It doesn’t require much imagination to explain why the YouTube channel, “Dad, how do I?” grew to 5 million subscribers. For those unfamiliar with it, the channel offers tutorials explaining the simple things that a father should have taught his children: how to tie a tie, how to change a tire, etc.
While absent fathers have indisputably become more common, there is more going on here. There is a failure to raise children, to help ready them for the world they will inhabit. Both parents contribute to an arrested development, stalling their child’s growth. Rather than teaching them these lessons, it is expected that the ever-child will contact the parent whenever the information is needed.
This failure to raise can be seen in public schools as well. Creating a budget, paying taxes, or adjusting communication based on social context and hierarchy are ignored, but the life cycles of the planets are rarely overlooked.
Do not misunderstand: It is not the case that children should only be educated in the things that will help them to be economically sustainable or to be “producers.” We ought not to live only to work. Man is made for more. However, we are neglecting essential skills, in the home and schools, and in so doing, perpetuating a kind of extended adolescence.
Are we really trying to form young people, or are we just wasting their time until they reach a certain age? Most schoolwork is busywork, designed to occupy 8 hours every day while the parents go to work. The teachers know it, the parents know it, and the children know it. It amounts to an unspoken collusion between the teachers, parents, and government, which sacrifices precious years, and perhaps ultimately, much more.
This pattern does not end at high school, especially for those from more affluent families. Plenty of young people aren’t going to college to prepare for a future, they’re going because they’re “not ready” (emotionally) to enter the workforce and they want a few more years of wasting time having fun with friends. Colleges do little to disavow this notion.
As a result, it is common for high school graduates to enter college without any comprehension of what they want to do with their lives, and having never dedicated serious time to philosophy or religion, presenting a near blank slate for ideologically motivated professors. G.K. Chesterton warned about the danger of coming upon ideas without first having been well formed:
“Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller.”
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Likewise, C.S. Lewis, noticing the Ford/Dewey shift towards trying to create factory workers who knew only how to function as “workers” but not as men, wrote extensively against the movement that he saw developing. He warned:
“The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.”
— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
The teacher of today is the propagandist, especially in college but starting much earlier. He teaches that which is not true, and ungrounds the student from his culture, his faith, and his family. His success is a tragic consequence of how young people are given few defenses and little real education with which to combat such deceptions.
“Adulting” is often used playfully, but the word’s seeming ubiquity testifies to the reality of young people who feel ill-equipped and out of place in responsible roles. They intuit their lack of preparation for what they are forced to face, and feel daunted as a result.
Likewise, the refusal to “adult,” or rather, to grow up, manifests in wasted lives. So many are addicted to video games (or worse habits), which treat their time and souls as valueless. They adopted routines that represent the worldview they were immersed in. They are deprived of an interiority that requires time and effort to cultivate.
Exclamations about such people who have no real hobbies, interests, or loves are not without merit, but they often overlook the environment that shaped them: one they grew up in but were never raised to confront. Adulthood is the fruit of formation—of discipline, guidance, responsibility, and meaning. What many young people need is not more time, but more truth. They need homes and schools that raise them with purpose, not merely systems that manage their time until they’re too old to be supervised. If we want a society of adults, truly formed men and women, we must start raising them to be stewards of time, thought, and virtue.
A profound post; and probably one with which many GOOD teachers would agree. However instead of bringing the hammer down on teachers, how about we get the POLITICIANS out of the public school system, and let the teachers, TEACH! Our daughter just retired after 30 years teaching US History and General and AP Psychology in public high school. As in any profession, there are those to whom it is a job, and those to whom it is a vocation, because they truly love to teach. Within a week or two of starting a new school year, our daughter would inevitably state, "I have the greatest kids this year!" Imagine the "luck" of having "the greatest kids" every year for 30 years! She says that most teachers with whom she has taught love "their kids." I believe that's true, because of the wonderful stories she tells. As for permanent retirement...we'll see!!!
A study or just exposure to easily read and possibly not so easily understood, with some effort, books such as Orwell's 1984, Animal farm, biographies of Nicola Tesla and others.
Would do a lot to open up a kids mind, but schools even at the age of 9-10 are failures for many children.