I suspect I don’t have significant thoughts about children because my own memories show no real sharp transition or even gradient between childhood and adulthood. Just a steady ramp of increasing control over my own life. There was no sense of arrival or rites of passage.
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My main memory of childhood is just figuring out adults and schooling early enough that I could just “solve” my way out of their sphere of influence with a decent muzzle velocity, no real damage. Books were mostly helpful, especially ones I chose myself, adults were mostly not.
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Just took care to almost never knowingly push adult buttons (though a couple of times perverse moods got the better of me). And just meet and slightly exceed their expectations so they’d leave me be in benign neglect.
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I was equipped to test well and work the system to my advantage, top 10% without killing myself, but nearly 100% of the kids knew how to work the system as best as their aptitude allowed. Almost none took the system seriously. Maybe 4-5 kids did in a class of 40.
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I’d guess 10% kids are clueless enough to run the maze for the cheese as opposed to just keeping adults out of their hair. Another 10% with serious behavioral issues. 80% just indulging adult conceits about the importance and sacredness of childhood institutions like school.
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The reason for optimism in response to stuff like Packer’s article is that kids seem to take educational institutions less seriously than parents, and are very good at surviving almost any environment pretty intact, besides serious material deprivation.
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They mostly learn from each other, adapt, immunize themselves against the worst excesses of adult bullshit, and follow good instincts about what it takes to survive as a human being while satisfying adult delusions of pedagogical agency.
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Replying to
South Park, Simpsons get the view right. It’s 10% Lisas, 10% Ralph Wiggums, 80% Barts, Stans, Kyles, Cartmans. Living in their own world (World B) crafted in the interstices of the one adults think they’ve crafted for them (World A). They just pretend to live in World A.
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Actually the Butters archetype is more messed up than Ralph Wiggum. Ralph is in his own world at least. Butters takes the Workd A crafted by adults seriously.
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Open rebels are actually as cluelessly trapped as Butters. The smartest way to rebel and subvert and escape is to tell the adults what they want to hear and get put as quickly and with as low effort as possible.
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This does not mean “doing well”. Good grades are only the lowest-effort escape route if you happen (like me) to test well easily. Otherwise get your C’s to get out, get your learning elsewhere.
I got good grades generally, but I’m only proud of how little I worked for them 😎
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