Millenials Need Adulting School

[Coriolis]

The difference in how much better the average homeschooled individual is than the average public/private school individual is staggering- both personally and intellectually. The tired old adage that public school is important because it teaches kids to socialize is garbage. Why learn to socialize with people who, like you, are not even mature enough to handle it? especially when those peoples dispositions, including yours, will be radically different (for the better) a few years after the fact anyhow.

The variation in ability among homeschooled students is as great - perhaps greater - than that of those who learn in a school setting. I can understand how parents in poor school districts can be tempted to homeschool, thinking they can do better. Perhaps they can. This generally comes down, though, to mother staying home full time to do it. (I have never heard of a father doing this, though a few probably do.) So, another case of mothers solving the world's problems for free.

Perhaps more disturbing is that many families who homeschool, at least many in my area, do so to keep their children from being exposed to viewpoints and lifestyles different from theirs. They want to raise their children with blinders on. I suppose that is their right, but eventually those kids will enter the broader world out there and encounter people unlike themselves, where they will either be in for a shock, or approach them in very judgmental, intolerant, and ultimately counterproductive ways. This is more significant than learning to socialize, which they can do at church camps, homeschool co-ops, etc.

 

[anticlimatic]

Perhaps more disturbing is that many families who homeschool, at least many in my area, do so to keep their children from being exposed to viewpoints and lifestyles different from theirs. They want to raise their children with blinders on. I suppose that is their right, but eventually those kids will enter the broader world out there and encounter people unlike themselves, where they will either be in for a shock, or approach them in very judgmental, intolerant, and ultimately counterproductive ways. This is more significant than learning to socialize, which they can do at church camps, homeschool co-ops, etc.

I'm not sure tolerance is something that can be taught. I think that you're either born with a mind for it, or you're not.

 

[ceecee]

I'm not sure tolerance is something that can be taught. I think that you're either born with a mind for it, or you're not.

I agree with this partially but it's more about the environment a person is brought up in. Which is why I had a nauseating culture shock in Mississippi.

 

[ceecee]

Perhaps more disturbing is that many families who homeschool, at least many in my area, do so to keep their children from being exposed to viewpoints and lifestyles different from theirs. They want to raise their children with blinders on. I suppose that is their right, but eventually those kids will enter the broader world out there and encounter people unlike themselves, where they will either be in for a shock, or approach them in very judgmental, intolerant, and ultimately counterproductive ways. This is more significant than learning to socialize, which they can do at church camps, homeschool co-ops, etc.

When our daughter first went to college, she had a roommate who was homeschooled, much like the way you describe. Little exposure to anything outside of her family and church, no exposure to people different from her, very religious. When she was suddenly thrust into on campus of 45,000+ students from all over the world, well, you can imagine the end result. She was very smart, she likely could have excelled in any area, full ride academic scholarship. She now has a drug problem, has been in jail for extended stays and is no longer in school. I wanted to punch her parents in the face when I met them, I wanted to punch them in the face when I saw that they took no responsibility for raising a functioning adult, it was pretty much on this kid with zero life skills. She had no chance, they made sure of it.

 

[Coriolis]

I'm not sure tolerance is something that can be taught. I think that you're either born with a mind for it, or you're not.

I don't think it can be explicitly taught either. It must be experienced, and those experiences come through exposure to people and ideas unlike what we are used to. Tolerance can also be demonstrated, e.g. by parents in the way they react when their kids come to them to share such an experience.

 

[Zoom]

Yes. Part of the problem. I have never said that to my kid or any kid without talking about it with them first. In other words, parenting.

Just curious, though - what do you think of the issue of helicopter parenting? A bit of a dramatic way to put it, but it has been brought up quite a bit in discourse regarding why those of a certain age are unable to cope in so many ways once they reach the age of adulthood. That the opposite of what you are talking about - too much parental involvement, too little of leaving children to their own devices (or at least letting them deal with the issues which arise in any child's life) in order to allow them to learn how to become a strong, effective personality. This is not to say leaving them without guidance or assistance, of course.

 

[Cellmold]

Just curious, though - what do you think of the issue of helicopter parenting? A bit of a dramatic way to put it, but it has been brought up quite a bit in discourse regarding why those of a certain age are unable to cope in so many ways once they reach the age of adulthood. That the opposite of what you are talking about - too much parental involvement, too little of leaving children to their own devices (or at least letting them deal with the issues which arise in any child's life) in order to allow them to learn how to become a strong, effective personality. This is not to say leaving them without guidance or assistance, of course.

While my parents are hardly helicopter parents, both myself and my brother suffered from the same issue which is that any time we were failing in a task, or doing it poorly, it was angrily & impatiently taken off us.

This causes a kind of infantilisation and I can attest as a living example to the dangers of that.

 

[Lark]

My first reaction, what just millenials?

 

[Ursa]

While I understand people getting mad in this thread - parents are falling down on the job. It's very difficult for society, in general to pick up all the slack, including the slack parents of these kids create by being oblivious AF. These are observation I've made of my own children and their peers and it was so alarming to me as a parent, I was more than happy to intercept it no matter who the kid was.

Do I think middle and high schoolers should be learning about basic life skills? Banking, budgeting, non-delusional sex ed, skills needed for the working world, the value of education and intelligence and critical thinking...yes. Should schools be teaching these things? Yes. In tandem with parents. And if you are an idiot that thinks - we shouldn't interfere/parents should be able to teach children bullshit with impunity/TAXPAYERS!! MY MONEY!! just shut the fuck up because you are also contributing to the problem and continuing to enforce the fact that America does not care about it's people, including it's children.

And I'm going to make this clear. I have seen several millennials on this forum ask questions that should have been answered by parents. The reason is almost always - my parents didn't teach me this. So stop getting mad at me or anyone identifying the problem. It isn't your fault but holding parents accountable for kids unable to cope with the world is something everyone should be doing. Including you.

I'm a Millennial. I don't give a rat's ass that my parents never taught me, because that is precisely what caused me to learn.

As a concession, I knew people in college who were previously home-schooled, and they had zero people skills, didn't know where Russia was on a map and had been taught obscure languages like Akkadian over practical languages like Spanish and French. It's totally on their parents that they were unprepared for the real world much less college. I always felt bad for those people. This kind of ignorance is fucked-up and wrong.

At the same time, my parents were emotionally absent and often physically absent. No one was around to help me with my homework, or give any sort of damn. I learned that I had to figure things out of my own - not just how to do my homework, but how to advocate for myself, how to seek out appropriate information, how to apply for college, how to apply for a job, how to invest in stocks, how to hire a lawyer when he was needed and what my rights were, etc. I wouldn't give any of that up. My parents didn't teach me shit, and honestly, I think that's great. "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand." I made terrible mistakes, but I was way ahead of my peers early in college in terms of job applications, the stock market and grades. Every time I hear some young adult say that it was his or her parent's fault (which is happening with increasing frequency in my world at least), I just know I never want to invest in any way in that person because they are likely not to accept responsibility for much, and because they likely lack resourcefulness. "But, but, but...!" The subtler alternative to that is, "But I was never told/never learned/can't think out of the box, etc." One reason why I hire only Gen X or older.

Yeah, there are some conservatives who don't want to spend a penny on education. Then there are others who more specifically think that children are overprotected to the point that they are rightfully viewed as characteristically unqualified and that's why they don't deserve taxpayer money. Maybe people should stop coddling their children and thinking that taxpayers owe their children when they are too soft to find jobs.

 

[ceecee]

Just curious, though - what do you think of the issue of helicopter parenting? A bit of a dramatic way to put it, but it has been brought up quite a bit in discourse regarding why those of a certain age are unable to cope in so many ways once they reach the age of adulthood. That the opposite of what you are talking about - too much parental involvement, too little of leaving children to their own devices (or at least letting them deal with the issues which arise in any child's life) in order to allow them to learn how to become a strong, effective personality. This is not to say leaving them without guidance or assistance, of course.

I think it's just as damaging. But helicopter parenting gets far more attention, and it could come down to because it's more fashionable to attack them vs attacking the uninvolved parents. I have a feeling that influences other things, such as why we put 10 year olds in jail and want to try children as adults. Not that they can't commit heinous crimes, they can. But they aren't adults. Apparently that's not as clear to people as one would think.

 

[Agent Washington]

Boomers and Gen X needed parenting schools.

 

[anticlimatic]

I don't think it can be explicitly taught either. It must be experienced, and those experiences come through exposure to people and ideas unlike what we are used to. Tolerance can also be demonstrated, e.g. by parents in the way they react when their kids come to them to share such an experience.

I don't think that's how it's done either. The south is packed with both whites and blacks and they're less tolerant of each other than northern communities with significantly less exposure to one another. Racial and cultural tolerance is an end result, but like in mathematics you can't teach a first grader calculus by jumping straight to calculus.

I think tolerance is a product of having a well worn scratch disk space in the mind; the awareness that just because you have an idea, it is not necessarily (or even often) right. A type of perpetual intellectual humility, which can only come from having the freedom from an early age onwards to think new and different thoughts and experiment with the consequences of them; to engage in conflict with them, and have them beaten back. Being humbled is the only way to achieve humility.

People are so preoccupied with making sure people know the 'right' stuff at the cost of intellectual freedom that they completely overlook how much more fundamentally beneficial it is to first dabble in whatever they want first- which will typically be the 'wrong' stuff. It's a good example of how the more you try to control people, even with the best intentions, the worse off you make them.

 

[Coriolis]

I don't think that's how it's done either. The south is packed with both whites and blacks and they're less tolerant of each other than northern communities with significantly less exposure to one another. Racial and cultural tolerance is an end result, but like in mathematics you can't teach a first grader calculus by jumping straight to calculus.

Proximity is not the same thing as acquaintance. That requires people to interact: to work side by side, attend class together, do business with each other, etc. We start by fulfilling the letter of the law, acting professionally, doing our job despite our personal feelings about the other person. Assuming the other person is doing the same, we develop a shared history which eventually overrides the prejudices. Then the question is how well we can extrapolate from our anecdotal experiences.

I think tolerance is a product of having a well worn scratch disk space in the mind; the awareness that just because you have an idea, it is not necessarily (or even often) right. A type of perpetual intellectual humility, which can only come from having the freedom from an early age onwards to think new and different thoughts and experiment with the consequences of them; to engage in conflict with them, and have them beaten back. Being humbled is the only way to achieve humility.

This is exactly where I find the religiously motivated homeschoolers go wrong.

 

[Haven]

We never learned how to be an adult because we had baby boomers for parents.

That video was from Alex Jones/Infowars, didn't watch sorry. Assuming he's one of the people that complain about living in a nanny state, it's weird when they turn around and expect the state (or someone else) to raise their kids for them. That's what a nanny does, right?

...ok I went back and watched it.
Boomers were able to leave home and become so successful so early because they grew up during economically prosperous times. There was a demand for labour that doesn't really exist in the same proportions today, and everything was more affordable.

I'm pretty sure a lot of baby boomers alive today have no idea what they're doing and never really grew up either.

Leaving home when I was 18 gave me advantages that I never would've had if I had stayed home, but I'm fortunate enough to have talent in a field that provides me with a lot of opportunities to be successful. Had things been any different, I'd be in the same boat as everyone else.

I feel really sorry for any millennials that have to go to work for boomers, no one deserves this kind of scorn. A school for life skills sounds pragmatic, I mean who else would prepare us for dealing with the boomers that didn't raise us right?

 

[Grace]

Wow, that video was terrible. I could only get about a minute into it. I'm a millennial and I hate all the millennial bashing. That being said, I do think it would be helpful to have more high school classes on topics like doing taxes and simple car maintenance. So this would be geared more toward the generation coming up in order to help them. I wish I had had those in high school but I didn't and had to learn that stuff on my own.

 

[Coriolis]

We never learned how to be an adult because we had baby boomers for parents.

It is harder for kids to learn to be adults now because laws and policies (e.g. at schools) prevent them from taking on responsibilities they are perfectly capable of. As a simple example, walking home from school unescorted by a parent is forbidden for elementary school students in my area. There is no provision for riding one's bike to school.

 

[ceecee]

We never learned how to be an adult because we had baby boomers for parents.

That video was from Alex Jones/Infowars, didn't watch sorry. Assuming he's one of the people that complain about living in a nanny state, it's weird when they turn around and expect the state (or someone else) to raise their kids for them. That's what a nanny does, right?

...ok I went back and watched it.
Boomers were able to leave home and become so successful so early because they grew up during economically prosperous times. There was a demand for labour that doesn't really exist in the same proportions today, and everything was more affordable.

I'm pretty sure a lot of baby boomers alive today have no idea what they're doing and never really grew up either.

Leaving home when I was 18 gave me advantages that I never would've had if I had stayed home, but I'm fortunate enough to have talent in a field that provides me with a lot of opportunities to be successful. Had things been any different, I'd be in the same boat as everyone else.

I feel really sorry for any millennials that have to go to work for boomers, no one deserves this kind of scorn. A school for life skills sounds pragmatic, I mean who else would prepare us for dealing with the boomers that didn't raise us right?

I have baby boomer parents. Millennials have a legitimate bitch at the state of the economy and this country. They're not lazy, not delusional for the most part and are pissed off that their future got shafted. Some of that blame falls on boomers but there are a lot of Wall Streeters that are my age that bear much of the responsibility.

I'm not giving a speck of attention to Alex Jones or anyone else people like to tout as bearers of information.

 

[Population: 1]

Millennials, Xers, boomers- every generation is made up of people and people are imperfect. Damning an entire generation with generalities is counterproductive. If boomers or Gen Xers like myself are claiming how perfect we are comparatively well we need more adulting too. Damn I hate that term.

Setting a generation up for success starts with the generation that's raising it. Parents need to start being parents again. This 'I'm your buddy' mentality sets you up to fail automatically. You're not their buddy, you're their guardian and their instructor. Hopefully they love you but they shouldn't always like you if you're doing it right. When they come of age, when they stand as your equals because you've done your job, then you can be friends.

 

[-Outsider-]

But I have heard people on Tumblr complain about schools not teaching about about banking, applying and doing jobs, and adulting stuff like that. I disagree since in 5th grade they did teach us how to write checks, but I forgot, and they taught us financial literacy stuff in 9th grade, and I bet the vast majority of people forgot by now (senior now). We forgot these things since they are not needed in everyday life when you are young. I think people should just research things as needed on the internet, so they can quickly apply their skills which should help them remember it. Life is the best teacher imo.

Bruh, idk wtf kind of school you went to, but my schools NEVER taught me anything about writing checks, finances, etc. No, I didn't "forget." It just wasn't part of the curriculum. When I was like 12 we had to do a few weeks of basic cooking, but that was it. It was mostly like making rice and shit. Nothing about finances and the job market.

IIRC, my high school probably had a class that had this idea in mind, but it was a "blow off" elective class that likely wasn't anywhere near as impactful or useful as intended. It was not mandatory, and most students looking to go onto college wouldn't even think of taking it because they were too busy filling their schedule with classes that colleges care about.

While I understand people getting mad in this thread - parents are falling down on the job. It's very difficult for society, in general to pick up all the slack, including the slack parents of these kids create by being oblivious AF. These are observation I've made of my own children and their peers and it was so alarming to me as a parent, I was more than happy to intercept it no matter who the kid was.

Erm, what? Look, I get what you're saying...but not all parents are great with finances and related skills! My parents' idea of living well was to take out loans and put everything on credit and shit. Shouldn't the point of the educational system be to, you know, educate? Not just to rely on home teachings that may or may not be good for a child?

Do I think middle and high schoolers should be learning about basic life skills? Banking, budgeting, non-delusional sex ed, skills needed for the working world, the value of education and intelligence and critical thinking...yes. Should schools be teaching these things? Yes. In tandem with parents.

Good, I'm glad you think it should at least be a part of schooling. Your above sentence didn't seem to indicate that.

My point is you really can't just assume that parents will have the right knowledge and skills for their children or even that they know how to teach these skills. The educational system is supposed to be there to provide a standard, why not extend this on to real-world skills?

 

[ceecee]

Erm, what? Look, I get what you're saying...but not all parents are great with finances and related skills! My parents' idea of living well was to take out loans and put everything on credit and shit. Shouldn't the point of the educational system be to, you know, educate? Not just to rely on home teachings that may or may not be good for a child?

Uhh,...I said these things should be taught by both schools and parents. Right here....

Do I think middle and high schoolers should be learning about basic life skills? Banking, budgeting, non-delusional sex ed, skills needed for the working world, the value of education and intelligence and critical thinking...yes. Should schools be teaching these things? Yes. In tandem with parents.