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Self organized play. It is the sine qua non of childhood agency. Kids will, left to their own devices, self organize to achieve their goals, with those goals mostly being or rhyming with "fun." We know this from Herodotus, who tells us how to identify a high agency child who might become the Great King of Persia, and who is right about everything in the end:
What do we have here? Boys naturally play, they naturally choose the best and most noble of them as leader, they punish those who don't participate. They're learning to operate within the world according to their abilities, developing their leadership abilities, Cyrus is clearly a future leader. In a nobility based society, that must mean that he has noble blood and is meant for great things, because he has such strong agency.
We still recognize that young leaders will grow into great leaders, but we've Goodharted it into adult-organized school-sponsored clubs that don't really do much of anything but provide "Leadership Positions" for gunners to put in their college applications.
What we need to do instead is encourage entirely self-organized play for young kids, put them in a position where they both have the ability and the desire to self-organize to do things that interest them. To do this we need to do three things: Allow and accept reasonable limitations to abilities, allow and accept reasonable risks to safety, allow and accept reasonable suboptimal outcomes in tradeoff for more agency and creativity. As a toy example take Basketball, and you have three basic paradigms: Sandlot1 archetype of kids playing self-organized pick-up games every day on their own, the organized coached league archetype of youth basketball, and the Bowling Alone archetype of a kid practicing skills by himself in the driveway of his home.
Sandlot is a perfect mid-century American equivalent to the Cyrus story above: the boys self-organize to play out the stories and legends they see adults playing out, the best of them (Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez) is their natural leader and goes on to become a great man.
For the most part we can say for our toy example that a coached team in a league is going to produce the best outcomes in terms of developing basketball talent and minimal risk while giving almost no freedom and developing no agency for the players, pick up games develop agency but give a lower quality in basketball development, practicing skills alone in your driveway gives maximum freedom as to time and style to the kid while developing low quality skills and no organizational agency.
What we want is to develop kids who self-organize spontaneously to achieve their goals. We want kids to Sandlot themselves, to get together and decide to play, figure out the obstacles on their own, and play ball. That's agency. We don't want them to sit at home doing drills by themselves, that doesn't develop agency, and it also doesn't tend to help kids develop any skills. And we don't want to force them to only compete in organized leagues, where they are told what to do and when to do it, as that limits agency: instead of playing basketball as a fun activity they do on their own, they play basketball when mommy takes them to basketball practice and the coach tells them to play basketball.
Limitations are the core of creativity. If every kid has a basketball hoop in their driveway, there is no need to go to each other's houses to play, you can just stay home and play by yourself. Sure, if I have a basketball hoop then I can go out and practice free throws any time I want, but that keeps from doing the far better activity of playing with friends and prevents us all from learning to self-organize. Needing something from others creates the need to self-organize, to create a social grouping and do things together. If the basketball hoop is at Chris' house, then to shoot basketball I need to go to Chris' house and hang out with him. If we both have a basketball hoop in our driveways, then I don't need to cooperate with Chris. But the limitations have to be reasonable, we have to provide enough stuff to allow kids to play, but not so much stuff that they don't need to get creative or work together. I have to be allowed to do some things to get there, which requires accepting...
Risks have to be accepted in this process. I have to get to Chris' house, a couple miles away. That means I have to be allowed and trusted to walk there, ride a bike there, some accident might happen on the trip. I have to be there for some time by myself. I have to have the free time to do it. I have to be out of my parents' sight for that time. Chris and his older brother might beat me up. I might get hurt. My parents have to be willing to accept that, rather than requiring that I only play basketball in a league with coaches that keep me from getting bullied or beat up and have been SAFESPORT certified etc.
Suboptimal Outcomes The best youth athletes come out of coached programs optimized to teach kids skills properly, not out of spontaneous kids playing for fun. The more coaching the better. But that reduces agency. We have to be willing to accept that we're trading some degree of agency development for some degree of basketball skill development.
Now of course, the ideal is probably somewhere in the middle. Kids can be on a school team or in a once-a-week organized league while also playing pick-up after school every day, and a kid that really loves basketball might want to spend hours practicing free throws or dribbling drills on his own even when nobody else wants to. Leagues help to build skill and love for the game, encouraging kids to later move on to self-organizing.
We can apply this model to everything. When one kid had an xbox, everyone wanted to go to his house to play xbox. When every kid has an xbox, they all vegetate at home. When one kid has a car they all go on adventures, when every kid has a car or no one is allowed to drive anywhere, nothing happens. Kids need limitations to overcome, acceptance of risk in overcoming them, and acceptance that it might not be the absolute best use of their time in doing so.
This seems obviously correct to me. Using a kid you knew as inspiration is not defamation.
You and I remember school very differently. And this isn't just a gotcha, huge numbers of famous, successful people had terrible experiences with boys at school. It used to be taken for granted that allowing children to self-organise their societies produced character, but then many people found that instead it produced spoiled, self-satisfied bullies and their hangers-on.
What if it does both? What if you can't get one without the other? What if you can't have character building without risking some kids getting bullied?
Then I will reluctantly admit that contra BAP, I do not want to live in a society of barbarian warlords.
Personally, I am unconvinced that school bullies and the first XI football team are in fact the best and brightest of us. I see no evidence that this is so. If anything, the children who do well in later life seem to be the misfits who had to learn because nobody else was there to lean on. Even in earlier times, much British and American greatness (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt) came from aristocrats who were educated at home and did not go to school.
I accept that there is some modern propaganda also pointing that way, but it didn't come from nothing. That's not to say that the optimal level of bullying and hurtful comments is 0%, but leaving boys to self-organise society does not produce good society.
Cope. There is no positive correlation for misfits and genius or success, we just tell ourselves there is because it's a comfortable story to tell to losers. Some teenage misfits are smart, others are dumb. Some jocks are very successful. All studies on the topic show that varsity athletes do better than non-athletes across most life metrics.
Young Teddy was asthmatic and sickly as a child, but at 14 he got bullied by some older kids and he decided to do something about it. He took up exercise and boxing, and made himself better. He dedicated himself to The Strenuous Life to advance himself. His entire life is the proof of the character building thesis: the bullies who attacked him triggered the rise of the Rough Rider. If he had never met those bullies, he might never have become the man he was destined to be.
I'm not advocating for boys organizing the whole of society, I'm advocating for boys (and girls) being allowed to organize themselves in a limited setting.
I'm not saying losers are destined to do well. I'm saying a disproportionate amount of people who make a real difference used to be losers.
Specifically according to your source*, high-school athletes are more likely to be employed, more likely to have a degree (American universities give athletic scholarships, so...), and more likely to take part in physical sports (again, they're athletes!). I was talking of rather higher ambitions.
Again, bro getting rich by betting on crypto is frankly the least impressive way of being 'very successful' that I can imagine. He doesn't seem to have done anything actually worth doing in his life, excepting sports if you're into that, just slid naturally into the kind of role that popular studly men do well in. I know lots of these people in the City - they're high confidence and high charisma but they don't actually create anything or achieve anything.
That's not the way I heard it. He did it because his father suggested it. (I will look this up when I can). He was also not very good with people compared to his more popular siblings, and definitely not a 'natural leader' at that age or really for some time.
I meant creating a good society for children, but also you seem to be advocating that the 'natural leaders' of boys and girls should be put in charge of society when they grow up.
*The actual source gives:
Educational
• any postsecondary education after high school for academic credit (i.e., college, university, or vocational, technical, or trade school) by 2000 (8 years after scheduled high school graduation);
• attainment of a bachelor’s degree or higher by 2000;
Labor Market • employment in 2000;
• full-time employment in 2000;
• income in 1999;
Health
• cigarette use in 2000;
• alcohol use in 2000;
• binge drinking in 2000;
• participation in physical fitness activities in 2000;
• participation in group or team sports and recreation in 2000.
And what, pray tell, might those be? Unless it's something utterly esoteric, or so rarefied as to constitute such a tiny number of people that statistical analysis becomes impossible, I posit that you'll find more athletes than you expect among their number.
From his autobiography:
Teddy directly states that this formative experience changed his entire life.
Well I didn't really say it, Herodotus did, though he is ultimately right about everything. Science says so as well: Studies show huge percentages of Fortune 500 CEOs were college athletes, though maybe that's too boring for you again, and the really smart kids are outcasts who do super important stuff like write groundbreaking Harry Potter fanfics or something.
But also, it's not really advocating for jocks per se as natural leaders. It would be those with the relevant talent to the task at hand who would assume leadership, whose peers will recognize them as leaders. Kids will recognize a great mathematician if his skill helps him win at cards, or a great prankster who makes everyone laugh, or a great singer if they're trying to form a band. All aspects of human endeavor naturally lend charisma to their practitioners. I'm advocating for letting kids pursue their goals on their own, how they organize is up to them.
Building things, inventing things, writing things. Some athletes, I'm sure, but I doubt many were at the top of the pecking order at school.
Fair enough.
Sarcasm aside, you're correct. I view Fortune 500 CEOs as being glorified babysitters, often barely competent. They're not idiots, often they're quite bright, but they're golden retrievers: they get those kinds of positions by being the right kind of chap who everyone likes, and they try to stay on the horse and not to fuck it up too badly before they leave. Say what you like about Yudowsky - and I do - at least he has ideas. Lots of my most charismatic schoolfriends went into Goldman Sachs and consultancy and the like, it's such a waste.
Sorry, I'm up too late and a bit bleary, but this just doesn't match on to my experience of life at all. Being good at this stuff (except football) makes you a loser. There is nothing that schoolboys (and often pre-1980 or so the men that they grew up to become) like to sneer at more than some swot earnestly making an effort to be good at things. Good for you if your life experience was different, but read say CS Lewis about his time at school for a counterpoint.
EDIT: I'm probably being a little belligerent. It's not even that I disagree with you completely, it's just the stunning levels of naivete and smugness in that story from Herodotus (on which my own schooling was at least partially based) irritate me. Oh, you didn't kiss the boot when the big kid told you to, and then he had his mates beat you up? Clearly you aren't high-agency and are doomed to a life of sad mediocrity while we reorder our society into bronze age Persia. Let the kids treat each other however they like, all things are for the best in this the best of all possible worlds...
We despise the experiences our ancestors told us would build character in young people, then are shocked that we lack men of character.
Bohr was on the Danish National Football team at the Olympics. Hemingway boxed and played football. Every president between Eisenhower and HW Bush, except LBJ, was a varsity athlete. Robert Moses was a varsity swimmer.
And yet he still became CS Lewis.
Or look at Elon Musk who went through a heck of a character building school experience back in the bad old South Africa:
Which sure sounds like it would be bad for Elon Musk, awkward target of bullies, and not at all like character building. It probably isn't something I would choose to send my kid to as described. But then he turned into Elon Musk. So we shouldn't totally discount that being the victim of bullies is a canon event that builds the character of the outcast who becomes a genius.
What the original comment advocated for was not sports specifically, or for every kid to be forced to hang out with every other kid and play sports. It was for kids to be allowed to self organize to do what they want to do. That can be form a band, that can be D&D, can be a creative circle, can be a WoW raid.
I've all the sympathy in the world for the loser, the outcast, the dork, the nerd, the geek. But I don't think they are any better served, ultimately, by safetyism than is the jock.
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