"Why teens Need a Sense of Purpose" - WSJ Article

[Triks]

Kids are addicted to the positive feedback loop of social media, possibly before even starting school. That failure belongs to the parents.

You find ways to get that validation. For me it was WoW, for some it's social media. My gaming time started decreasing when I started getting real-world success.

[Travis B]

The teacher is a line manager and spends on average more time with the child/teen than the parents do. A good teacher should be able to identify the strengths, weaknesses and interests of a student and guide them. A bad teacher just says "Johnny is getting mediocre grades and this needs to change.".

Just to put things into perspective, if I adopt the same approach to my workers, I will get reprimanded and even fired if they start underperforming because I am the one responsible for them.

Teachers have been getting off easy for far too long.

Not sure how it is in your country, but in the U.S., the bolded part is not true. Once a kid reaches 5th or 6th grade, a teacher will spend maybe an hour with the student each school day. That's an average of less than 30 minutes per day in a calendar year, not to mention the teacher has about 25 other kids they are dealing with simultaneously. If a parent is spending less than 30 minutes a day with their kid, then that's a shit parent.

[Nitros14]

You find ways to get that validation. For me it was WoW, for some it's social media. My gaming time started decreasing when I started getting real-world success.

You'd think with all that success you wouldn't be on mmo-champion.

[Triks]

Not sure how it is in your country, but in the U.S., the bolded part is not true. Once a kid reaches 5th or 6th grade, a teacher will spend maybe an hour with the student each school day. That's an average of less than 30 minutes per day in a calendar year, not to mention the teacher has about 25 other kids they are dealing with simultaneously. If a parent is spending less than 30 minutes a day with their kid, then that's a shit parent.

Here we have class-leaders and specialised teachers. Our school-days run from 07:00-14:00 or 13:00-19:00, depending on the shift. Class leaders spend an average of 8h per week and the others have the rest between them.

How's the whole teaching curriculum structured in the US?

- - - Updated - - -

You'd think with all that success you wouldn't be on mmo-champion.

Made me chuckle.

[Nitros14]

The fact is, nothing you do is ultimately purposeful unless you decide it has purpose. We're all here to eat and sleep and work for a bit until we die. If you're content playing games your whole life and can swing the money to do it that life is no more wasted than a wall street banker's life was. You're both dead at the end and don't care about what you left behind.

If you're unhappy playing games your whole life you've got a problem, but I see no problem with people who enjoy it.

[Lord Pebbleton]

As a university student well within my fourth year with no exams left behind and right on time with all my subjects, I can say this with extreme certainty: school sucks.
(At least here in my country)
You get taught things you don't care about in institutes that promise you an entire different thing, like advanced maths and science in a language school. Focusing on linguistics instead of translation in a translation school. These are things I lived, suffered through, and I still experience to this day. I can't wait for it to end, and I've been waiting for almost 10 years now.
I've come to hate greek and latin culture, I suck at maths, and I strongly dislike other things that I might have enjoyed otherwise, but I have been taught them in such a terrible and obnoxious way that they just became a burden.
I'm not perfect, but I endured because I'm convinced that you cannot go anywhere in life without university education. The vast majority of people is just too incredibly bored (rightfully so), forced to study things they hate, and drop out early/have to repeat the year/fall behind. This situation cannot stand.

[Triks]

The fact is, nothing you do is ultimately purposeful unless you decide it has purpose. We're all here to eat and sleep and work for a bit until we die. If you're content playing games your whole life and can swing the money to do it that life is no more wasted than a wall street banker's life was. You're both dead at the end and don't care about what you left behind.

If you're unhappy playing games your whole life you've got a problem, but I see no problem with people who enjoy it.

I agree - I have more respect for the person that plays games all day but loves every second of it, than I do for some plodder at a Big 4 firm.

[Doctor Amadeus]

This goes for everyone, not just teens.
We ALL need a sense of purpose, or we aren't going to make anything of ourselves or our lives.

This is why you should take an entire weekend for yourself and really think about what you want out of life, write it all down, attach concrete goals to them (think in reverse - what do you need to get there and repeat for every step) and progress towards this every day!

Those that have purpose in life are happier, more successful and generally are the people that others would call "lucky", even though they create their own luck!

Nah this is the kind of self help guru nonsense that warps people minds and gets them doing what others manipulate and need for them to do. Real problems don’t work this way nor are they solved.

[Triks]

As a university student well within my fourth year with no exams left behind and right on time with all my subjects, I can say this with extreme certainty: school sucks.
(At least here in my country)
You get taught things you don't care about in institutes that promise you an entire different thing, like advanced maths and science in a language school. Focusing on linguistics instead of translation in a translation school. These are things I lived, suffered through, and I still experience to this day. I can't wait for it to end, and I've been waiting for almost 10 years now.
I've come to hate greek and latin culture, I suck at maths, and I strongly dislike other things that I might have enjoyed otherwise, but I have been taught them in such a terrible and obnoxious way that they just became a burden.
I'm not perfect, but I endured because I'm convinced that you cannot go anywhere in life without university education. The vast majority of people is just too incredibly bored (rightfully so), forced to study things they hate, and drop out early/have to repeat the year/fall behind. This situation cannot stand.

To play devil's advocate - maths is fun once you start getting into the Monte Carlo model, general financial analysis/data analysis and programming. School and university make it a chore.

[Travis B]

Here we have class-leaders and specialised teachers. Our school-days run from 07:00-14:00 or 13:00-19:00, depending on the shift. Class leaders spend an average of 8h per week and the others have the rest between them.

How's the whole teaching curriculum structured in the US?

It varies somewhat from school to school, but in general, there are 7 periods a day of about 50 - 60 minutes. Each period has a different teacher for the subject (English, Math, Science, History, etc.)

So most teachers will have a student for a little less than 5 hours per week, and that's only during the school year. Keep in mind there is summer vacation and holiday breaks, so there are only 180 school days per year.

Also class sizes can be very large, the high school in my town has an average class size of 34 students. So it's not like the time a teacher does get to spend with a student is anywhere close to 1-on-1 where they can really get to know the student on a personal level.

[Lord Pebbleton]

To play devil's advocate - maths is fun once you start getting into the Monte Carlo model, general financial analysis/data analysis and programming. School and university make it a chore.

There were some fun chapters in my maths/physics book. Those were the ones we skipped. I had to read them on my own to find some fascination in it.
Point is, we were at the same point in the subject as our fellows at the nearby scientific school. As a language school, that was unnecessary. The most of us had to study maths more than other languages in order to pass the year.

[Deleted]

Nah this is the kind of self help guru nonsense that warps people minds and gets them doing what others manipulate and need for them to do. Real problems don’t work this way nor are they solved.

For me it works well.
I often see people claim it's not how the world or life works. I personally find that life and the world are actually surprisingly simple but we are learned otherwise by our parents and teachers. People just like excuses and only see problems where I see possibilities.

Steve Jobs said it best when he said "Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking".

Oh, and I also like Jack Ma's (from Alibaba) way of thinking when people complain about things being hard and when they only see problems.
He suggested that people earn a living then by offering solutions for these problems. It really shows how different successfull people think compared to those that aren't.

[Grimbold21]

This sounds familiar.

Oh yea, Jordan Peterson has talked about this...

[Mic_128]

Here's the article in question:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-tee...64001?mod=e2fb

The study briefly touches upon but doesn't quite nail why young people are so disengaged - schools suck and the teachers simply don't care (and before you start saying "it's the family yadda-yadda", the teachers are essentially line managers in schools and should look after the development of their students). You go to school and they [...]don't provide any guidance for the kids on what they should be doing with their free time

In High School, if any teacher told me what to do during my free time, I would literally have done the opposite.

As an actual teacher now, I wouldn't simply because it's not my job, nor business to parent the child. If they asked me, I'd happily suggest, but I'm not going to lecture them on what they should and shouldn't do away from school.

The teacher is a line manager and spends on average more time with the child/teen than the parents do. A good teacher should be able to identify the strengths, weaknesses and interests of a student and guide them. A bad teacher just says "Johnny is getting mediocre grades and this needs to change.".

The thing is, a lot of that support needs to come from home. Help the kids with homework. Get them a tutor. Read to them. Often many parents don't want to do this and then wonder why their kid isn't doing as great as they'd like.

Teachers have been getting off easy for far too long.

...seriously go fuck yourself. Infraction's be damned, but we have not been 'getting off easy'. Teacher's have been put under more and more stress, more and more demands, with less and less funds (outside of private schools, of course). Weekends marking, holiday periods planning, parents (and students!) being rude and abusive and absolving themselves of all blame because it must be the teacher's fault.

[Deleted]

I think that’s why he and Sam Harris have become so popular, so quickly. Jordan gives meaning through a psychological/metaphorical purpose, Sam gives meaning through scientific truth.

Different people will be attracted more to one, both, or the other.

Why them though?

Its not like there is a desperate shortage of philosophers and psycho-analysts, both contempory and historic, that people could be reading.


The problem here is that 'purpose' will be an Interpreted by the puritanical right to support their work is good for it's own sakes .message to force the young, poor and unemployed into what is essentially forced labour.

[Boricha]

You guys keep trying to assign the full blame to a specific group, parents, teachers, or teens themselves, which I don't believe will lead you anywhere productive. Teens struggle with sense of purpose among many other issues as a cumulative result of their environment, economic-class, those around them and society as a whole. I think the most important thing for them is a stable living situation where they are fed, have healthcare and are not at risk of violence. I agree that the education system needs retooling, but that would require a rethinking of our economy as well. Teachers deal with a lot of their own problems and, in the US, are woefully under-payed and stigmatized as being unable to have a "real career" related to their degree. Parents often see idealized versions of themselves in their child and then set them down paths they never asked for, or didn't understand what they were getting into. Parents also struggle to recognize norms of newer generations, or what the world may look like for their child in the future. There's a lot of problems that will take a long time to solve, but the only the way to move the ball is by creating stronger means of communication between teens, parents, and teachers alike.

[mvaliz]

Oh goddess, another "lets blame the millenials/next generation" article? >_<

I find it actually more likely that teens have found purposes or are at least trying out "purposes", It's kinda in the nature of being a "teen" really. But usually parent's are so full of their self-righteousness and prejudice that they can't see it or can't understand how the modern day works.

[Dontrike]

This goes for everyone, not just teens.
We ALL need a sense of purpose, or we aren't going to make anything of ourselves or our lives.

Or, what will most likely happen, is we try and have a sense of purpose and still make nothing of ourselves.

This is why you should take an entire weekend for yourself and really think about what you want out of life, write it all down, attach concrete goals to them (think in reverse - what do you need to get there and repeat for every step) and progress towards this every day!

Woah woah woah! Who has time to make themselves better in this day and age? Or the funds? Or the ability?

Those that have purpose in life are happier, more successful and generally are the people that others would call "lucky", even though they create their own luck!

That can be true, on occasion, but most of the time it's just about being in the right place at the right time, somehow knowing the right people, which can be because of luck, or the universe throwing you a bone.

Burglars rob your house and kill a family member and your life is in shambles. Why did they not hit a different house? Unfortunately life is nothing but pure luck and all you're trying to do is find the best odds for it to not fuck you up.

[Templar 331]

No I disagree teens like everyone else are told too much who they need to be from others. If people focused on themselves it would be better lead by example or don’t.

Very much this. You can't make someone choose who/what they are, they have to do it themselves.

My little cousin chose to be a film producer but my family didn't like that. He wanted to go to a film school dedicated to the profession but my family bribed and guilt tripped him into going to a university. He failed and hid it from them until he got kicked out. My family can't figure out what's going on and I'm sitting here laughing because I knew their BS would bite them in the ass. They tried to do the same thing with me but since I live hours away they didn't have as much control as they do my cousin.

[Strawberry]

Man, I've been saying, the kids lack that discipline that was whipped into me when I was a kid.

Now they are just spoiled brats.