this a bit more. People marrying down wasn't ever common, to my knowledge. And, this is my biased and bigoted opinion, but people in similar classes often have the same values, and this is why cross-classing never works so well. For instance, I tend to be attracted to people who are very logical and very expressive. I find myself attracted to the gap right in between programmers and actresses, because that's where people share similar values to myself. That might be shown as a sign of bias on my part, and it is, but it's a bias that can't be fixed, because elsewhere people and I are less compatible. I'd assume the same to be true across social boarders: people who go to certain places in society all have similar traits. Forgive me if I sound ignorant: I'm not at all knowledgeable in this field. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." 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. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college. True. But I was talking more about people based on location. People of similar classes and skin color will be radically different based on where they come from. And some people never realize that until they get to college. It's not a huge change, not as huge as it could be, but it's a change and I'd argue that it's good for most college students.

jacobolus 18y ago

> 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 [sic]. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income. Please provide citations of serious studies of these trends you talk about; this analysis seems facile and frankly misleading, even as a first-order approximation, but I’m not an expert so I’d be glad to be convinced otherwise. In particular, “indoctrination” of immigrants is going to be hard to establish as a primary goal of the education system, and the benefits of credential laws and the technical training institutions that go along with them in fields such as medicine, engineering, and so forth are hard to overstate.

bokonist 18y ago
Unfortunately a lot of this came from books and articles I read years ago. "Indoctrination" is a bit of a loaded word, perhaps I should have said "assimilation" or "acculturation". But it was definitely a major factor. I remember reading a long paper about the movement establishing universal high school in New Haven in the early 1900's. It all revolved around dealing with the massive flows of immigrants who had no grounding in American civic culture. As for credentialing laws, pretty much all professions rely on some level of book knowledge plus on the job training. The book knowledge can be provided for by reading books and passing an exam. You don't need to attend three years of law school in person to become a great lawyer. Nor do you need four years of university to be a great engineer. The architecture profession seems to have been much better off without any degree requirements. Just compare the architecture of the 1800's to that of the past few decades. 30% of jobs in the U.S. economy now have legal credentialing requirements. That includes everything from hair dresser to interior designer. Even jobs like parole officer now require a four year college degree. We're essentially recreating the old guild system, which stifles economic growth. I don't think it's any accident that the most dynamic sectors of the economy - software, consumer electronics, movies - have virtually no licensing requirements.
- jacobolus 18y ago
  For some things (e.g. the hair dressing you mentioned), I concede that licensing requirements are unnecessary, and their use should be reexamined. For others (public defenders, surgeons, structural engineers, etc.) such licensing and formal training is in my opinion critically important. To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading. What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees? Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?