There is an ugly trend here. We want to protect children from exploitation, so we make artificial learning environments where kids interact with each other instead of adults and perform often silly exercises instead of actually participating in the creation of value. Now we want to protect kids by removing their capacity to communicate and organize socially. Protecting children is a noble goal, but it may be possible that the best protection for children is to interact with adults to create value and communicate and organize socially. Building cocoons for kids hoping that will help them pupate into successful adults seems misguided.
Adults have been fine with the Lord of the Flies tendencies of adolescent education. But now smartphones are ruining everything?
I don’t have children let alone teenage ones so maybe I shouldn’t have an opinion on this, but it seems that we adults complain way too much about teenagers and almost never consider that maybe we have structured their lives in a way that isn’t great for them.
Singling out smartphones or binge drinking won’t fix anything at the root.
Exactly. We put children into a 12 year long institutional dictatorial meat grinder with absolutely no say about anything (well, maybe a few electives in high school).
It stems from "children" (aka under 18) having absolutely no rights, and the parents having all. And the schools are in loco parentis, so they can do mostly anything they want.
And I find hilarious that this country extols republics and democracies as the best forms of governance, yet 2 places we humans spend most of our time in (school, work) are dictatorships. And we usually are powerless in choosing schools, and only have some power to choose which company to work at.
I agree that the education system (at least in the US) is chafing at times. I had an idea about more freeform education paths with plenty of time for sports or whatever. I seriously doubt someone interested in a subject needs the better part of an hour for five days a week to learn it well. Not for high school topics, at least. Maybe boarding schools? Don't ask me about the logistics. Smartphone (social media, really) addiction is still a problem, though.
