If being a typical teenager is a modern day phenomenon and some parents prefer their children ascend directly into the real world of adulthood, then what about getting married at 13-18 years old? My own grandmother dropped out of high school to get married at 16. Might have even been 15 now that I think about it, and started a family shortly after.
If motherhood is no less noble a choice than a worldly career outside the home, then what difference does it make if the goal is to skip adolescence? Doesn’t get any more “real world” than providing for or bearing a child. This is not confrontational as I am not even 100% decided either way for my kids (as far as delaying adulthood/skipping adolescence, most likely a little of this, a little of that), but I am offering some food for thought here. Yes, kids back then were teaching in a one room school house, but they were also getting married off quite young. Something I don’t particularly aim for with my own kids (says the girl who was married at barely 19 herself, still considered relatively young by modern standards ).
Also, maybe it was already mentioned on the forum, but are there any differences in the brain scans of a 13 year old versus a 19 year old? or a 16 year old and a 19 year old? I don’t think I’ve ever looked that up but if there are scholars making the argument that adolescence is artifical, then perhaps they have already proved that teens are really adults as shown via brain scan.
This is semi-related to what we’re talking about, raising adults versus kids. I happened to stumble upon it tonight. Coincidentally I tried to read her book a month or two ago and didn’t get that far, nothing too memorable about it worth noting but I just couldn’t get into it. Regardless, this is a solid approach to teaching your kids about chores and responsibility.
I have been following this thread with interest and it has certainly given me food for thought. I am quite happy to say I am raising a baby and preschooler and, while developing independence is a key goal, I am in no hurry for them to enter the world of work, marriage and children. I hope they will study, travel, explore, and generally have a good time - is this so bad? I don’t think so.
Sternberg published some excellent research a few years ago on risk taking in adolescence which highlights the differences in the brains of teenagers. This research has been very influential in sentencing of adolescents for crimes.
Also, I think it is very important to remember that the life span has greatly increased in line with the apparent extension of childhood.
I am raising a man. Hopefully a good man. I tell James all the time that I don’t care why he does in life just as long as he works hard and is a good happy man. I think growing up and being a stay at home parent is a great goal. I am a stay at home mum raising my son and I don’t feel any less accomplished than friends in the career world.
Now that being said, I am not raising him to leave home at 13 or 16. I am trying to make sure that he has the independence and the coping mechanisms to function in the real world once he enters it. Ideally after college, or when he goes off to college, or even when he enters the workforce. I know many young people who are in their early 20s who have a hard time functioning. They are unable to prioritize and pay their bills and rent before their tanning salon fees. They shuffle around from apartment to apartment being evicted. They then move back home with their parents. My husband is dealing with these you kids tattling at his work place. If someone says a naughty word, they run upstairs to the managers. This is a blue collar factory with a lot of colorful language being used daily.
Apologies for not responding sooner; time is sparse these days it seems. :biggrin:
Many great points ITT; My goal was to spawn a discussion, and I think so far we’re doing that. The artificial extension of childhood is only one of myriad problems that Gatto points out. I do happen to believe it, alone, is at the crux of his disillusionment with school, and is therefore very worthy of an entire side discussion.
This post has a lot of salient points, but for brevity purposes, I isolated this paragraph here. IQ has gone up as measured by increasing means for the last 50 years. This is known as the Flynn Effect click here for more. There is evidence that the trend has reversed at around 9 years ago. I find the Flynn Effect to be a fascinating topic in its own right, but also should not be used as a rebuttal for the argument that artificial extension of childhood exists. They are two different things. I happen to agree that there is an undercurrent of taking charge of your life; I can’t comment how this compares to yesteryear since I wasn’t around then, but I’d guess books such as Think and Grow Rich, were pivotal in re-establishing that YOU are the biggest determinant of success or failure in a capitalist nation as the USA - though it’s really the only ingredient you can control and therefore the main ingredient you should focus on. You cannot choose your parents, for example, let alone where you’re born or the era you’re born. But I digress there, sorry about that.
I do think Gatto tends to undershoot the benefits of traditional school, but in my own opinion, it doesn’t much matter; he’s correct so often that it calls into question if these benefits are anywhere near just compensation for what they take away. This argument I highlighted is similar to the classic “socialization” argument. According to it, school is where you learn social skills. I should point out, it was never designed to be an institution for socialization; it is only recently where this default argument has arisen. The social structure of school is perhaps my biggest complaint (and one of Gatto’s as well) - it is not reflective of society at large in any noticeable way. For instance, kids are all the same age, and they are kids. The child to adult ratio is widely skewed toward child. While this makes it easier to make friends, the atmosphere itself is very homogenized and leads to a new subculture dictated by children. This subculture has its own norms and values. Further, the importance of that miniature society outweighs the real world of family, household, neighborhood, and community by a significant margin. Gatto doesn’t necessarily discuss this in the exact terms I’m describing, but I’m sure he touched on it in Dumbing us Down. There was a reason why I told my wife that skipping high school could be a way to avoid teen rebellion - avoid subjecting your child to the miniature society and force them to interact with the larger world instead - the larger world where the milieu won’t undercut your family and community values. In short, what’s important in the miniature society - or children led sub-culture - is vastly different than what is important outside of it. For this reason, I find the mini-society to be a waste of time, effort, and most importantly detrimental to success in the later years; not a benefit.
I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m just saying that the benefits of this system are outweighed by its weaknesses. I believe we could perhaps discuss where I might be correct and where I might be wrong - or stated another way (in more poker like mindset) what variables are at work that if changed, would make me either totally correct, or totally wrong. I’m sure if given enough time and thought, I could come up with some variables that would do this.
I really enjoyed the blog post. One of the things in it was how Gatto talks about physical attractiveness as a main criteria for high status universities. Like Gaither, I found that argument totally lacking. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not going to swallow an argument unless its backed by evidence, or a posteriori reflection. Most of his arguments I can sit back and reflect upon and either see it for myself, or after some digging, find that he’s correct. I was recently listening to a US History lecture series, and sure enough, the professor mentioned the rise of public education and how military style inculcation was and is used. I didn’t expect validation from an experienced historian, but there it was in a mainstream lecture series. It’s not made up; even if it were, the result is really all you need to focus on. Does said institution produce said results? By enlarge, yes. Gatto is correct. This blog post touches on religious beliefs - this is a side discussion and not really important in the grand scheme of things, BUT - I do find Gatto’s allegiance to faith a bit incongruous. It reminds me Robert Kiyosaki’s love for Multi-Level Marketing, and that’s the best analogy I can come up with. Kiyosaki endorses MLM and I believe the reason why is because he knows who buys his materials in droves (hint, MLMers). Likewise, people that tend to side with Gatto are more faith based and want to eschew the system for those reasons.
I’ll give you another weakness in Gatto’s argument, and I do it unsolicited. He points to the eugenic movement as having influence on schools, where schools were to serve as a sifting mechanism so that the unfit would be seen as unfit and lack reproductive opportunities as a result of their failures in the school system. Well - there is TRUTH to this argument even though it’s a laughable argument at best. Charles Murray in Coming Apart writes an entire chapter on homogamy, where at the elite universities men and women are meeting, dating, marrying, and having children. They then go on to live in insular neighborhoods and the cycle repeats; this contributes to the US middle ripping apart as it were. I can’t argue against Murray here - this is where Gatto’s argument holds water. Where it falls short is that if you look at demographic information in the US, public school, on the whole, has a dysgenic effect. The poor and uneducated are able to reproduce at greater rates than the upper societal tiers in part because of the social structure of public school (in addition to other programs providing structural support). In other words, if Gatto thinks public school is designed to produce a stronger genetic future (as misplaced as he thinks that idea is) school falls woefully short, to the point of humorous.
As for whether or not kids are sharper or not (in terms of what they know) now than they were decades ago - not even close. While absolute knowledge is higher for the educated, more people are uneducated even with a so-called education. It is prevalent. Hence why we have so many threads on BK that outline Robinson, et al. FWIW, Robinson says the same thing, the level of education at any given grade has gone down. The Dumbest Generation was one of the greatest books I ever read on this subject. I highly endorse it.
That’s mind blowing. I think your insights are impressive. Wish I had more time at the moment… my view that Cub is his own person just so happened to be my view the day he was born. I’m not sure where it came from exactly except maybe from my own reflections on my life in relation to my parents. I would tell my wife “he is his own person” - and he’s this little helpless newborn when I said it. I do find that a bit odd that I think that way, but - perhaps this is the big reason Gatto resonated with me as he did; his entire message has this at the hinge: Your kids are their own person; treat them that way.
This is true. Last month I put her series into mp3 format for later listening with Cub and remember this factoid from looking up information on her story.
One of Gatto’s pet facts is that of David Farragut; aka Admiral Farragut. Wikipedia page here. From that link:
“Farragut was 12 years old when, during the War of 1812, he was given the assignment to bring a ship captured by the USS Essex safely to port.”
The point is that teens are capable if they’ve been brought up correctly. If they aren’t capable, then something has gone wrong. In Gatto’s view, the mere observation that teens across the country aren’t doing extraordinary things as they once were is evidence in itself that school artificially extends childhood, or put another way, cripples them.
He is correct in that assertion. For simplicity, view his argument from an EL stance…
“Waiting until 6 or 7 to teach reading is artificially extending the illiterate years. If you would just teach them sooner, they would be far more capable, on average, at that age than they are now”
Can you argue with my ad hoc statement? I doubt anyone here would argue with it because we all know it to be true on some level. Gatto makes the same argument. Teens would be far more capable if not for a system that holds them back.
Only with that in mind would I dare to venture into the realm of 13 year olds getting married or such. I think for the point of having a greater debate about what younger adults (adult here used in a very primitive sense) are capable of, polarizing arguments are helpful for flushing out consistent logic, but risk losing the greater importance to minutiae.
In pre-history, I have zero doubts that a 13 or 14 year old was treated as an adult and held the responsibilities of an adult. Of course, we do not live in pre-historic times. So much of our world is arbitrary that we accept the lines and rules as fact. 18 and then you can vote. 16 and then you can drive. 21 and then you can drink. 23 and you can rent a car. 25 and then you can get your own health insurance. 30 and then you can finally finish grad school and move out. (and yes, I’m being facetious on those last two) It’s just silly to think that age itself is a qualifier for so many things; I feel this is backwards. Skill should be the merit.
I’m not advocating that we throw our kids out when they turn 13, 15, 16, or even 18. I’m just saying that my goal is to ultimately prepare Cub for success in the real world, and that much of school (if not all of it) is maladaptive to those ends. I don’t mean to say education - obviously I’m for copious amounts of that! lol
I’m also not saying let’s marry off our daughters and sons at the ripe age of pubescence. (though this is still practiced today in some regions of the world). Again, see my ultimate goal. I think taking some actions would be counter-productive in the environment we find ourselves in today.
If you want to talk about brain scans - I’ll save you some work. Brain size is mostly determined by teen years, though during the teen years/heading into the 20s there is a major shift that occurs. Synaptic pruning comes up again (as it does in early childhood) as the brain makes a final push into full adulthood. In that sense, you can argue that a young teen is not an adult. I’ll concede there. But, I will point out that our brain is never fully done devloping until the day we die and that this whole line of reasoning misses the point: it’s not about when to declare our children adults, it’s about preparing them to be one someday. Gatto argues that traditional school thwarts this process and hinders it. I find the conclusion to be spot on (though I do disagree in many parts to getting to that conclusion)
IQ has gone up as measured by increasing means for the last 50 years. This is known as the Flynn Effect click here for more. There is evidence that the trend has reversed at around 9 years ago.
Maybe the average IQ has decreased because babies don’t get enough tummy time anymore since 1992 SIDS campaign and thus crawl later. :rolleyes:
Here is one of Gatto’s videos titled ``Compiled Thoughts on Schooling’'. (Thank you, PokerDad)
He talks about attributes taught at elite boarding schools. He also shared how he implemented the entrepreneurship/ job shadowing/apprenticship/mentorship strategies, etc. He said the shadowing/entrepreneurial opportunities did not have to be mutually exclusive to academic curriculum (his almost exact words). He mentioned that lack of responsibility was the reason for the pathologies he saw among his students. In his words, not to be useful is to be useless.
Here is another interesting video titled ``John Gatto on Compulsory Education and Permanent Childhood’'.
Here, Gatto talks about the epidemic of childishness. He mentions that one only needs to read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Andrew Carnegie to see that the concept of adolescence is a myth. Adolescence was a fantastic lie invented only at the beginning of the 20th century by a fellow named G. Stanley Hall as a pseudo-scientific excuse for extending tutelage. Very worth listening to.
regarding the ted talk video, she discussed the changes that occur during the teen years and made an argument that under such an environment, learning can and should continue. I don’t disagree at all. She also made the claim that some people say adolescence is a newly invented thing and showed a quote from Shakespeare to illustrate her point that it isn’t. Knowing what I already knew (much of which is covered in the video), I was never willing to say adolescence is a pure fiction and that the teen brain equals an adult brain. I know better than that.
What did stand out was her emphasis that synaptic pruning is largely dependent upon the environment the teen is in while this pruning is taking place. In other words, it’s a neurological adaption to optimize in the current environment. My question is if the hypothetical environment of teens (in the aggregate) is reflective of the environment they will live in during their 20s, 30s, 40s, etc? Yes and no. There are similarities and differences even if you take school out of the equation (think technology and cultural shifts over the course of decades) - so the optimizing will be adapting to a slightly different environment than the future regardless of what we do.
The question I would then have is if school (since that’s the subject at hand) is significantly worse in terms of neural adaptation than the real world in terms of application. I don’t know, and I’m not qualified to make that sort of judgement. However, it does stand to reason that teens in general ought to be extremely engaged in what they’re doing to make best use of the adaptation process.
For comedian Steve Martin, this meant working full days and assimilating elements of entertainment while working at Disneyland. For inner city troubled youths, it might mean eschewing the classroom and digging deeper into the culture around them.
Therefore, some environments will be better suited than others and will produce different results.
My question is where does school, itself, fit into this? Gatto despises public school for so many reasons, namely that it stunts growth. What do you all think?
In the “compiled thoughts” video that Nee1 posted, Gatto discusses the skills taught at elite boarding schools. They seem like great non-academic skills that we should perhaps incorporate for our children, but that’s my opinion… what is yours?
I think Australian youths are better equipped for the real world than American youths… Well… This is taken from my experience over a decade ago. Things may differ now.
Part of my education in Australia applied real world learning. We learned cooking, and mending and building things. I took classes which taught about rental contracts, employees rights, balancing checkbooks. I have been told that those things just aren’t taught in US high schools. We have a variety of subjects that have real world applications. Legal studies, business studies, info and tech and civics are just a few of them.
We also do work experience weeks where we go into the workforce to experience what it is like.
I think college in the US can be an isolated culture too. Especially for those that live in dorms. We don’t have those kind of colleges in Australia (as far as I know…) We have universities that are more akin to community college. You go to classes you go home. You may or may not work. You may or may not live at home. But you don’t live it the college and mingle with mostly kids your own age.
Which takes me back to schools in America. There are so many organizations and clubs in American high schools that students with certains interests don’t need to lead their little adolescent niche to follow what they love.
In Australia if you love drama you join a local community drama programs and mingle with people of all ages. Same with many other sports in my small community. My high school didn’t offer sports so if we wanted to play cricket we had to join a club in town with a variety of people. Likewise with life saving or little athletics.
I am curious what does an ideal childhood look like under these philosophies? What does the transition to adulthood look like? How are you taking Gatto’s lectures and making them practical and applicable to your life? What does the ideal day look like for the varying stages of raising an adult?
That’s something I’m still working to figure out. Luckily, I have a lot of time before I really have to worry about it, but it’s always nice to have a good idea of where I’m going beforehand.
The key elements are not mutually exclusive. According to Gatto, one of the main problems is that we expect too little; he loves to point out great accomplishments that children and teens have achieved outside of school. Another problem is that kids aren’t interacting with the community at large because they’re stuck in an artificial world. In my view, time would be spent in mentor relationships, apprenticeships, and in the real world environment while continuing the studies. With the standard approach, school takes up 7 hours a day considering travel, etc + any homework which leaves very little time to pursue one’s passions.
In my case, I did the 7 hours per day thing at school, and then went to swim practice. That was another 3.5 hours once you factor in travel time. By then I was too exhausted to do much but eat and space out in front of the boob tube (something I wish didn’t happen to the extent that it did). Part of Gatto’s argument is that between school and TV, there’s little time for real world interaction, and over the course of years, this is crippling.
In a homeschool environment, studies could be completed before noon which would leave a whole lot of time for interesting things. I think that’s more of what Gatto would envision.
I don’t think it has to be a dramatically altered childhood. Children should have responsibilities. I think chores is a good way to start. I am constantly shocked at the overwhelming number if school aged kids including teens that have no to few chores.
I grew up on a farm and I had to do chores for as long as I remember. I was doing dishes by standing on a chair and I was collecting eggs from the chooks by myself from about the age of 4. I had to feed and water them also.
I had to feed the pigs and As got older I was involved with herding animals and slaughtering chickens.
My mum was mustering independently on horse back on a dairy farm from about the age of 4. Her mom was sick ans her older sister was away at school at lot so my mum was the one running the house from a young age. Her childhood was no more stymied than mine.
John Taylor Gatto – 14 Principles of Elite Private Schools:
1.) No kid should graduate without a theory of human nature attained through the study of History, philosophy, theology, literature, and law.
2.) Every graduate has a strong experience with the active literacies: writing and public speaking.
3.) Insight into the major institutional forms: courts, corporations, military, etc.
4.) Repeated exercises in the forms of good manners and politeness, based on the fact that these things are the basis of future relationships.
5.) Independent work. (Contrast with public school where the teacher is tasked with filling 90% of the class time.)
6.) Energetic physical sports are not a luxury, but are rather the only way to confer grace on the human presence.
7.) A complete theory of access to any workplace or any person. (Imagine an assignment for a student to get a personal meeting with the governor.)
8.) Responsibiity as an utterly essential part of the curriculum. Always grab for responsibility when it is offered, and always deliver more than what is expected.
9.) Arrive at a personal code of standards. Standards of production, behavior, and morality.
10.) Familiarity with the master creations of the arts so that you are at ease within all the arts.
11.) Realize the power of accurate observation and recording. (Drawing is Gatto’s example.)
12.) The ability to handle challenges of all sorts. Challenges are different for different people.
13.) A habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions.
14.) The constant development and testing of judgements. You make judgements, but you keep an eye on results to see how you’re doing.
Now let’s take a look at what parents at the finest private schools want from schooling. I’ve been studying their expectations for nearly 20 years in order to compare them with my own goals. I’m talking about the 20 ritziest private boarding schools in America – schools like Groton, St. Pauls, Deerfield, Kent.
I’m going to ask you to note that none of the principles these parents seek cost a penny to develop. Everybody could do one or all these things with their kids just as well as Exeter or St.Paul’s could. What these elite private school parents want schools to teach their children, in no particular order of importance, are:
• good manners and to display those manners to everyone without thinking, because they know in this way their children will be welcome everywhere.
• hard intellectual knowledge, undiluted, but in simple English so no specialized jargon interferes with understanding the fundamental ideas.
• love and appreciation for the land and the natural world of plants and animals, because without this understanding, life becomes lonely, barren, and abstract.
• a public sense of decorum so that they can adapt naturally to every setting they find themselves in without provoking anger and opposition.
• a common core of western culture so that all the generations can be comfortable with a shared set of tastes and values.
• leadership; they aren’t interested in their children being part of a managed herd.
• self-discipline.
A major concern of private school parents is that the schools understand the partially invisible qualification system that provides access to key positions in the economy. These parents expect schools to qualify their children to move freely through the economic system. But don’t we all want this?
Private school parents also demand individualized attention for their children, small classes, continuous pressure on their children to stretch individual limits, exposure to many different theoretical and practical aspects of life, exercises to develop self-reliance and self-confidence.
To be educated is to understand yourself and others, to know your culture and that of others, your history and that of others, your religious outlook and that of others. If you miss out on this, you are always at the mercy of someone else to interpret what the facts of any situation mean.
We are not in the financial position to put our kids in private school, but I can definitely incorporate some of these principles at home so that my kids can have that much more knowledge and insight.
A friend of mine put me on to the International Baccalaureate program. If you have one in your area (we don’t ), definitely check it out. www.ibo.org/
A lot of those desires seem to compare to the list forum members came up with here as far as what we want for our kids. For my kids, I am aiming for boarding school over skipping high school, however I would prefer they go together because it would make me feel much more comfortable. They’re only a year apart, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The OP notes that these things can be taught for free, however it is difficult to teach your child networking in the capacity one of these schools would.
excellent posts TmT! I’m going to have to save it for future reference. Actually, I should perhaps print it out and post it to my wall
As to boarding school, there are pros and cons to any option you choose; it’s a really a matter of preferences and priorities. I also don’t think 1 year apart is going to matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
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