Growing mastery and agency

We should be thinking much harder about ensuring children can make meaningful contributions, and we should be teaching them in ways that are sensitive to the context of the real world. We are not looking for a job but opportunities for mastery: learning and practice beyond the depth one would find along the common path, which demands no such thing.

That is from Simon Sarris's article in Palladium about how a schooling isn't enough for young people.

At this point, probably my most unconventional belief is that we should be giving teenagers more apprenticeship opportunities at companies. I feel weird saying this because it sounds like I want to return to a world where children worked in coal mines, which is very much not what I want. Instead, I think there is a type of learning that happens best hands on with real stakes and that by keeping children away from it we are doing them a disservice.

One of the things I notice with my children, who are very young (under 1 and 3), is that they are happiest when working on something that is outside their comfort zone, but within their capability, especially when it matters to the rest of the family. My three year old has had a toy cleaning set that she hardly ever played with but now uses daily to sweep up after dinner. I don't want to draw conclusions that are too sweeping from what I see observing my kids, but I do suspect there is something there.

2023-06-22