mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Feb 14, 2012 11:09:57 GMT -5
Please, cite your source for this claim, formerroomate.
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Feb 14, 2012 11:13:42 GMT -5
You know, if we challenged our kids- they wouldn't have time to bully one another (or use drugs, or get pregnant, or fat...) My high school had tracking. In the nerd classes, staying up till 3am studying was the norm and I never saw my classmates picking on each other, and there were some kids in my classes that really asked for it, like the guy who wore a pocket protector. In the lowest tracks, the students never did their homework and whenever you heard of some cruel prank being pulled on somebody, it always came from the lower tracks.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Feb 14, 2012 11:19:49 GMT -5
You know, if we challenged our kids- they wouldn't have time to bully one another (or use drugs, or get pregnant, or fat...) My high school had tracking. In the nerd classes, staying up till 3am studying was the norm and I never saw my classmates picking on each other, and there were some kids in my classes that really asked for it, like the guy who wore a pocket protector. In the lowest tracks, the students never did their homework and whenever you heard of some cruel prank being pulled on somebody, it always came from the lower tracks. Tracks are becoming the norm in government run schools- it's been that way for European students forever. The problem is that a "track" is just another name for "pigeon hole" and pretty soon the government will be telling us what we can major in, and where we can work. In other words, the decision to put a kid on a given 'track' is not always correct.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 11:21:59 GMT -5
Wisdom comes with age and experience, IMO, and no amount of hanging with adults is going to make an 18 find some wisdom.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 11:22:18 GMT -5
"I'm proposing we let kids hang out with other kids and not pretend that social skills and same age interactions don't matter. "
Social skills do matter. I'm just questioning whether or not it is a good idea to let kids 13-18 primarily learn social skills from one another... I would prefer those older/wiser have some influence...
The scene from Take the Lead comes to mind... where Antonio Bandaras is showing the parents what he 'teaches' through dance... and asks how a man who learns to handle a woman on the dancefloor with grace and tenderness, will ever raise his hand in anger, and how a girl, who learns to trust and respect herself, will ever let some punk knock her up...
Same age interactions are not innapropriate, but they are not the end all be all... Marriages actually work better when there is an age difference of about 4 years.... And most of your adult life is NOT spent with people your exact age... In fact, and this is anecdotal, but when i think of those I know who do spend most of their time with same age peers as adults, they are the ones who resemble 'adolescents' longest...
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 11:22:48 GMT -5
My high school had tracking. In the nerd classes, staying up till 3am studying was the norm and I never saw my classmates picking on each other, and there were some kids in my classes that really asked for it, like the guy who wore a pocket protector. In the lowest tracks, the students never did their homework and whenever you heard of some cruel prank being pulled on somebody, it always came from the lower tracks. Tracks are becoming the norm in government run schools- it's been that way for European students forever. The problem is that a "track" is just another name for "pigeon hole" and pretty soon the government will be telling us what we can major in, and where we can work. In other words, the decision to put a kid on a given 'track' is not always correct. Isn't the whole point of NCLB to end tracking and get all kids on the same level? I thought tracking was something of the past.......
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 11:24:12 GMT -5
Crap, my marriage is doomed.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Feb 14, 2012 11:24:29 GMT -5
I don't think it would have made a difference. Back then all kinds of whacky marriages took place because marriage was such a high expectation. If you wanted sex, there were two ways to get it- marriage and whorehouses. There was very little in between.
It was utterly socially unacceptable to be unmarried, and once married you were considered cursed by God if you didn't have 10 children in your first 8 years.
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AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP
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Post by AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP on Feb 14, 2012 11:26:43 GMT -5
Crap, my marriage is doomed. Yeah- us, too. Sad, because had I known it wasn't going to work out, I would have ended it long before we'd been married nearly 20 years (June).
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Feb 14, 2012 11:28:15 GMT -5
Please, cite your source for this claim, formerroomate. Try actally talking to someone who lived through the Depression. Back then, the degree of common sense you rarely see until the 20's was prevalent in most teenagers. It had to be. If the vast majority of humans were unable to think rationally until their late 20's, then how can you explain how the orphanage my grandfather grew up in felt confident letting him go at 14, and trusted him to hold down the job they had found for him, and manage his money well enough to not get evicted from the boarding house he was living in? This guy was a WW1 vet, there was no depression going on when he was discharged from the orphanage, but he and most of the other graduates did just fine because by 14, they had enough common sense to function in the adult world. How do you explain the fact that a short 70 years ago, most people were able to hold down jobs, manage their money, and start families at 18? Do you really think that human brain development could have changed so much in less than a century? Yes, our society has gotten more complex, but the things that 14-18 year olds were expected to do less than a century ago are the same things things many of today's 18-25 year olds can't do.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Feb 14, 2012 11:31:01 GMT -5
Message deleted by mmhmm. Question was answered while I was typing.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 11:32:13 GMT -5
Crap, my marriage is doomed. who spouted this unsubstantiated gem of knowledge?
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Feb 14, 2012 11:43:30 GMT -5
My high school had tracking. In the nerd classes, staying up till 3am studying was the norm and I never saw my classmates picking on each other, and there were some kids in my classes that really asked for it, like the guy who wore a pocket protector. In the lowest tracks, the students never did their homework and whenever you heard of some cruel prank being pulled on somebody, it always came from the lower tracks. Tracks are becoming the norm in government run schools- it's been that way for European students forever. The problem is that a "track" is just another name for "pigeon hole" and pretty soon the government will be telling us what we can major in, and where we can work. In other words, the decision to put a kid on a given 'track' is not always correct. I agree with you that an inflexible system where your fate is sealed when you take a test at age 10 is not the best. There has to be a degree of flexability that allows kids to move between tracks. Not all kids mature at the same rate. This is one reason we have community colleges, so someone who was a late bloomer in high school can have a second chance. But the fact that many school districts don't bother to even try to challenge the brighter kids until the high school level is a terrible waste of time. And if a kid isn't particularly bookish in high school, I don't see anything wrong with giving him just enough math and english to be able to go to the community college and have him graduate high school with a trade. If he's a late bloomer, he can always go the community college route.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Feb 14, 2012 11:46:36 GMT -5
Please, cite your source for this claim, formerroomate. Try actally talking to someone who lived through the Depression. Back then, the degree of common sense you rarely see until the 20's was prevalent in most teenagers. It had to be. If the vast majority of humans were unable to think rationally until their late 20's, then how can you explain how the orphanage my grandfather grew up in felt confident letting him go at 14, and trusted him to hold down the job they had found for him, and manage his money well enough to not get evicted from the boarding house he was living in? This guy was a WW1 vet, there was no depression going on when he was discharged from the orphanage, but he and most of the other graduates did just fine because by 14, they had enough common sense to function in the adult world. How do you explain the fact that a short 70 years ago, most people were able to hold down jobs, manage their money, and start families at 18? Do you really think that human brain development could have changed so much in less than a century? Yes, our society has gotten more complex, but the things that 14-18 year olds were expected to do less than a century ago are the same things things many of today's 18-25 year olds can't do. I talk to my 90-year-old mother daily, formerroomate. No problem for me to get that perspective. Nobody has said young people are totally irrational. What has been scientifically proven is that the frontal lobe of the brain is not fully developed until the mid-twenties. The area impacted is that which deals with risk-taking and decision-making. Until this area completes its development, there is more likelihood of impulsive decisions leading to unanticipated difficulties. Times do change. We can't go back 70 years (well, I almost can!). The things 18-year-olds did 70 years ago are, often, things that aren't even done today. They're part of our past, not our future. While I do believe we can do better in finding ways to occupy these young people that will foster the development of decision-making skills, that doesn't change the fact that the brain does, indeed, develop more slowly in some areas than in others. Formation of the myelin sheath is slower in the frontal lobe. Simple fact. Anecdotal evidence of "what you've seen" does not serve in areas like physiology, I'm afraid.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 11:48:32 GMT -5
My husband was living on his own at 15 and attending high school as well.
I did not say marriages between people of the same age were doomed. I just said there have been some benefits to a small gap in the literature.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:01:09 GMT -5
Ok... so why would you want to take people with underdeveloped frontal lobes and make their main source of socialization other people with underdeveloped frontal lobes?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:06:52 GMT -5
Because if they try to make out with people who have fully developed frontal lobes, that is just gross.
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billisonboard
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Post by billisonboard on Feb 14, 2012 12:09:53 GMT -5
.... That being said, he was, and still is, an introvert, and no system is going to fix that. ... Interesting. My ex-wife is an extrovert. Couldn't be alone for more than two minutes. I often wished that there were a system that could fix that.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:15:56 GMT -5
Because if they try to make out with people who have fully developed frontal lobes, that is just gross. LMAO
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Feb 14, 2012 12:16:41 GMT -5
But many of them are, and the fact that today's kids aren't able to do what was expected of younger people less than a century ago is a big problem.
One of the reasons I had such trouble in elementary school was because I actually had enough common sense to know I was there to get an education, not to obsess about clothes, big hair, padded bras, and pancake makeup. In my mother's time, (she was born in 1930) it was considered normal and admirable to do well in school. Everyone recognized that education was the way to success and it was considered perfectly normal for kids to be thinking about what they wanted out of life and how to get it from a young age.
Today, kids aren't expected to think long term, though in past generations, this was expected. Parents support and even applaud their kids obsessing about things they know darn well don't matter in the real world, because they know that kids who are thinking long term and aren't obsessing about silly things often face years of isolation and abuse in a school environment.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:18:44 GMT -5
;D .... but funny aside... 'socialized' is a far broader topic than kissing... (and just because you want to be kissing someone else with an underdeveloped frontal lobe... doesn't mean that you should be LEARNING most of what you know about kissing and man/woman interactions from someone with an underdeveloped frontal lobe... )
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 12:24:39 GMT -5
;D .... but funny aside... 'socialized' is a far broader topic than kissing... (and just because you want to be kissing someone else with an underdeveloped frontal lobe... doesn't mean that you should be LEARNING most of what you know about kissing and man/woman interactions from someone with an underdeveloped frontal lobe... ) But if your frontal lobe isn't developed, it's illegal to learn it from someone who is developed, just sayin'.........
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 12:25:21 GMT -5
But many of them are, and the fact that today's kids aren't able to do what was expected of younger people less than a century ago is a big problem. One of the reasons I had such trouble in elementary school was because I actually had enough common sense to know I was there to get an education, not to obsess about clothes, big hair, padded bras, and pancake makeup. In my mother's time, (she was born in 1930) it was considered normal and admirable to do well in school. Everyone recognized that education was the way to success and it was considered perfectly normal for kids to be thinking about what they wanted out of life and how to get it from a young age. Today, kids aren't expected to think long term, though in past generations, this was expected. Parents support and even applaud their kids obsessing about things they know darn well don't matter in the real world, because they know that kids who are thinking long term and aren't obsessing about silly things often face years of isolation and abuse in a school environment. Not everyone went to school in the bizarro world where you were bullied for doing well.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Feb 14, 2012 12:27:22 GMT -5
Many kids are quite able to do what's expected of them, formerroomate, and quite willing to do so. A lot of it comes down to parenting, as well as to individual differences in the kids themselves.
What you went through in elementary school is irrelevant to these kids today. It's strictly anecdotal and applies to you, not to them. I went to school, too, and I didn't experience what you did despite being academically advanced and one to follow my own path rather than engage in what the other kids were doing. I didn't feel isolated, and wouldn't have cared anyway. I had my own muses to follow. However, my experiences, like yours, are anecdotal and individual and don't apply to every kid out there today.
To say that kids, in general, aren't expected to think long-term today is to make an assumption based, again, on anecdotal evidence from your experience. I don't see that. I see some kids who are taught (and expected) to think ahead, and others who aren't. I see some kids who are taught and expected to do so slip-up from time to time, and some kids who aren't so taught to make some outstanding decisions for their futures. This is to be expected during the long period of physiological development from child to adult.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:29:50 GMT -5
Sigh... is this one of the times everyone else is trying to be funny and i should just go along and quit... i'm always so bad at telling those things... Not everything is learned first hand by doing. Fathers teach their daughters a lot about how men should treat them (or should) and no there is nothing icky about the way i mean that... They should also teach their sons about how to treat women... etc. ... and healthy, adjusted, productive, adults are the best ones to learn about adult roles from... The hands on stuff is the easy stuff frankly doesn't take much to get the hang of it... its the rules of conduct, respect, deference... etc... which are harder, and which i'd much rather my daughter learn from the adults around her, than a 14 year old boy... If that makes any sense... and again we're back to socialization = kissing... ... ok, i'm giving up now...
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:30:05 GMT -5
But many of them are, and the fact that today's kids aren't able to do what was expected of younger people less than a century ago is a big problem. One of the reasons I had such trouble in elementary school was because I actually had enough common sense to know I was there to get an education, not to obsess about clothes, big hair, padded bras, and pancake makeup. In my mother's time, (she was born in 1930) it was considered normal and admirable to do well in school. Everyone recognized that education was the way to success and it was considered perfectly normal for kids to be thinking about what they wanted out of life and how to get it from a young age. Today, kids aren't expected to think long term, though in past generations, this was expected. Parents support and even applaud their kids obsessing about things they know darn well don't matter in the real world, because they know that kids who are thinking long term and aren't obsessing about silly things often face years of isolation and abuse in a school environment. Not everyone went to school in the bizarro world where you were bullied for doing well. but if I and a couple of my friends experienced something, that means it happens to everyone.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:31:29 GMT -5
I did well in school and I wasn't bullied either.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Feb 14, 2012 12:31:49 GMT -5
You're right, but no amount of teaching, showing, lecturing, etc. makes up for experience. I've had some bad relationships. I'm actually glad. It made me more compassionate and also gave me a perspective of what not to do.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:31:57 GMT -5
What grade did your elementary school go up to?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2012 12:33:53 GMT -5
My dad asked a few weeks ago if I was seeing a lot of kids go back to school as they get older... in fact we've had the opposite happen. Son's age range in our group has almost doubled in the past year as more and more parents take their kids out of school Schools are economically troubled... they are closing schools, moving kids into larger classrooms... One local middle school in particular is a huge problem... a woman who teaches there has had to file reports twice this year because kids in mass lectures have put hands ON HER, the teacher, inappropriately... one had to be physically restrained...
I am not saying this is norm. I am saying, more and more parents around here seem to be decidding they do not necessarily want the kind of socialization they see being offered in public schools at the moment...
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