If I had all the time in the world...

[elfs]

Worth Reading Today:

The Expert Mind:

What matters is not experience per se but "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player's progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study...

Having reached an acceptable performance--for instance, keeping up with one's golf buddies or passing a driver's exam--most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind's box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields...

Surely, [skeptics] will say, it takes more to get to Carnegie Hall than practice, practice, practice. Yet this belief in the importance of innate talent, strongest perhaps among the experts themselves and their trainers, is lacking in hard evidence to substantiate it.

A Nation of Wimps:

But taking all the discomfort, disappointment and even the play out of development, especially while increasing pressure for success, turns out to be misguided by just about 180 degrees. With few challenges all their own, kids are unable to forge their creative adaptations to the normal vicissitudes of life. That not only makes them risk-averse, it makes them psychologically fragile, riddled with anxiety. In the process they're robbed of identity, meaning and a sense of accomplishment, to say nothing of a shot at real happiness. Forget, too, about perseverance, not simply a moral virtue but a necessary life skill...

Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends, according to a recent report by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues. There is, instead, a growing no-man's-land of postadolescence from 20 to 30, which they dub "early adulthood." Those in it look like adults but "haven't become fully adult yet-- traditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parenting-- because they are not ready or perhaps not permitted to do so."

Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent.

Comments

I can see that.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

I've been having a lot of fun with my sewing lately. I've been taking on techniques that I haven't used before. They're turning out well anyway, somewhat to my surprise, and the process is satisfying. Now to turn that spirit to other things...
The second portion sounds like a good argument for more personalized education. But there's a big can of worms in there regarding what is the responsibility of parents vs. the responsibility of the school system.

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

Using the classic benchmarks, a self-employed gay man can never be an 'adult' no matter how successful and mature he is, and yet a 18 year old mother of two with a barely earned highschool diploma working at McDonalds is an adult, even if she's living with her parents and still practicing the immature habits that got her those two kids in the first place and her 'husband' has departed for parts unknown. Perhaps, then, the classic benchmarks aren't exactly a valid measurement of maturity, and by choosing to bring them up in his argument, the writer invalidates everything he says, even when he's making some damned good points.

Or maybe I'm just all fogged up on cold medicine, and will think differently later on.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

It's also worth noting that the constraints on women achieving adulthood in this definition are twice as great, because they have half as much time. Death stops men from conception; women over 40 who conceive are taking significant risks with their health.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to ask "What are those benchmarks?" Did they mean "finish school, get a job, get married, have kids?" Or are there some other benchmarks not mentioned here?

Here's a good benchmark for you. Move out of your parents' house, get a job, and pay your bills on time. You can accomplish that before you finish school. You can accomplish that if you're gay. You can accomplish that before you're 19. All that really matters is that you make your own way in the world without anyone else's help, least of all your parents. Hell, you might even be able to take care of a family or a company. That's the only benchmark there ever was, even if that true meaning was hidden behind a lot of chest-thumping and bruhaha about being a Real Man.

[(Anonymous)]

And Isn't this a very american way of defining adulthood. In lots of cultures both western and others people don't move out of there perent's
home, often for the simple reson that its econmically infesable.

[amythis.livejournal.com]

I'm much closer to adulthood as a middle-aged divorcee than I ever was as a post-teen wife.