Apropos of nothing, when I read Newt I did not think of the Gin-Grinch, I thought of the kid from Aliens. Carry on, then.

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newt would probably have quite a bit to say on unusual childhoods, except for being fictional/dead.

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I dunno, what I wanted to be when I was 13 was any number of things, one of which is the career I am working to embark upon, but also included like 5 billion other things. Also when I went to college, I almost got stuck in a career that would have, it turns out, made me completely miserable, even though at the time I thought it was the best idea ever. I wasn't aware enough of things outside of my own desires to figure out what I would like to do then that I would still like to do eventually...
Having "created" adolescence, I don't think its gonna be such an easy thing to then dump it.

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I was talking with Dan about this earlier, and I also have a lot of issues with this idea. The expectation that puberty = "real" responsibility and "real" work worked in the past, sure... when there was class exploitation up that wazoo and women died in childbirth by the time they were 25 after birthing eight kids...

I don't think you can protect people from class and gender roles without at least a semblance of a level playing field. I mean, you already see it to some extent, because in some states, it's legal to drop out as early as 16. So the poor kids drop out as soon as they can, an alarming percentage of the girls get pregnant, and the men end up stuck in dangerous, ultimately low paying ($20 an hour at 16 is great, but at 50, when you're still doing the same, dangerous, manual labor, not so much) jobs that they work until they physically aren't capable of working anymore. While the rich kids at least graduate high school, and are likely to go on to college.

I'm all for making education resources available 24/7, and for stream lining education in general, but there's a lot of stuff people learn in school that has nothing to do with math and science and other testable qualities. Cutting people off from that at 13 because that's how they did it in the good old days would be a huge step backwards.

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this is a stupid idea.

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brb mutilating you

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