
Why Teenagers Are Growing Up So Slowly Today  - anuleczka
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/11/05/why-teenagers-are-growing-up-so-slowly-today.aspx
======
reader5000
Not only are kids expected to stay in school until their early/mid 20's,
depriving them of necessary real-world developmental experience as discussed
in the article, they are expected to accept decades' worth of debt to pay for
it. The American education model is poison.

~~~
electromagnetic
I believe it's the worlds greatest deception. At 16 I was working as a
reviewer, I worked as an assistant (note: not apprentice) electrician for a
couple of years doing identical work to my father who was certified (on
several jobs he did solely the testing to pass the work as legal) and right
now I'm working in windows and siding. I presently earn more than any of my
friends, and job prospects still land me at the head of my group of friends in
10/20 years, only my wife is likely to be earning more than me. I've done
virtually everything involved in building a house save for foundation work,
and was taught this all by my father. Nothing I did in school prepared me for
any of this. Outside of manual labour, I'm a writer, I repair and upgrade
friends and acquaintances for cash on the side . . . all of which I did not
learn from school.

Nothing in my life has really come from school. I'm only indebted to three
teachers, my English teacher who encouraged me into writing, my science
teacher who taught me to watch and question everything and my woodwork teacher
who encouraged me to hit nails into things all class. For 11 years of
education, little in retrospective appears to have been useful. My greatest
lessons were of casual knowledge, not of information or education by any
institutional standard. Persistence and intrigue.

~~~
Raphael
> I repair and upgrade friends and acquaintances for cash on the side

You're an unlicensed doctor too!

~~~
electromagnetic
Well there's a lot of cuts and scrapes in my work and First Aid training was
required, unlicensed doctor was just a natural progression . . . lol no, there
was supposed to be a 'computers for' in there, but a lack of proofreading bit
me in the ass.

Ironically, my mother was a nurse and I just picked up on how to patch minor
injuries up. Nothing sutures better than sterilized royal blue thread in a
hurry.

------
limist
With more context and eloquence, John Taylor Gatto has been saying this for
years: adolescence is artificial, and dangerously so. See his sketch of the
future Admiral Farragut, who took his first command at age 12:

<http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1q.htm>

...and of course, Ben Franklin:

<http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1r.htm>

~~~
euroclydon
Another big point JTG makes is that the current crop of wealthy producers have
no need for 80% of the smart people out there who might get an education. So
why not keep them in school and hence not in competition with the established
producers, for as long as possible?

~~~
stretchwithme
I've heard that unions were big proponents of universal compulsory education
when it was being introduced. Some say it was for the very same reason.

------
ejames
I feel this article is worth pointing out as a reminder: Almost all concepts
of school reform still takes as a given that you will have basically the same
foundation of a school.

Sometimes it's worth stepping back and asking, "Does it actually make sense to
put all children below a certain age in a big building for the majority of the
day, where they spend all their time with other children of the same age,
taking classes from teachers who serve as their only consistent contact with
the adult world outside their own home?" Very few concepts of "education
reform" are radical enough to ask that question.

Maybe it would be better if children spent more of their time in the company
of adults in the real world, rather than in the company of each other in a
kind of greenhouse-for-children artificially designed to raise them in a
certain way.

Or maybe not; maybe after taking a step back and thinking big thoughts, we
take a step right forward again and decide that schools as currently
understood are what we're sticking with and any problems just mean we need
better schools. But it's best to make that decision on the basis of a rational
plan, rather than saying that Kids Belong In Schools because that's what the
conventional wisdom was last year and we can't think of anything else.

~~~
run4yourlives
_Does it actually make sense to put all children below a certain age in a big
building for the majority of the day, where they spend all their time with
other children of the same age, taking classes from teachers who serve as
their only consistent contact with the adult world outside their own home?"_

Yes, because like it or not, our current set up sees a large secondary
function for school: babysitter.

The larger problem when dealing with what to do about school is addressing
this issue.

~~~
protomyth
The other problem problem is that the current system has a lot of people and
organizations invested in keeping the system running as is or adding more days
to the system to add to income. Children aren't the issue, paychecks are the
issue.

~~~
wtn
The other problem is that dumping millions of teenagers into the workforce
would decrease wages for older people.

~~~
mmt
This is only a problem if one assumes labor and wages are a zero-sum game,
which I think most people on HN would disagree with.

~~~
stretchwithme
exactly. any new worker will add to both demand and supply or save his money
for someone else to borrow and add to demand.

------
shib71
One of PGs essays discusses similar ideas
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>). I agree that segregating teenagers
may actually be harming their development instead of aiding it.

The problem is specialisation and aptitude. First part of the problem:
Underlying most modern education is the idea that each individual is suited to
a different profession, and that both the individual and society benefit when
people are allowed to pursue that specific profession.

Second part of the problem: there are more specialisations, professions, then
ever before. How many basic professions can you think of? Farmer, sailor,
doctor, ... There are hundreds or thousands. And every one has hundreds or
thousands of specialisations. In some professions these change on a yearly
basis.

Thus education becomes a search problem, and like all search problems the key
is scaling: how do you find the ideal speciality for each of the millions of
students? Modern education takes an iterative approach, where students learn
the absolute basics of everything, then learn a little more of a slightly
narrower subset. The early iterations (i.e. school) are long and concentrate
on building up foundations for later choices. The later iterations (i.e. early
jobs) are shorter and concentrate on quickly narrowing down huge numbers of
possible specialisations.

Reality (young brain needs real world) vs. Idealism (direct each person to an
ideal profession). The trick is how to compress the spectrum - incorporate
reality into a system built on an ideal.

~~~
apsec112
"The trick is how to compress the spectrum - incorporate reality into a system
built on an ideal."

It's actually much, much simpler than that. Schools simply don't give a damn
about teaching students about anything- their primary purpose is just to keep
the kids in one place all day long. So give the sufficiently
motivated/intelligent kids, who have proven that they don't need to be kept in
one place all day long, an opt-out option.

~~~
shib71
I've seen that opinion here a lot, that school is a glorified babysitting
service. Maybe that's true in your experience, but that is a shortcoming of
those schools in particular, not of schools in general.

I loathe special cases. As a programmer I see them as a sign that program
design is flawed. A good program, and a good education system, has mechanisms
in place to handle extreme cases.

Opt-out is fine for students who have a specific alternative (e.g. trade
apprenticeship). But it is not a "solution". It does not help the 99% of
brillient students for whom there is no alternative. Simply cutting them loose
is a cop out.

~~~
protomyth
I am a programmer by training, but my first job out of school was an
administrator-type under a government grant in one of the ugly parts of
government (Health and Human Services). Sadly, there is a huge difference
between established bureaucracy and code. People aren't widgets, we are all
special cases, we all learn differently, and we all have different things that
inspire us. If you think schools actually serve the "smart" student well, then
you are not looking at real funding priorities or went to a special case
school yourself.

ND has full driver's licenses at 14. An old teacher of mine says it will
probably go to 16 since students aren't as mature as they used to be. WTF?
That shouldn't be. Teens are running half-million dollar combines at that age.
What changed?

------
pstevensza
I'd be interested to see a study of people, like my folks, who were in their
teens in the 60's and 70's. Up north where my family is from, you generally
left school at 16, got an apprenticeship with a company like Caterpillar, or
hit the coal mines or shipyards. There was no coddling, no indeterminate
hiatus from responsibility, and it seems to have produced a generally
successful group of people who rank amongst the top contributors to a variety
of industries the world over, some of the largest and most successful
companies ever brought to light having come from people within this
generation. Something else I find interesting, and something I see in my own
age group (30-40), is that a lot of the South Africans who were forced to
undergo conscription into the armed forces seem to have a deeper level of
self-discipline, which you'd expect from a military experience of the kind
that they were subjected to. I'm not saying that you require a drill
instructor to develop self-discipline, but it did have the advantage of
forcing you to take responsibility for your assigned tasks, even if only to
avoid a run and indeterminate PT to sooth the ruffled feathers of your shouty
DI.

------
tokenadult
What my son has wanted for as long as he has been a teenager is a chance to
have grown-up responsibility. That's why he loves working on his start-up
project. An actual profit-making business proposal gets evaluated by investors
with no "grading on the curve" or concern for "self-esteem." He can deal with
that. He found school environments that attempted to coddle teenagers (he
wasn't in many such environments, but encountered them in passing) very off-
putting.

~~~
dsspence
I realize this is a site dedicated to startups, but business proposals and
investors for children? As long as he likes it I suppose and doesn't
rationalize happiness = money.

~~~
tokenadult
He has been quite motivated in his learning as considers the problem of how to
use his teen years to get ready for running a business in his (soon)
adulthood. That's been good for my younger children to see his thought process
in making the teen years count for adult independent life. The essay pg wrote
about this

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

has been helpful in our family's thinking about this issue. Perhaps endure
school-like experiences, but look for the most adult-like learning experiences
possible.

~~~
dsspence
I understand your rationale and sounds like everything is going swimmingly. In
my eyes some things aren't meant to be 'optimized' or taken so seriously, like
when you are teenager. Or maybe I'm just playing Devil's advocate.

~~~
tokenadult
Why not take something seriously if it is meaningful to you? I don't take (for
example) the high school prom at all seriously, rather when I was in high
school I look learning foreign languages seriously. Isn't freedom all about
letting people decide for themselves what to value?

------
kilian
It's an uphill battle even if you want to do something productive instead of
drinking and doing drugs. I started my own company when I was 16... and my
higher education (which was supposedly training me for _the job I was already
doing_ ) did nothing but try and keep me from actually getting real world
experience by using real work for my education, or god forbid, intern at my
own company.

Not to speak of the artificial group assignments. That model just doesn't
work. Period. It's the lowest common denominator that controls the quality, or
it's the lone nerd that spends his entire weekend redoing his teammates sub-
par work. Ugh.

Unfortunately, nothing learned at that university will be of use to me in the
real world, save how to handle bureaucrats.

~~~
rick_2047
Come on dude, handling bureaucrats is one of the most important principles one
can learn anywhere in the world. (I think this remains true for only this
generation).

~~~
kilian
Absolutely! But I'm not sure if it was worth the 4 years of tuition ;)

------
patrickk
In the Napoleonic wars, 20 year old Generals commanded armies. Today,
Napoleon's military tactics are taught at West Point and other noted military
academies. Life expectancy was mid-thirties to forty-ish if my memory serves
me correctly. Necessity drives people to do whatever is required to achieve a
goal if the need is pressing enough.

The notion that young adults aren't able to cope with "real life" (what an
oxymoron that is) is utter rubbish. Try giving them real responsibility
(within reason) is the cure.

~~~
xtho
Ah, the good old times.

------
madmanslitany
I do think that some more real-world and unstructured experience added into
standard schooling would do some good, but I sometimes think there's an odd
anti-schooling bias on HN, maybe because we all hated high school.

Another common theme on HN is how the lack of basic science knowledge amongst
the voting population negatively impacts funding of and perception of science
policy. Is advocating that we abolish general schooling and have everyone just
learn what they need for their jobs a good idea? How does that fix that
problem? Doesn't it just make it worse?

Tweak the schooling model, yes, but I've not been convinced yet that any of
the radically different alternatives I see proposed here would still
accomplish some of the important things that general schooling DOES do.
Everyone hates certain subjects, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be forced
to learn them at least once in your life.

------
patio11
One thing I noticed when I went on the employment market for the first time
was that I had never had a relationship with an adult other than family or
teachers close enough to discuss jobs/money. American middle class children
are hermetically sealed in a child's world, with the adult world a bit outside
the bubble filled with sexual predators who you can't talk to. That's another
flavor of crazy.

------
kentosi
(disclaimer: this is just my theory...)

Coming from an Asian perspective, I can see why the concept of schooling has
become so heavily mainstream.

Surely enough, people in the old days didn't get as much "schooling" and
entered the adult world with real responsibilities and work earlier in life.
For this reason, the jobs they held would typically have been labour-based
jobs.

In such societies, though labourers received a decent life, it was the
doctors/lawyers/professors that held the highest respect socially. The reason
for this is that when things got tough outside the norms of what the common
people could control (health, injury, legal issues, politics, etc), people
from such educated professions were the ones that were looked up to.

It's due to the commanded respect of such learned professions that more and
more parents wanted their children to receive further education. Even to this
day, I hear a lot of my aunties and uncles talk in awe of children who grow up
to become doctors. They really were the celebreties in my parent's culture.

Times have changed. Rather than being a place to go to learn, highschool has
turned into a mindless competition to get "ranked" on how well you can retain
(mostly) useless information that would have little to do with what your
target professsion will actually require.

------
AlisdairO
I picked up a bunch of stuff from school that would perhaps have never fully
developed if I hadn't gone there, or if I'd had my own choice of exactly what
to do. I would never have chosen to take a history class, and yet in that
class I learned critical thinking skills in a way that I would have had no
direct cause to do outside of that environment. I gained a basic grounding in
science. I learned enough about a variety of different subjects that I was
able to make an informed choice on a career path.

I certainly believe that the school system needs changing, particularly as
self-learning becomes easier, and I agree that kids need more responsibility
(I recall aching for it in my teenage years), but the number of comments here
suggesting that school is of no use whatsoever surprises me.

------
runT1ME
"Never let school interfere with your education"

~~~
tokenadult
Agreed. See

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281341>

on efforts to trace the quotation.

------
MrFoof
_"I never let public schooling interfere with my education."_ \- Mark Twain

\-----

At 12 years old my sister and I were "off the dole" as my parents put it. No
more allowance, which had topped out at $2.75/wk. If we wanted money, we were
expected to use our heads. We ended up mowing lawns, gardening and shoveling
after having my mom introduce us to the neighborhood.

At 14 I wanted a computer to mess around with. That's fine, but the family
computer wasn't for that. I went with some juniors and seniors in the computer
club to dumpster dive behind businesses, or sometimes to the dump itself.
Ended up with a working stack of 386s to put FreeBSD and Linux on.

I had a part-time job at 15 to save for a car, because at 16 we were told we
were going to be on foot. At 16 I used to take on contract work that one of my
teachers had to pass up, doing web-development. Mostly PHP, ColdFusion and
some Classic ASP. Two of those sites, 12 years later, are still running just
fine on the custom CMS built for their needs.

I had partial scholarships to top tech schools, but the debt load of going to
CMU or WPI was still approaching that of a home mortgage where I grew up. I
had saved enough money to go to state school and pay cash. Yet when I got
there, I was completely underwhelmed. Bored out of my mind. There was very
little I would learn until my 3rd or 4th years, they didn't end up applying AP
course credit to get me out of 10x courses, and the social environment was
akin to drunken day care (and I didn't need to be on campus to make new
friends or go on dates). After 3 semesters I ended up in the Vice Chancellor's
office with my parents having a very long, very candid discussion about the
pros and cons of me sticking it out. They're weren't paying for it, but they
were livid at the idea of me dropping out. Long story short, no one could
punch a hole in my argument and I even managed to get a partial refund for the
3rd semester. I had until the end of the week to pack up and move out.

I'll go back eventually for a proper engineering degree when I'm bored
building trading systems for investment firms.

Point is, nothing like being stuck with a dilemma (no more allowance, so
unless you want a video game, we expect you to find a way to make money) and
being forced to work out a solution at the ripe old age of 12. I learned more
about how to further myself in my free time than I ever did through some
state-mandated curriculum.

Would I recommend this exact approach to everyone? Absolutely not. Yet there's
always a playing field everyone can succeed on, and there's an immense amount
of value in kids finding that out for themselves with a bit of guidance.

~~~
tokenadult
_"I never let public schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain_

Of all persons to whom pithy lines are attributed, Mark Twain is by far the
most likely to NOT be the genuine attribution.

[http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Sleuth-Manual-Tracer-
Quotations/...](http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Sleuth-Manual-Tracer-
Quotations/dp/0252016955)

I have never been able to verify that Twain wrote the usually quoted form of
that line, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." (There
are a lot of scholars who study such things.) I have seen one attribution of
that line to Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Leacock>

which to me is a much more believable attribution, but one I am also unable to
verify.

Mark Twain did have some great lines about schools, of which my favorite is

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
School Boards."

\-- Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1903) 2:295

/pedantry

------
alexyim
Additionally, this seems to explain why some people are getting married and
having children later. It's a combination of a lack of life experiences and
financial unreadiness from school.

------
jleyank
Don't forget there are some positions that require a fair amount of training.
I guess if those in school because they're forced go away, it would leave a
better environment for those picking up the background for advanced studies.

And I see criticisms of the American model of college. Yeah, it pushes a lot
of debt on the students but I thought the European model resulted in more
years spent in college. There's ways to secure funding for school (such as
taking the King's Shilling), and there's no real reason to try for Harvard vs.
less-expensive schools, etc.

~~~
cracki
training, not learning. did you read the first paragraph? care to give
examples of positions that require learning that isn't actual hands-on
training?

~~~
jleyank
Folks with advanced degrees in things like math, physics, physical chemistry,
... Many types of doctors (ie non surgeons), possibly lawyers as people have
said that their schooling trains the mind rather than provides "courtroom
practice". One can argue that advanced degrees in organic chemistry or biology
is "hands on training", but those doing research in reaction mechanisms would
probably beg to differ.

------
RyanMcGreal
A few months ago I read Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman's excellent book
_Nurtureshock_ :

<http://www.nurtureshock.com/>

If you have or are responsible for children, I _highly_ recommend it as an
excellent overview of current research into cognitive development.

------
format997
I tend to see this type of article and the associated discontent with a
protracted adolescence quite a bit on ycombinator, and I can't understand it
as of yet. Is their really that much research suggesting that an extended
education and a delayed maturation really is detrimental? Or is it more of a
shared experiential resentment? Or is it just a resentment at the lack of
flexibility and accommodation in our current system, a system that assumes
that one size fits all?

In some ways, I wouldn't have minded earlier exposure to questions that forced
me to discover my innate passions as opposed to continuing to be fed
prerequisite course after prerequisite course. However, I can't say that this
is equivalent to wishing that I had started my adulthood at age 15 (or
earlier). Modern society is more complex, as are the roles that adults assume
in modern society, and I presume that a protracted adolescence serves to give
maturing adults longer to find their place in this increasingly complex
society.

Is the resentment founded in the fact that we force everyone to extend their
adolescence for so long? Or that such a period provides no usefulness
whatsoever?

~~~
cracki
so you argue that it's okay to FORCE kids through school?

i wouldn't have been ready for the world at age 15, but maybe at age 19-20.
now i'm 23 and i'm getting sick and tired of university. they don't even try
to relate the stuff they teach to any real-world applications.

i realize that i've been depressed for a while now. it's affecting me
physically now. i can't handle expectations these days. i avoid even thinking
of studying for exams, which might be the _third_ response of the fight-or-
flight response. i can't manage my time. i'm always 20 minutes late to
anything, even dates i set myself and that affect nobody else, even if i
"account for" that usual delay, unless it's a one-time event and i'm making a
real mental effort.

kids want choice, because they're not given any. expectations are the opposite
of choice. i can't blame kids for turning out fucked up like they are.

~~~
format997
I actually have experienced the same depression and listlessness you
described, and I imagine a lot of it could be tied to the constant lack of
choice and excessive amount of expectations that our current, mill-like
educational system forces students through. I definitely agree with you that
our system, one that burns so many kids out about caring about anything, needs
an antidote. But, along the lines that you said, I don't think that the
antidote is necessarily forcing kids to take on full adult responsibilities at
age 15. I guess I can see a real-life-buffered educational system that allows
for more responsibility and choices without going so far as asking kids to
start working full time and living on their own at age 15.

------
gojomo
Oddly enough, Newt Gingrich agrees:

[http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b41...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_45/b4107085289974.htm)

~~~
hugh3
Why is that odd?

~~~
gojomo
You're right that it's not _that_ odd. I was pandering a little to readers who
might otherwise be open to Po Bronson and alternative child-rearing theories,
but have biases against Gingrich based on a partisan caricature of him.

But, Gingrich is a former college professor and sometimes-member of a
political establishment which usually emphasizes more high-school-graduations,
and more people going to college. So it is a little odd (and brave) for
Gingrich to advocate a change in thinking that, practically, could mean fewer
traditional K-12 high school diplomas granted, and lower traditional college
enrollment.

He's breaking a political taboo, the simpleminded idea that more years-of-
schooling is always better. That's a little odd for someone who might have
presidential ambitions.

~~~
philwelch
One thing I've noted is that a rare number of politicians, like Gingrich and
Al Gore, have the ability to see above and beyond the short term political
context and the courage to act on what they see. Both of them have an uncommon
amount of wisdom and intellect and an inclination to break from conventional
thinking.

------
viraptor
Interesting... however I would really like to know how could anyone convince
the teenage me that moving to yet another step of school doesn't really matter
- that I should think about actually starting to do some serious freelance
work in microcontrollers / electronics instead, which is what I liked to do.
In the end, it didn't matter that much what I did during the studies - being
good enough to pass, or even putting uni off for a couple of years could be
probably more beneficial to me long-term.

But would I believe anyone saying that? Now I wish I tried... But at the same
time I'm thinking about what I could tell my future kids, so that they join
studies only if they really, really _like_ learning in the academic way - not
because "everyone does that".

~~~
timwiseman
Good points, but remember it isn't an either or. I had several friends in high
school who worked in addition to class. And yes, most of those were "McJobs"
but for at least one young lady I know that "McJob" brought in a nontrivial
portion of the income for her entire household. And another ran his own
business. Granted it was just a lawn maintenance business, but it was his and
helped him start saving.

In college it is even easier to do both because there is more freedom. I
worked full time in tech support while I was getting my undergrad. Now I am
going for my masters part time while working full time.

~~~
ams6110
Despite the derisive use of the term in this piece, there's nothing wrong with
experiencing a "McJob". Two good things that could come from it are: you learn
that this is NOT where you want to work for the rest of your life (or even
another month) or you follow the path to franchise ownership that is available
in most such jobs.

Even if you don't go all the way with it, a hard working entry-level employee
at a "McJob" can quickly advance in to management and learn quite a bit about
how business really works. And get paid for it, rather than forking over
tuition to learn about "stars", "cash cows", "question marks", and "dogs"

------
outotrai
More readable print version of article:

[http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/11/...](http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/11/05/why-
teenagers-are-growing-up-so-slowly-today.aspx?print=true)

------
drivebyacct
I hate being lumped in with the rest of American culture and society. I'm very
glad that my parents didn't lose all sense of worldliness or intelligence when
they decided to procreate.

------
hiralove
i don't agree .. teenagers are growing much much faster then before .... and
its all because of technology .. the major thing is Internet

~~~
cracki
so they're growing faster, but they're held back by school with no end in
sight, doing inconsequential things?

