This article resonated with me, as someone who felt the fixed tracks of school often held me back and wasted my time with busy work like random craft projects or homework that didn't further my understanding. It's all lost time that I'll never get back, that I could have spent in some alternate way. Hell, even just spending more time with my parents living our life together would have been great. Instead, childhood flies by with much of that time taken by force seemingly, or as the article puts it, with a lack of agency.
This particular line is something I foresee as a future problem:
> I suspect the downplaying of agency in childhood not only creates fewer opportunities for great people, it must also create more marginal people
The less agency, and corresponding personal responsibility is given out, the more likely it is that we will condition future generations to expect things to be provided. After all, they are used to diminished choice and lesser agency, and removing those training wheels can be intimidating. That's not only a risk, but it is also sad, because I think it will have some indirect impact on the creativity of future generations and the intangibles of life.
This article is focused on childhood and schooling. Maybe those are addressable via concepts like school choice (vouchers). But I would argue that problems of agency extend to adulthood as well. Agency is something that needs to be defended through our policies and laws. For example, I foresee future policies that are hostile towards car ownership as eroding agency. I see the practical need for continuous work history (no gaps in employment) as eroding agency. I see the 5-day work week as eroding agency. I'm sure other HN folks will have their own set of examples and desires for greater agency that are very different from mine. I feel like it'll be harder to solve for all of it except to err on the side of individual freedoms when possible.
Note that discouraging car ownership—and instead encouraging cycling with safe infrastructure, like the Netherlands has been doing for the last 50 years—actually dramatically increases independence for both children and adults: https://thecityateyelevel.com/stories/biking-the-streets-to-...
Thanks for sharing. Some of what that article outlines resonates with me, and reflecting on what I see today, it does seem odd that there aren't as many children out on bicycles. However, I also was able to have the same freedoms of being able to bike around as a child (without parental supervision) in a car-centric setting. That may be because I lived in the suburbs and not some very dense urban center, but my point is it doesn't have to be a binary choice.
As an adult, the type of agency I derive from cars is slightly different. It's about being able to go where I want quickly, without the waiting times of public transit or slow speeds of a bicycle. It's about being able to put that faster travel time to use, by spending the new free time on other activities. For example I can run errands, manage children, meet with a friend, and go to the movies all in one day thanks to the magic of a personal car. And when I go out of town, a car lets me go wherever I want with nearly endless freedom only limited by availability of road infrastructure, while moving the cargo (and people) I want with me at those destinations.
This particular line is something I foresee as a future problem:
> I suspect the downplaying of agency in childhood not only creates fewer opportunities for great people, it must also create more marginal people
The less agency, and corresponding personal responsibility is given out, the more likely it is that we will condition future generations to expect things to be provided. After all, they are used to diminished choice and lesser agency, and removing those training wheels can be intimidating. That's not only a risk, but it is also sad, because I think it will have some indirect impact on the creativity of future generations and the intangibles of life.
This article is focused on childhood and schooling. Maybe those are addressable via concepts like school choice (vouchers). But I would argue that problems of agency extend to adulthood as well. Agency is something that needs to be defended through our policies and laws. For example, I foresee future policies that are hostile towards car ownership as eroding agency. I see the practical need for continuous work history (no gaps in employment) as eroding agency. I see the 5-day work week as eroding agency. I'm sure other HN folks will have their own set of examples and desires for greater agency that are very different from mine. I feel like it'll be harder to solve for all of it except to err on the side of individual freedoms when possible.