No. 20: Experiment in obscurity, the value of tinkering, and a generation falls behind
Embrace the time when you can learn and play while you are young and unknown.
First, some numbers…
1000% - Between 1977 and 2015, cost of textbooks increased by over 1000%
1,597 - Books challenged in 2021, according to American Library Association
27% - Lowest in 43 years, only 27% of Americans have confidence in their institutions
Message for graduates - Embrace your obscurity
The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.
Soon after, you learn that most of the world doesn’t necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it’s true. As the writer Steven Pressfield says, “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.”
This is actually a good thing, because you want attention only after you’re doing really good work. There’s no pressure when you’re unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you’re unknown, there’s nothing to distract you from getting better. No public image to manage. No huge paycheck on the line. No stockholders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.
You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.
Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.
via Austin McKleon
The value of tinkering
TL;DR: Our children and students are increasingly engaged in a very structured and busy world that does not allow for the development of the valuable skills and growth mindset that come with time to tinker.
Tinkering is, by definition, “to work with something in an unskilled or experimental manner.”
As an elementary school science teacher, I find this not easy to admit, but some of my students’ most rewarding and meaningful classes over the years have happened when I have taken a back seat and let my students “tinker.” Whether they want to dam up a stream during a water study, build nests with mud and sticks while investigating local bird populations, or, after completing a set of Lego models, independently design and build spinning Lego tops from which energetic battles ensue, students love having time to explore and investigate independently.
Tinkering is not a word that many educators use, and for good reason: parents and administrators have come to expect us to use certain educational buzzwords when discussing our strategies, approaches, lessons, concepts or skills that are to be taught. To an elementary teacher, there seems to be a steady push to engage students at a younger and younger age with more structured and teacher-driven processes, and so I am increasingly worried about their lack of unstructured time.
Why are millennials falling behind?
Even though millennials make up the largest percentage of full-time workers in the US, Scott Galloway breaks down how they are experiencing the lowest economic growth compared to Boomers and Gen X generations.
Further reading: The unluckiest generation in U.S. history (Washington Post)
Till next time…
Hurt me with the truth. Don't comfort me with a lie. - Rihanna
Image: Joshua Hoehne