I don’t like the framing—“what is X supposed to be” is a confusing question, because it supposes a supposer. There is no god, I think (and if you disagree, that should be front and center of your post). There are MANY books, papers, blog posts, and family conversations about how to raise children, and ZERO authoritative positions with any standing to actually know an answer.
I also object to the implication that one size fits all, and that all (or even most, or even a significant enough majority to brush away the variance) kids should have the same experience. Same for parents and communities. There is so much variance that “what is best” just can’t be defined. The happy medium is different for everyone.
Even if you zoom out enough to treat kids as mostly-fungible, the difference between kids of educated two-involved-parent families and uneducated less-involved parents is qualitiative, as is the difference between significantly below, near, and above median intelligence and personality traits like conscientiousness. Many of these are correlated, and some of them are mutable (and perhaps changing them is part of the reason to prefer social/group schooling). Which just makes it MORE complicated.
I suspect there are a whole lot of equilibria that would work, and a lot of reasonable variance within the current middle-class+ US expectations. If you don’t like the competitive/optimization pressures, pick a different one. You probably can’t (as child or adult) fully ignore the fact that there are many people who want the same stuff that you do, so competition is just a part of every life. But it doesn’t have to be the obvious, common dimensions of grades, “approved” extracurriculars, and college admissions. There are TONS of happy people who didn’t go to a name college (or didn’t graduate at all, which includes me).
Keep in mind, the optimization pressure is NOT from colleges. It’s exploited by colleges, but it comes from parents, family, peers, and (sometimes correct, sometimes misunderstood) future employers and potential mates. And most importantly, from inside the child’s head, based on all those inputs.
Perhaps a better way to express my thoughts would have been “What goal do the structures of society create optimization pressure for, when it comes to childhood?” I believe that different societal structures create optimization pressures for different visions of what childhood is like, and this can confuse conversations about those structures.
I don’t like the framing—“what is X supposed to be” is a confusing question, because it supposes a supposer. There is no god, I think (and if you disagree, that should be front and center of your post). There are MANY books, papers, blog posts, and family conversations about how to raise children, and ZERO authoritative positions with any standing to actually know an answer.
I also object to the implication that one size fits all, and that all (or even most, or even a significant enough majority to brush away the variance) kids should have the same experience. Same for parents and communities. There is so much variance that “what is best” just can’t be defined. The happy medium is different for everyone.
Even if you zoom out enough to treat kids as mostly-fungible, the difference between kids of educated two-involved-parent families and uneducated less-involved parents is qualitiative, as is the difference between significantly below, near, and above median intelligence and personality traits like conscientiousness. Many of these are correlated, and some of them are mutable (and perhaps changing them is part of the reason to prefer social/group schooling). Which just makes it MORE complicated.
I don’t go as far as Bryan Caplan in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education, but it’s a valid point that a lot of things matter less than they appear at first.
I suspect there are a whole lot of equilibria that would work, and a lot of reasonable variance within the current middle-class+ US expectations. If you don’t like the competitive/optimization pressures, pick a different one. You probably can’t (as child or adult) fully ignore the fact that there are many people who want the same stuff that you do, so competition is just a part of every life. But it doesn’t have to be the obvious, common dimensions of grades, “approved” extracurriculars, and college admissions. There are TONS of happy people who didn’t go to a name college (or didn’t graduate at all, which includes me).
Keep in mind, the optimization pressure is NOT from colleges. It’s exploited by colleges, but it comes from parents, family, peers, and (sometimes correct, sometimes misunderstood) future employers and potential mates. And most importantly, from inside the child’s head, based on all those inputs.
Perhaps a better way to express my thoughts would have been “What goal do the structures of society create optimization pressure for, when it comes to childhood?” I believe that different societal structures create optimization pressures for different visions of what childhood is like, and this can confuse conversations about those structures.