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Freedom for teenagers
In an interview with Psychology Today, Robert Epstein discusses his view that adolescents are harmed by being restricted and infantilised. This strengthens some of my views about schools and over-protective parenting, which I mentioned in my post on the lies we tell children.
He starts by criticising the “lock-step” rigidity of education, which is crammed in to the first part of our lives, instead of being a life-long process. I could not agree more. I am not sure what the solution is: home eduction, more flexible schools or a mixture of both. More flexible and available adult eduction is definitely part of what we need.
He moves on to the amount of freedom teenagers have. They certainly have too little, thanks to paranoid parents and over-zealous laws — although the situation he describes in the US seems much worse than in other countries.
I cannot say that I am comfortable with the idea that they should be treated as adults: the place I think we should be is somewhere between the extremes of treating them as children and as adults. They are not altogether capable of handling sex or alcohol, or making important decisions unaided. On the other hand a good many would benefit from being allowed to work, from being allowed to travel, and from being allowed to make their own mistakes.
Unfortunately, a the moment we seem to be going the other way.
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[…] Dare to Know. It outlines a possible solution, which also goes a long way to solving the problem of freedom for teenagers, which I discussed […]
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