Comments on: Academia: Age of Intelligence

By: Webs

Webs — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:16:00 +0000

Ditto what George said.IMO: teens and children are filled with lots of blossoming knowledge and are excited to tell anyone. What they need is not only someone that will listen, but will also engage. I think some parents miss the mark on this one. I feel in some ways mine did. I have memories of being flat out told I was wrong at an early age (also by the occasional teacher). I don’t think any of it was intentional, just an adult not knowing how to connect with someone younger. And since no parents or adults are given manuals on this stuff, I can’t say I can blame them 100%.This is what adults need to steer clear from though. You don’t have to quiz a child or teen, but just engage them and they will talk. I can’t speak for Kaden, but this is what I was missing. Now I’m 25 and I still run into the “You’re the young guy” syndrome. Where I have to prove myself to get people to listen. It’s assumed that because of my young age I’m lacking in experience and because of this I’m wrong. It’s happened at every single job I have ever had. My key now is to do more listening and less talking. That way I don’t get treated as a whipper-snapper and I usually end up learning another way to do what I might have known, or I just learn something new.

By: george.w

george.w — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:12:00 +0000

“Times are indeed changing and I think younger people are being taken more seriously in many ways.”I certainly hope so. One of the things I always liked about Fred Rogers is that he truly respected children. To expand on what Chaos Lee said, most adults aren’t even sure other people are real people at all, let alone children and young people.Oddly, one of the biggest challenges in Buddhism is to achieve “the beginner’s mind”. Harder as you get older, but it’s the only way I’ve kept bread on the table all these years.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:36:00 +0000

Thinking back, the most exasperating encounters I had with adults who wouldn’t or couldn’t respect a young person’s understanding happened at academic-team competitions. I did the whole Quiz Bowl thing for a couple years, and our team was generally accounted a pretty strong player (twice annual state champs. . . in Alabama). Every once in a while, the official answer to a question would be wrong, and it’d always be a toss-up whether the judge recognized the error. Many times, the teachers running the show couldn’t admit that an answer on the paper was mistaken. The most galling were when the meet was held in a school library; we would walk over to the shelf, pull out a book, point to the right page and say, “Look!” Never worked.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:09:00 +0000

Thank you for your post. I agree with you that adults play a part in devaluing students’ education, and I wish more students were like you in that they took classes to challenge themselves rather than taking what they think they should, or taking classes to get by until graduation.I’m working on a follow-up to my previous piece that I think will explain my position a little better.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:30:00 +0000

Many "Students today put no value on their education."But then, so do many adults, even Presidents.

By: Jacob

Jacob — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:19:00 +0000

@all Thank you all for your awesome comments and thoughtful replies!@George; I do see your point, and most of this was aimed at that group of adults who do bicker, "Kids nowadays!" and not so much the rest of the bunch. Times are indeed changing and I think younger people are being taken more seriously in many ways.@Lee I lol'd

By: Chaos Lee

Chaos Lee — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:34:00 +0000

There will always be those who somehow can’t believe that kids are even real people until they’re over 21. As though only experience validates any knowledge, understanding, or quality of thought. Just as there always little bastards who think anyone over 21 are basically walking corpses oblvious to how completely irrelevant they actually are.When I was in high school, I was embrassed by how aboslutely vacuous and uninteresting the majority of my peers were.Now I’m thirty, and I’m downright disgusted by how absolutely vacuous and uninteresting the majority of my peers are. People are people at any age. I pre-judge people on a very primal level. “You have opposable thumbs, I see. Fuck off, eh?”

By: Cobalt

Cobalt — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:24:00 +0000

Right on.Don’t get me started on “child psychologists.”

By: Woozle

Woozle — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:54:00 +0000

In the chat rooms Harena and I frequent, we’ve run into a pretty good selection of smart kids who seemed “just like adults” (actually, clearly superior to some of the adults we’ve met in those same rooms), some as young as 12 or 13.And I’m saying this as someone born in the 1960s, with an offsprungen who is 13.(Aside: …and who actually said once “aren’t you going to ask me about my grades? all the other relatives do.” and I basically said no, I only care about your grades if they’re worrying you (or if you’re particularly proud of them, but the implication was clear that I should be Worrying About Anna’s Grades because it’s Vital To Have The Best Grades So You Can Get Into a Good School… never mind that she’s still years and years away from being a senior, and senior grades are pretty much all they look at) and I’m much more concerned about your morale being good, because that’s what killed my academic career. (I thought that being related to me, she just might possibly be vulnerable to some of the same/similar problems I had.) Because basically what they teach you in school is mostly BS, and your real education comes from the stuff you read and find out on your own. End aside.)And really, I think that’s one of the ways in which the ‘Net is also The Great Equalizer. You can’t tell how old someone looks when you first meet them, so they have a chance to make a first impression based solely on how they present themselves verbally.There’s also something of a social stigma attached to hanging out with people who are of a radically different age than oneself; interacting on the ‘net seems to completely suppress that stigma, and you have the chance to build up a relationship online which otherwise would have been killed by it — and then you meet in person and you realize it couldn’t possibly have happened without the equalizing influence of the ‘net, even if you’d been in the same town. (It’s a bit odd finding that one is closer in age to the parents of the people one is friends with, and yet still not having much in common with those parents, usually, though again there are a few.)But I digress.My basic thesis: I don’t know what’s wrong with most people, except that they’re generally content with the status quo and therefore try to reinforce it wherever possible by ignoring anything surprising or unusual (such as an intelligent 18-y.o. — who knew that such a thing was possible! Why didn’t Carl Sagan warn us??).And yeah, Dana, I think an alliance between non-authority-based people of different ages could be a large part of what saves the world. (Hmm, is this a good time to post a link to my idea? I just realized I need to write a third part to the non-technical intro, though, explaining how it actually works… so it’s not quite ready.)

By: Dana Hunter

Dana Hunter — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Dana certainly was! Of course, now I know (or at least know of) quite a few kids and teens who are far smarter than the adults condescending to them, so I’m less surprised than I used to be. Maybe we should start a Meet-up group wherein smart kids, teens and adults get a chance to exchange knowledge. When we’re done doing that, we’ll take over the world. Between all those generations, I think we’ll know enough to do so. ;-)I’d say something a lot more intelligent about this post, but I’m dog fucking tired, and I think my IQ’s gone down by at least 50 points because of it. I’ll just sit back in me nice comfy chair and let you be the smart one, as you so often are.Keep ambushing unsuspecting adults with your brains, my dear.