> Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults
I'm currently a teenager. This is mostly false.
--
On a serious note, interesting idea. It won't happen, since the US education system (and the public sector in general) is not open to, well, any kind of change.
But as the founder of 9 startups, high school wasn't a huge help for me in any ways other than somewhere to socialize. However, this is the special case. High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.
Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
I was a teenager -- I dropped out of school, moved out of my parents home, and took a full time technology job at 16, and began working my way up. This meant that by the time my peers graduated from college, I had 6 years of experience under my belt.
I wasn't special, I was simply motivated. If my home and school life had been satisfactory, I probably would have been content to sit out my future high school and college years with very little responsibility, and I imagine this is the situation that most teenagers find themselves in.
High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.
95% of teenagers don't accept real responsibility and behave like capable adults because there is no external motivation or encouragement to do so.
Is this beneficial to their well-being?
Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
That depends on what you would like to do with your life. Returning to college later in life is surprisingly easy.
The data doesn't support high school working out for 95% of students.
Fewer than 70% of US high school students graduate with their class. Few districts do better than 80%. About 3% or so homeschool, so that leaves you with about 67% who graduate in the system.
The 2005 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that 34% of 12th graders rated "proficient" reading abilities.
Not exactly a glowing success.
There are good options if you're looking for alternatives. I know a bit about the situation in Seattle because I opted out of high school there. The school district there has a "school" set up where home schoolers can register, do some non-home friendly classes (science & theater mostly IIRC), and benefit from government education funding. Many cities have programs that let high schoolers get credit for taking college classes and some universities are set up to do early admission (I did the UW program). Before all that I did an apprenticeship at a small electronics company (age 13). Pretty much you need to do the legwork though, you may find that the school district isn't interested in helping students leave the system (taking their funding with them).
High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.
Funny. If you listen to the political-sphere, the argument is that high school sucks for most people, but works brilliantly for the well-off.
But if you actually ask the well-off and the people at the top of the class, they almost unanimously decry it as an awful waste of time.
High school does not really work for anyone. The vast majority of people end up learning their trade on the job. Why delay that process 4 (or 8) years?
Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
I enjoyed turning on, tuning in and dropping out, fwiw. It's not for everyone, but life experience has fine-tuned my BS filter, given me infallible icebreakers and generally purged that poisonous Life-As-A-Race mindset.
By my experience getting into university after doing the dot-com years and a few years of domesticated life, colleges only care about their straight-out-of-secondary rates (given, I went to a state school, not an Ivy League, but I feel that the end effect would be similar.) Asian/1st generation immigrant parents, on the other hand, are a terrible burden to bear!
I would encourage the younger HN demographic to manage their expectations. Spending 3 decades in school doesn't give you a whole lot of common ground with a VC panel, other people in your chosen field or (really) anyone outside of a similarly-academic background. While that may be who you're working with or hiring, 8/10 times that's not who you're ultimately selling to. Freight-train academia can, however, set up a crushingly intense fear of failure that can break a young hacker's willpower in half.
Short story: never be afraid to walk away from a raw deal, especially if there's an implication that it's "mandatory." Life doesn't have to be a Dostoyevsky novel.
The assertion that teenagers have an 'immature' brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world.
That children and teens have an immature brain is supported by biological research:
I was not happy in high school (only ten years ago), so I think efforts to improve that period of people's lives are well spent. But I can't support something that starts from what I consider a faulty premise, which is the assumption that children and teens are miniature adults.
What does 'mature' even mean in this context? Don't mistake "not finished growing/changing" with lacking the ability to make mature, thoughtful decisions if given the opportunity/responsibility.
One of the reasons teenagers act so irresponsibly is because they've grown up with the idea that teenagers are inherently irresponsible and therefore aren't completely accountable for their actions. It becomes self-fulfilling.
But that's not the point. People with brains that are still developing are perfectly capable of functioning in 'adult' society. Many teenagers, and perhaps society as a whole, would benefit it we allowed those willing young people to make 'adult' contributions.
Our brain grows and develops not so much as a function of time but of experiences. I don't think MRI images of modern day teens is really enough to base a conclusion on. It may be true that teens today show less development but the reason for that is not a foregone conclusion.
I think what the author is trying to say in his article is that teens are capable of much more than they are allowed to do. And that very fact may be what causes the results in the research you linked above.
>John Taylor Gatto has long warned about the dangers of artificially extending childhood, and has blamed our schools for damaging families and stifling creativity and a love of learning.
I think it's ridiculous that it is now normal (or actually preferable) now to be in school until you are done with 1/4 to 1/3 of your life without seeing what "the real world" was like. This means the average person won't be able to do anything significant until they have already wasted their best years in school and low level positions.
I can get decent grades pretty easily (much like many people here) and so slacking off and procrastination was just a smart way of using my time. Now that I think I'm of the age where I can make something of myself, I need to unlearn a lot of the bad habits learned in school in order to get things done. Many smart, ambitious people I know do not try to start independant projects because they are still "just students," but then go on to do amazing things after graduating and finding their purpose in life. Much of this can be prevented with an early firsthand exposure to a life outside of the artificial punishment and reward system of school.
Chances are, even after reform people will probably still go on the same path -- highschool, college, graduate school, but they will have a much better reason to do well, since it will be what they chose to do.
Whatever happened to the idea of an 'apprenticeship'? Not all teenagers want to pursue 'traditional' studies and would be much better off learning a specific trade or craft that they are interested in.
I think if a 15 year old was put into the position of having to make adult decisions and behave like an adult they would be perfectly capable.
It's just that they either don't have the chance or given the option, prefer to cruse through and muck around for as long as possible before being force to get serious.
I think you're right. I recall noticing that after I turned 12 my approach to situations was fundamentally adultlike... I don't think I've changed much cognitively since then either... Just the slow accretion of experience, etc.
I did learn how to be more self-actualized, etc. since then, since a good portion of even the best K-6 education constitutes obedience training... which I had to unlearn.
I like the ;?> on the top left. The title is a little misleading, the article is actually much more rational than the title sounds.
I’m a father of four children, and about 10 years ago I noticed—I couldn’t help but notice—that my 15-year-old son was remarkably mature. He balanced work and play far better than I did, and he seemed quite ready to live on his own.
For parents that help educate their children, stimulate their interest and set an example this might be so, but for others, school might be a better alternative.
The core of the argument, IMO, is that, by 15, the damage has already been done. On the other hand, if kids were set up in a system that expected them to be self-sufficient by 15 and started towards that at 8, then they would be self-sufficient by 15.
If you look at the last 60-70 years, you see that kids become adults later and later. My grandparents were married and on their own in their late teens (15-17 years old). My parents were in their early 20s. My generation seems to average around the end of college. The current generation (my sisters) are approaching 25 and still not making the transition.
This is worrisome for me, since I've got my own kids coming through that process. I know my 15 year old could succeed, but there is no way the societal infrastructure would let him. I worry more about my other kids who aren't as self-aware as he his.
I can say that I totally agree that a huge part of the problem is that kids are kept in the kid group until, one day, they are just expected to flip the switch and be adults. They aren't learning how to be adults in school, that's for sure.
Limited to yard work/baby sitting/uninteresting jobs? Where exactly?
After I turned 16 I enrolled in a community college, fully paid by high school, using a local dual enrollment program. When I was 15 I started working as a C++ developer, which was quite fun.
Yes, I was a freak and still am a completely asocial misanthrope. But no one is limited -- it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown) that children stay in high school.
>> it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown)
Or because of the social benefits. You state that you consider your former self a freak, and consider your current self a completely asocial misanthrope. I was following a very similar path to you, but realized that I was on my way to being a social outcast. To me, being a C++ programmer was not my purpose in life (although it was a very interesting field I ended up making my career). A great deal of what I see as the "purpose of life" consists of those social relationships. If I didn't have those, C++ wouldn't make me happy, so what would be the point of it all?
I don't mean to sound argumentative - I'm just pointing out that although I was capable of doing more, I chose to stay close to my own age group because of a legitimate quality-of-life benefit. You did state that it's by choice, but I think that's an aspect a lot of people don't consider, especially the author in question.
I believe this is true. Children are adults-in-training and need to be treated as such. Yet we create these unnatural environments and wonder why teenagers act so irresponsibly. And when they finally do become "adults", they can't function as adults.
I believe the majority of teenagers will rise to the responsibility given to them, if it is genuine. You can't expect them to act responsibly on one hand but then subtly treat them as nothing more than overgrown children.
I came to the same conclusion (based on my own experience in teenage, and observations later) that there is a lot of talent waiting to be tapped in teenage years, and treating teenagers respectfully as young adults and giving them responsibility is good for them and good for society.
That is one of the reasons we like to hire 17 year olds in Zoho and combine education with work. Labor laws won't let us hire any sooner, but if it were my own family members, I would hire them sooner.
as a framework for practicing computer programming related to pure mathematics, and runs his own literary discussion website both to learn about online community administration (including coding site features) and about creative writing. The most annoying aspects of his teen years, for him and for me, have been his closest approaches to "high school" experiences. Senior year of high school for him should be mostly dual enrollment at our friendly state university and a distance learning course in advanced microeconomics.
Is he not allowed to do that? I grew up in Virginia, and two of my friends chose to spend their senior years of high school by taking classes at a local university or the local community college.
(They were, in fact, brother and sister and had spent six years in Denmark as the children of foreign service officers. They did not take well to American high school.)
It's not a terribly good use of time for people who actually like to learn. I dropped out of two high schools, including a gifted and talented program - who the hell knows how I got into that one, but I dropped it as well. It really seemed like obedience school to me - capricious, arbitrary, with a focus on discipline and not on learning. A number of times, I would fail a class where I was in the top five most talented people in it. I didn't see much point in doing what they prescribed - I'd rather go explore the world or play around on a computer or read books or go make some money.
I left home at 16, and eventually wound up graduating high school by going into an adult learning center at age 17 or so. I said, "I am fully emancipated, and living as an adult. I would like to complete the adult program." After some talking with a very nice fellow and being politely evasive, he agreed. I took a series of competency exams, completed the silliest multiple choice packet of American history I've ever seen, and I was awarded a diploma. I went and took the standardized tests and got into university. They were kind enough to loan or grant me almost my full tuition, though I dropped out of university once as well. Same reasons.
Anywho, with a quick perusal of history, it's pretty obvious that maturity does not come from age, it comes from having unique experiences and learning from them. If you see someone who is forced to become "head of household" at a young age due to parents illness and cares for his/her siblings, they are very mature and adultlike even in their mid-teens. Likewise, people dragged into a war move differently, with less naivete - characteristics you'd usually see in someone in their 40's. There's kids in their mid-20's with that look.
At least, that's the hypothesis I made: Unique experiences and learning from them = maturity. So I set out to have a lot of unique experiences, and I think I did rather a good job. I've had an interesting, enjoyable life. The only part I regret is wasting my age 13/14/15/16 years in middle school and high school. I had some fun with extracurricular activities and friends, but I could have done something so much more interesting during the actual classtime. Yuck.
One in particular that made me wake up when I read it was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was third of Japan's great unifiers. In the 1600's, he founded the Tokugawa Shogunate - his family ruined in almost complete peace for 250 years after one of the most lawless and brutal times in Japanese history. Ieyasu married for the first time at age 13 or 14, and was Captain of a small division of troops around the 14/15 years. He did a pretty admirable job of it, grew up fast, and the rest is history.
But I think the flipside is true, too - if you don't let someone have responsibility, if you treat them like a child, they'll stay childlike and immature. Being an American who has traveled, I see people who are age 26-28 who are barely capable of functioning in the world, and I sometimes see people age 14-18 doing amazing things. This could be the norm, if we wanted it to.
I had a 17 year old fellow apply to work for me - he was half-generation American, if I've got the terminology right - he immigrated here with his parents around age 10 or so. I didn't wind up hiring him, but I became a mentor to him. We'd go get tea or coffee every couple weeks and I'd give him some generally no-BS advise. A very good guy, he's done some really impressive things in a short period of time - all he had to do was shake off the reigns and shackles, but that is harder than it sounds to do. At least in the average American school, they punish you swiftly, thoroughly, and publicly if you try to abstain or dare to question them. There's the occasional good teacher - I had maybe a dozen excellent professional teachers in my life, which I count myself quite lucky to have had. But the rest? Well, I guess we shouldn't be too hard on them. They're just doing what they were taught, too.
If you get a crappy education in HS, despite your abilities, you're far behind your peers who got a very good one. Whether you then apply yourself in college, you remain behind those people because they keep on keepin on.
That's not so true today as it once was for kids who have access to the internet. If you've got a hunger to learn, there's plenty of fodder. My life would have been quite different if I'd had the net to learn from.
As to whether it's necessary depends on what you feel life is all about, and/or what real talents (not addressed by mainstream ed) you have. Highly self-motivated people (or who fortune smiles on) can usualy live without HS. Most of the rest of us need it to cope in an ever-more-complex world.
Maybe it isn't all about your profession. Maybe you should try to know some of the basics taught in high school in order to be a good citizen. Not to say that the high school I went to wasn't a waste of time, but that doesn't mean high school has to be a waste of time.
People are good at being smug, and thinking they know everything. The best way to realize that there's actually some depth to a topic is to study it a bit. Since (from reading other comments here) none of us would have wanted to learn some of these topics, maybe we'd all still think that those other topics are all a stupid waste of time, and people who do them are also useless.
"and he had no choice but to attend high school for several more years"
This is a very common misconception. It's quite possible and legal in many (most?) US states to remove a child from school and keep them home to let them learn at their own pace.
This worked for me and I am definitely better off than if I had stayed in high school. That said, most kids, don't have the necessary drive and motivation to make this work.
I largely agree with his conclusion, but don't like it when people point out history to support it. Sure kids didn't have to go to school in 1850, but black people and women couldn't vote, most people didn't have indoor plumbing (let alone electricity), slavery was still legal.
The fact that kids didn't have to go to school back then is not at all an argument in support of them not doing so now and should be left out of a serious essay in favor of that position.
In case anyone is curious, there are proposals for systems that respect the individual, are libertarian and are passive in the sense that the individual is the active part, choosing when, how, and what he will learn.
Without yet reading the actual post, let me put my thoughts in there.
After the age of 16, make school non-compulsory. At the end of the 10th grade year, have everyone take the GED/ACT/SAT and if they get a threshold level, congrats, you can now move on.
So when kids start misbehaving, you don't have to keep them there.
Eliminating high school would cut the amount of taxes needed for public schooling, and would instead increase tax revenue by putting more people in the workforce. Not to mention that a more experienced (real-world experience) workforce might be more productive.
[+] [-] markbao|16 years ago|reply
I'm currently a teenager. This is mostly false.
--
On a serious note, interesting idea. It won't happen, since the US education system (and the public sector in general) is not open to, well, any kind of change.
But as the founder of 9 startups, high school wasn't a huge help for me in any ways other than somewhere to socialize. However, this is the special case. High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.
Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
[+] [-] antonovka|16 years ago|reply
I was a teenager -- I dropped out of school, moved out of my parents home, and took a full time technology job at 16, and began working my way up. This meant that by the time my peers graduated from college, I had 6 years of experience under my belt.
I wasn't special, I was simply motivated. If my home and school life had been satisfactory, I probably would have been content to sit out my future high school and college years with very little responsibility, and I imagine this is the situation that most teenagers find themselves in.
High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.
95% of teenagers don't accept real responsibility and behave like capable adults because there is no external motivation or encouragement to do so.
Is this beneficial to their well-being?
Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
That depends on what you would like to do with your life. Returning to college later in life is surprisingly easy.
[+] [-] hedgehog|16 years ago|reply
Fewer than 70% of US high school students graduate with their class. Few districts do better than 80%. About 3% or so homeschool, so that leaves you with about 67% who graduate in the system.
The 2005 data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that 34% of 12th graders rated "proficient" reading abilities.
Not exactly a glowing success.
There are good options if you're looking for alternatives. I know a bit about the situation in Seattle because I opted out of high school there. The school district there has a "school" set up where home schoolers can register, do some non-home friendly classes (science & theater mostly IIRC), and benefit from government education funding. Many cities have programs that let high schoolers get credit for taking college classes and some universities are set up to do early admission (I did the UW program). Before all that I did an apprenticeship at a small electronics company (age 13). Pretty much you need to do the legwork though, you may find that the school district isn't interested in helping students leave the system (taking their funding with them).
[+] [-] bokonist|16 years ago|reply
Funny. If you listen to the political-sphere, the argument is that high school sucks for most people, but works brilliantly for the well-off.
But if you actually ask the well-off and the people at the top of the class, they almost unanimously decry it as an awful waste of time.
High school does not really work for anyone. The vast majority of people end up learning their trade on the job. Why delay that process 4 (or 8) years?
[+] [-] fallentimes|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] absconditus|16 years ago|reply
Toward what end? Babysitting teenagers? Forcing people to memorize information that they forget a day after the final exam?
[+] [-] electronslave|16 years ago|reply
I enjoyed turning on, tuning in and dropping out, fwiw. It's not for everyone, but life experience has fine-tuned my BS filter, given me infallible icebreakers and generally purged that poisonous Life-As-A-Race mindset.
By my experience getting into university after doing the dot-com years and a few years of domesticated life, colleges only care about their straight-out-of-secondary rates (given, I went to a state school, not an Ivy League, but I feel that the end effect would be similar.) Asian/1st generation immigrant parents, on the other hand, are a terrible burden to bear!
I would encourage the younger HN demographic to manage their expectations. Spending 3 decades in school doesn't give you a whole lot of common ground with a VC panel, other people in your chosen field or (really) anyone outside of a similarly-academic background. While that may be who you're working with or hiring, 8/10 times that's not who you're ultimately selling to. Freight-train academia can, however, set up a crushingly intense fear of failure that can break a young hacker's willpower in half.
Short story: never be afraid to walk away from a raw deal, especially if there's an implication that it's "mandatory." Life doesn't have to be a Dostoyevsky novel.
[+] [-] scott_s|16 years ago|reply
That children and teens have an immature brain is supported by biological research:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1899715
http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/09/the-teen-brain.html
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/15/health/2008091...
I was not happy in high school (only ten years ago), so I think efforts to improve that period of people's lives are well spent. But I can't support something that starts from what I consider a faulty premise, which is the assumption that children and teens are miniature adults.
[+] [-] hackinthebochs|16 years ago|reply
One of the reasons teenagers act so irresponsibly is because they've grown up with the idea that teenagers are inherently irresponsible and therefore aren't completely accountable for their actions. It becomes self-fulfilling.
[+] [-] thewiglaf|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaphar|16 years ago|reply
I think what the author is trying to say in his article is that teens are capable of much more than they are allowed to do. And that very fact may be what causes the results in the research you linked above.
[+] [-] leecho0|16 years ago|reply
I think it's ridiculous that it is now normal (or actually preferable) now to be in school until you are done with 1/4 to 1/3 of your life without seeing what "the real world" was like. This means the average person won't be able to do anything significant until they have already wasted their best years in school and low level positions.
I can get decent grades pretty easily (much like many people here) and so slacking off and procrastination was just a smart way of using my time. Now that I think I'm of the age where I can make something of myself, I need to unlearn a lot of the bad habits learned in school in order to get things done. Many smart, ambitious people I know do not try to start independant projects because they are still "just students," but then go on to do amazing things after graduating and finding their purpose in life. Much of this can be prevented with an early firsthand exposure to a life outside of the artificial punishment and reward system of school.
Chances are, even after reform people will probably still go on the same path -- highschool, college, graduate school, but they will have a much better reason to do well, since it will be what they chose to do.
[+] [-] sgoraya|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|16 years ago|reply
It's just that they either don't have the chance or given the option, prefer to cruse through and muck around for as long as possible before being force to get serious.
[+] [-] evgen|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandalf|16 years ago|reply
I did learn how to be more self-actualized, etc. since then, since a good portion of even the best K-6 education constitutes obedience training... which I had to unlearn.
[+] [-] makmanalp|16 years ago|reply
I’m a father of four children, and about 10 years ago I noticed—I couldn’t help but notice—that my 15-year-old son was remarkably mature. He balanced work and play far better than I did, and he seemed quite ready to live on his own.
For parents that help educate their children, stimulate their interest and set an example this might be so, but for others, school might be a better alternative.
[+] [-] TJensen|16 years ago|reply
If you look at the last 60-70 years, you see that kids become adults later and later. My grandparents were married and on their own in their late teens (15-17 years old). My parents were in their early 20s. My generation seems to average around the end of college. The current generation (my sisters) are approaching 25 and still not making the transition.
This is worrisome for me, since I've got my own kids coming through that process. I know my 15 year old could succeed, but there is no way the societal infrastructure would let him. I worry more about my other kids who aren't as self-aware as he his.
I can say that I totally agree that a huge part of the problem is that kids are kept in the kid group until, one day, they are just expected to flip the switch and be adults. They aren't learning how to be adults in school, that's for sure.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannicken|16 years ago|reply
After I turned 16 I enrolled in a community college, fully paid by high school, using a local dual enrollment program. When I was 15 I started working as a C++ developer, which was quite fun.
Yes, I was a freak and still am a completely asocial misanthrope. But no one is limited -- it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown) that children stay in high school.
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|16 years ago|reply
Or because of the social benefits. You state that you consider your former self a freak, and consider your current self a completely asocial misanthrope. I was following a very similar path to you, but realized that I was on my way to being a social outcast. To me, being a C++ programmer was not my purpose in life (although it was a very interesting field I ended up making my career). A great deal of what I see as the "purpose of life" consists of those social relationships. If I didn't have those, C++ wouldn't make me happy, so what would be the point of it all?
I don't mean to sound argumentative - I'm just pointing out that although I was capable of doing more, I chose to stay close to my own age group because of a legitimate quality-of-life benefit. You did state that it's by choice, but I think that's an aspect a lot of people don't consider, especially the author in question.
[+] [-] jmillikin|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackinthebochs|16 years ago|reply
I believe the majority of teenagers will rise to the responsibility given to them, if it is genuine. You can't expect them to act responsibly on one hand but then subtly treat them as nothing more than overgrown children.
[+] [-] TravisLS|16 years ago|reply
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b41070852...
[+] [-] sridharvembu|16 years ago|reply
That is one of the reasons we like to hire 17 year olds in Zoho and combine education with work. Labor laws won't let us hire any sooner, but if it were my own family members, I would hire them sooner.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|16 years ago|reply
Good on ya.
[+] [-] tokenadult|16 years ago|reply
http://projecteuler.net/
as a framework for practicing computer programming related to pure mathematics, and runs his own literary discussion website both to learn about online community administration (including coding site features) and about creative writing. The most annoying aspects of his teen years, for him and for me, have been his closest approaches to "high school" experiences. Senior year of high school for him should be mostly dual enrollment at our friendly state university and a distance learning course in advanced microeconomics.
[+] [-] scott_s|16 years ago|reply
(They were, in fact, brother and sister and had spent six years in Denmark as the children of foreign service officers. They did not take well to American high school.)
[+] [-] lionhearted|16 years ago|reply
I left home at 16, and eventually wound up graduating high school by going into an adult learning center at age 17 or so. I said, "I am fully emancipated, and living as an adult. I would like to complete the adult program." After some talking with a very nice fellow and being politely evasive, he agreed. I took a series of competency exams, completed the silliest multiple choice packet of American history I've ever seen, and I was awarded a diploma. I went and took the standardized tests and got into university. They were kind enough to loan or grant me almost my full tuition, though I dropped out of university once as well. Same reasons.
Anywho, with a quick perusal of history, it's pretty obvious that maturity does not come from age, it comes from having unique experiences and learning from them. If you see someone who is forced to become "head of household" at a young age due to parents illness and cares for his/her siblings, they are very mature and adultlike even in their mid-teens. Likewise, people dragged into a war move differently, with less naivete - characteristics you'd usually see in someone in their 40's. There's kids in their mid-20's with that look.
At least, that's the hypothesis I made: Unique experiences and learning from them = maturity. So I set out to have a lot of unique experiences, and I think I did rather a good job. I've had an interesting, enjoyable life. The only part I regret is wasting my age 13/14/15/16 years in middle school and high school. I had some fun with extracurricular activities and friends, but I could have done something so much more interesting during the actual classtime. Yuck.
One in particular that made me wake up when I read it was Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was third of Japan's great unifiers. In the 1600's, he founded the Tokugawa Shogunate - his family ruined in almost complete peace for 250 years after one of the most lawless and brutal times in Japanese history. Ieyasu married for the first time at age 13 or 14, and was Captain of a small division of troops around the 14/15 years. He did a pretty admirable job of it, grew up fast, and the rest is history.
But I think the flipside is true, too - if you don't let someone have responsibility, if you treat them like a child, they'll stay childlike and immature. Being an American who has traveled, I see people who are age 26-28 who are barely capable of functioning in the world, and I sometimes see people age 14-18 doing amazing things. This could be the norm, if we wanted it to.
I had a 17 year old fellow apply to work for me - he was half-generation American, if I've got the terminology right - he immigrated here with his parents around age 10 or so. I didn't wind up hiring him, but I became a mentor to him. We'd go get tea or coffee every couple weeks and I'd give him some generally no-BS advise. A very good guy, he's done some really impressive things in a short period of time - all he had to do was shake off the reigns and shackles, but that is harder than it sounds to do. At least in the average American school, they punish you swiftly, thoroughly, and publicly if you try to abstain or dare to question them. There's the occasional good teacher - I had maybe a dozen excellent professional teachers in my life, which I count myself quite lucky to have had. But the rest? Well, I guess we shouldn't be too hard on them. They're just doing what they were taught, too.
[+] [-] teeja|16 years ago|reply
That's not so true today as it once was for kids who have access to the internet. If you've got a hunger to learn, there's plenty of fodder. My life would have been quite different if I'd had the net to learn from.
As to whether it's necessary depends on what you feel life is all about, and/or what real talents (not addressed by mainstream ed) you have. Highly self-motivated people (or who fortune smiles on) can usualy live without HS. Most of the rest of us need it to cope in an ever-more-complex world.
[+] [-] fburnaby|16 years ago|reply
People are good at being smug, and thinking they know everything. The best way to realize that there's actually some depth to a topic is to study it a bit. Since (from reading other comments here) none of us would have wanted to learn some of these topics, maybe we'd all still think that those other topics are all a stupid waste of time, and people who do them are also useless.
[+] [-] bufordtwain|16 years ago|reply
This is a very common misconception. It's quite possible and legal in many (most?) US states to remove a child from school and keep them home to let them learn at their own pace.
[+] [-] trafficlight|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] absconditus|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PostOnce|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmaroon|16 years ago|reply
The fact that kids didn't have to go to school back then is not at all an argument in support of them not doing so now and should be left out of a serious essay in favor of that position.
[+] [-] b-man|16 years ago|reply
Take a look at this article of mine for instance http://cnxs.com.br/posts/an-emergent-participatory-design-fr... .
[+] [-] steveplace|16 years ago|reply
After the age of 16, make school non-compulsory. At the end of the 10th grade year, have everyone take the GED/ACT/SAT and if they get a threshold level, congrats, you can now move on.
So when kids start misbehaving, you don't have to keep them there.
[+] [-] ColemanF|16 years ago|reply