

The Case Against Adolescence - ivankirigin
http://www.kottke.org/07/09/the-case-against-adolescence

======
daniel-cussen
Adolescents are not allowed to join the workforce until their specialized, but
are not allowed to specialize until college. I have always thought it would be
cool for kids to be able to begin an apprenticeship in medicine or engineering
earlier on in their lives.

~~~
mechanical_fish
You can specialize in engineering long before college. I was writing programs
for our home computer at age 12. I'd bet that more than half the people
reading this started out the same way.

In the specific case of computer hacking, this works - because even
professional-level computer work doesn't require any equipment that a twelve-
year-old cannot get. People in other fields aren't so lucky: You really can't
learn much about the reality of practicing law, or medicine, or manufacturing
from books or websites. You kind of have to learn these things on the job.

Why are so many tech companies founded by people in their twenties? Because
software is one of the few fields where a twenty-two year old can have more
than ten years of experience.

Of course, even young hackers face problems. They're still treated like
children. Back when I was young, teens were rarely exposed to real mentors,
taught real computer science, given real tasks, or paid real money. The web
has helped to change a lot of this - on the internet nobody knows you're a
teenager - which explains why young people are the web's most enthusiastic
users.

~~~
vlad
I wish I could mod you up two points. Great analysis.

------
karzeem
This is nicely reminiscent of PG's high school talk.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html>

------
Alex3917
For anyone who has read this, is the argument much more detailed than the one
John Taylor Gatto makes in his book? It's pretty long (at over 400 pages), but
if others think it's worth reading then maybe I'll go through it at some point
in the future. The article in Psychology Today made it look like there wasn't
that much new from the Gatto though.

