How to be an adult
Artur Piszek describes the situation of many adults in the United States,
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We are all sure everybody else has [adulting] figured out while being too ashamed to admit we could use a few pointers ourselves.
Are We Cursed By Specialization?
His heading, “Modernity Likes the Helpless You” is partly true but, while I admit that “greas[ing] the wheels of commerce” is a factor, the modern shift to specialization is driven by more than capitalism. I’ll leave that to a subheading below (mostly because I’m not sure it has much value. Also, Artur isn’t making a “good ol' days” argument, so it’s not relevant to his writing anyways).
To Artur’s point, I do agree that there is something about the force of “progress” that funnels people into specialization whether they choose it or not. I explore this in the software domain with why specialize as a software developer. School curriculum may have drifted from teaching what was practical for community life into what’s needed for a student’s specialization at the local community college. Those skills which might be most practical, like personal finance, were notoriously absent in the public school I attended.
Who Should Teach Us?
That many adults are ill-equiped for the commonplace skills of budgeting, home repair, basic parenting, etc. is not merely an oversight in our education, or our failure to ask for help. Sometimes those who might teach will not. Often it’s simple oversight, but some will not overcome their desire to be needed. It’s better to keep their place in the social hierarchy than sharing their best tools with others. For example, only secure managers share their own tools.
Specialization As Maslow’s Hierarchy
The first time I reviewed the 1834 Ray’s Arthmetic curriculum, I admired its practicality. “So this is what Laura Ingalls Wilder learned in school,” I thought to myself. The curriculum is filled with bartering and agricultural scenarios to equip the young student to market their produce and goods in the town square. No Trigonometry or Calculus to be found. Folks like the Ingalls family, who lived on the cusp of extinction in the prairie frontier of South Dakota, would soon have been lost were they more skilled in the calculation of planetary movements than crafting warm, durable clothes. But her social location and Einstein’s are night-and-day and, while I respect the practical skill of frontier settlers, I’m grateful that modern life supports more Einsteins (well, more common-people Einsteins; there have long been geniuses supported by the state, church or nobles).