[peakok]

It is naive to assume that "adolescence" was a concept invented out of the blue, then deliberately experimented by some politics, it never works this way. The opposite is true : at some point we needed a word to describe a change in society, and a new cultural phenomenon that didn't exist before. Then was born the concept of adolescence and the teenager, wich is a worldwide phenomenom in Occident and other parts of the world.

Necessity is the mother of all virtues. People responsabilise when there is a need for it, especially when there is no other choice. Should the economic crisis worsen and make our life tougher, you'll see a lot of young people do whatever it takes to support their family and take a more serious stance on life and politics.

Some people are afraid that young people cannot responsabilise because of their education. I would argue that the same people underestimate (1) the potential of the young people, wich fuels the problem, and (2) underestimate the greatest educator of all : necessity.

[bokonist]

It wasn't invented out of the blue, but it was an evolved creation of politics. In classic democratic fashion, a lot of factions were pushing their own agenda that ended up making the country as a whole worse off. The education establishment has continually upped the drop out age. Labor unions ( in alliance with wealthy parents) pushed for stricter child labor laws to reduce competition for jobs. Aristocratic progressives wanted an institution to indoctrinate immigrants in the American way of live. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income. Since colleges require a high school diploma, this put teenagers in an eight year holding pattern, waiting for a piece of paper.

The result of this has been every bit as disastrous as Newt claims.

[peakok]

You give too much power to politics. I think that the dramatic increase of productivity and the creation of much more wealth in the post-industrial society is the main factor in the emergence of the "adolescent". Suddenly families didn't spend their whole budget on food, housing, and they had a lot more of free time to do something else than satisfying their basic needs. They sent their childs to education because they could afford it, and it made them happy to do so.

You'll notice that it also allowed the society of services to emerge, and we wouldn't have this discussion on Hacker News if we had to work 12 hours a day just to satisfy our basic needs.

Overall, I don't share your opinion that the country is a "whole worse off" now. We only face different challenges because our fathers did their job in their own time.

[bokonist]

Technology and politics can move in opposite directions. Technology is far, far better. The political situation is much worse. Overall, life is far better.

Unfortunately, we don't have an example of what adolescence would look like if we had the same growth of technology but without the decline in the political system. I suspect though, if we could glimpse into this alternate world it would blow us away.

[unalone]

I don't know. I'm almost certain we'd lose something in that alternate world as well. In particular, we'd lose a tolerance for the diversity of the world. College is tremendous for that: it's the one thing it's tremendous for. You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world. Without that, if you're born and raised in a suburb then there's a good chance you never realize what you're missing out on.

[bokonist]

The suburbs are isolated because of the decline of the school system. Parents are unwilling to put their kids in schools will they will get harassed and bullied by lower class kids. "Public schooling" results in private communities. It used to be that the richest people in a city would live blocks away from the poor and the working class. That rarely happens anymore because of the association of location with schools.

As for universities - the top universities have a rainbow of skin colors, but the culture is overwhelmingly "Whiter Person" - http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

[kingkongrevenge]

> You realize what radically different sorts of people there are in the world

I would argue the exact opposite. The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins. The statistics show we have a society of increasing class stratification; people never marry down anymore, for example.

College and credentialism is also reinforcing an elitist attitude to manual labor. I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker." We're getting MORE social division, not less.

And let's not kid ourselves about the real level of diversity in colleges. Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.

[unalone]

The majority of college educated people I know have never had a friend of less than middle class origins.

It depends on the college that you go to. Some colleges don't let anybody of less-than-middle class in.

people never marry down anymore, for example.

You'll have to clarify this a bit more. People marrying down wasn't ever common, to my knowledge. And, this is my biased and bigoted opinion, but people in similar classes often have the same values, and this is why cross-classing never works so well. For instance, I tend to be attracted to people who are very logical and very expressive. I find myself attracted to the gap right in between programmers and actresses, because that's where people share similar values to myself. That might be shown as a sign of bias on my part, and it is, but it's a bias that can't be fixed, because elsewhere people and I are less compatible. I'd assume the same to be true across social boarders: people who go to certain places in society all have similar traits. Forgive me if I sound ignorant: I'm not at all knowledgeable in this field.

I've even seen several posts on this board that implicitly assume someone who works with their hands must be inferior to a "knowledge worker."

I don't look down on people who work with their hands. At the same time, though, I think that the power to create original things is the best power we've got. To be fair, few people ever do this, regardless of position. If you look at hackers as a whole, we're no better.

Hispanics are WAY underrepresented, and probably always will be. You're not going to come to any sort of understanding of chicano culture by going to college.

True. But I was talking more about people based on location. People of similar classes and skin color will be radically different based on where they come from. And some people never realize that until they get to college. It's not a huge change, not as huge as it could be, but it's a change and I'd argue that it's good for most college students.

[jacobolus]

> Labor unions (in alliance with wealthy parents) pushed for stricter child labor laws to reduce competition for jobs. Aristocratic progressives wanted an institution to indoctrinate immigrants in the American way of live [sic]. The rise of credentialing laws made college a necessity for earning a decent income.

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

[bokonist]

Unfortunately a lot of this came from books and articles I read years ago. "Indoctrination" is a bit of a loaded word, perhaps I should have said "assimilation" or "acculturation". But it was definitely a major factor. I remember reading a long paper about the movement establishing universal high school in New Haven in the early 1900's. It all revolved around dealing with the massive flows of immigrants who had no grounding in American civic culture.

As for credentialing laws, pretty much all professions rely on some level of book knowledge plus on the job training. The book knowledge can be provided for by reading books and passing an exam. You don't need to attend three years of law school in person to become a great lawyer. Nor do you need four years of university to be a great engineer. The architecture profession seems to have been much better off without any degree requirements. Just compare the architecture of the 1800's to that of the past few decades.

30% of jobs in the U.S. economy now have legal credentialing requirements. That includes everything from hair dresser to interior designer. Even jobs like parole officer now require a four year college degree. We're essentially recreating the old guild system, which stifles economic growth. I don't think it's any accident that the most dynamic sectors of the economy - software, consumer electronics, movies - have virtually no licensing requirements.

[jacobolus]

For some things (e.g. the hair dressing you mentioned), I concede that licensing requirements are unnecessary, and their use should be reexamined. For others (public defenders, surgeons, structural engineers, etc.) such licensing and formal training is in my opinion critically important. To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading.

What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees?

Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?

[bokonist]

What proportion of top-level architects don't have architecture degrees?

Today all of them do because it is legally required. My girlfriend is currently attending architecture school and it is beyond useless. She's learned an awful lot about "aura" and "algorithmic design" and precious little about designing buildings for the real world. Architects end up learning everything on the job.

In the 19th century, it was not uncommon for architects to be high school drop outs. The New York Public library, some of the tunnel projects under London, the California Aqueduct, were all designed by drop outs.

The structural integrity of the buildings was very high, and the aesthetics far surpass the creations of modern architects.

To construe it as purely anti-competitive is pretty misleading.

I obviously would not want an untrained surgeon practicing on me. The trouble is that credentialing laws are a highly unstable equilibrium. It requires 8 years of post-secondary schooling to prescribe penicillin, read an x-ray, or set a broken bone. I could be convinced that 2 years of schooling might be necessary. But not 8. The reason it is so high is because of lobbying by the AMA. I'm sure they argue that the requirements are in the public interest. Perhaps they even believe their own PR. But if you talk to doctors about medical school, most of them will tell you that it had little relevance to their actual job.

Perhaps the most notorious example of credentialing is the orthodontist profession. The average orthodontist works 35 hour weeks and makes 350k ( about 40% more than dentists). The reason for this is that number of orthodontists allowed to graduate each year is actually capped at 280. The orthodontist association have even gone after inventors who devise new labor-saving (and thus income-reducing) braces, See the case of Viazis v. American Association of Orthodontists. This is blatantly anti-competitive, and it costs thousands of dollars from the pocket book of every American.

Finally, do you think that teaching citizens about civic culture and American political institutions is a mis-use of public education?

I once worked a bit on capitol hill. The civics class description of American democracy bears little resemblance to the reality. However, these the civics class lies are probably necessary to make a democratic system even marginally functional. My preferred solution then, would be to get rid of electoral democracy.

[rsheridan6]

>My preferred solution then, would be to get rid of electoral democracy.

To be replaced with...?

[cousin_it]

Wow. I just read some of your other comments, and you rock. Thanks!

[bokonist]

I found one of books: "Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform". You can read a full review here: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000948.html

[nihilocrat]

Thus says the Online Etymology Dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/):

teenage 1921, formed from -teen as a separate word + age; derived noun teenager is from 1941 (the earlier word for this was teener, attested in Anmer.Eng. from 1894). Teen-aged (adj.) is from 1952; shortened form teen is from 1951 (though this had been used as a noun to mean "teen-aged person" in 1818). Teeny-bopper is recorded from 1966, from teen but also felt as infl. by teeny. For second element, see bop.

Couldn't find the word "adolescence", unfortunately. Based on this, you could argue that the first "teenagers" showed up as early as 1894 or as late as 1941.

[whughes]

Adolescence is from antiquity, but the meaning has diluted to become the same thing as 'teenagerhood' recently, if I recall correctly. It was more like being a 'young man' prior to that.