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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30160 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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This excellent piece on age segregation has got me thinking about how serious and pervasive this problem is. As the author states:

Young adults are afraid to have children, because they can’t possibly imagine adding some to the life they currently have. New parents are isolated from most of their previous friends, as their paths suddenly never cross again unless they too have kids of their own. Children compete within their age group at schools, never having a chance to either mentor someone or have an older mentor themselves. Teenagers have no idea what to do with their lives, because they don’t know anyone who isn’t a teacher or their parent. And everyone is afraid of growing old because they think that the moment they stop going to the office they’ll simply disappear.

As discussed in @2rafa's post downthread, a major issue of the fertility crisis is a lack of time. Another issue it seems is a lack of even interacting with children unless you have some yourself, or have some in your family. I wonder if the lack of time among young adults in the West is causative of this age segregation?

Regardless, it likely has its roots in the K-12 education system. It's profoundly unnatural from a cultural standpoint to only be in the same peer group as people right around your age. I'm convinced it's unhealthy, and it predisposes us in a massive way to only socialize with people close to our age.

Do you think age segregation is an issue as well? If not, why not?

I do think age segregation is a problem for all the reasons you observe. One room schoolhouses were once the norm, with older kids helping younger. Larger families and tribes were once the norm, with older children contributing to raising younger children. Children working alongside parents was once the norm; they learned labor at their parents' side, by doing (badly at first, then better as they grew).

But segregation is, or is at least believed to be, efficient. Adults can get more work done if they aren't simultaneously tending to children. Children can be educated en masse if they are sorted by approximate ability. Age is an efficient approximator of ability--far from precise, but adequate for factory-style education.

I assume that we could probably have the civilization we do without the age segregation, but maybe I'm wrong about that. I bet there is a charter school or private school out there somewhere experimenting with mixed-age classrooms; it would be interesting to see how those operate in modernity.

Montessori age groups are 3 years each starting age 3 and up. But under 3s are separate into 2 groups, little babies and toddlers.

So yeah, plenty of Montessori private schools don't segregate year-by-year.

My elementary school gifted program combined 1st-5th grade into one classroom with two teachers. The child had to have a IQ score of 130+ to be assigned into the classroom. I can't really say if the age mixing was very beneficial. There's the obvious cofounder of everyone having a high IQ. It wasn't disastrous, at least. I think I had trouble learning spelling compared to my peers in normal classes, but I was ahead in reading and logic.

I believe a lot of the Montessori schools do this.

That's a definition of Montessori teaching. There are a few multi-year age groups. If a school segregates year-by-year then they aren't Montessori.

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