[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.