Why August has Become the New September

[David Horn]

(08-05-2019, 10:57 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-03-2019, 07:48 AM)sbarrera Wrote:

(08-01-2019, 10:12 AM)David Horn Wrote: The oversubscribed child is an experiment in social engineering that may very well backfire in a monumental way.  For the life of me, I can't see how the social skills developed by unorganized childhood activities can be replicated, to say nothing of improved, by scheduling every spare minute of children's' lives.  

I observe my own grandchildren.  They will return to class as 9th graders on the 19th of August.  This will complete a summer of perpetual organized activities that began the Monday following the end of the last school year.  All told, they will have gotten less than 2 weeks of open-schedule time, and most of that will be spent in front of screens of one sort or another.  It's sad that they only relate to others their age in organized settings.  Yes, they can be teammates or competitors, but only very rarely just companions.

Soon enough, they will be adults.  I'm less than sanguine about their ability to march their way through the labyrinth of adult life without having an artificial structure to conform to.

If structure is what works for the young generation, they will reshape the adult world to make it more structured. Though I do think the unstructured way that previous generations have left it is part of the reason for the "epidemic of loneliness" that the media reports.

Too much structure becomes rigidity, and that's not good at any time.  When at least some degree of flexibility is unachievable, group think becomes universal.  Once there, it's hard to address problems that don't fit the mold -- which is most problems.

In all fairness, there is no ideal model.  Everyone has some glaring faults that create problems.  I still prefer with less structure than more, but I definitely don't prefer none at all.

An interesting follow-on to this: "We Have Ruined Childhood".  Maybe the tide is finally turning.