It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most of the organizations I highlight in Unschooled are independently run. Disruptive innovation may originate with individual ingenuity, but it is fueled by consumer demand and value creation within the private sector.
Tag: children
The Weakest Generation
As it turns out, sharing a downtown loft with a horde of dysfunctional roommates, taking an Uber every time you need to travel, and using Postmates instead of going grocery shopping doesn’t exactly create functioning adults. There is plenty of blame to go around. Helicopter parenting, participation trophies, a lack of real-world experiences and work (whatever happened to summer jobs?), and the systemic failures of higher education have all played their part. Let’s talk a bit about the last one.
Don’t Let Measles Hysteria Defeat Freedom
Vaccines as such don’t bother me a bit. But I believe that you own your body, and that you are therefore entitled to decide what may or may not be put into that body. If you choose to forgo any or all vaccinations, that’s your choice to make for yourself and for your children or wards.
The Hardest Thing
Parenting is the hardest thing in my life. It’s a series of new situations that require new modes of thinking, always in moments where you are too pressed for time to do much thinking. So they are a test of instincts and habits. Whatever gut reaction comes out of you is usually the best you can do in the moment.
Big Business: Recasting the Anti-Hero
My main criticism: Tyler is so pro-business that he often forgets (at least rhetorically) to be pro-market. He spends minimal time calling for moderate deregulation – and even less calling for radical deregulation. So while he effectively calls attention to everything business does for us, he barely shows readers how much business could do for us if government got out of the way.
This Is What Peace Looks Like
This – here, now, concretely, in front of me- is a small vision of what I and all of my idealistic friends and forebears talk about when we talk about the world we want. This is what people have fought and died for. This is it. Peace becomes far more interesting and compelling when it has a face. And that face is far more beautiful than any of the allure of war and conflict.
The ADHD Overdiagnosis Epidemic Is a Schooling Problem, Not a Child One
While ADHD may be a real and debilitating ailment for some, the startling upsurge in school-age children being labeled with and medicated for this disorder suggests that something else could be to blame. More research points to schooling, particularly early schooling, as a primary culprit in the ADHD diagnosis epidemic.
You Have No Right to Your Culture
Most complaints about immigration are declarative: “Immigrants take our jobs.” “Immigrants abuse the welfare state.” “Immigrants won’t learn English.’ “Immigrants will vote for Sharia.” One complaint, however, is usually phrased as a question: “But don’t people have a right to their culture?” When people so inquire, their tone is usually conciliatory, as if to say, “Surely, even you will accept this.” My considered judgment, however, is that this challenge is a true Trojan Horse. No one, no one, has “a right to their culture.”
The Value of a Self-Directed Summer for Kids
Childhood anxiety and depression can be linked to a high-pressure environment and not feeling in control of one’s life and circumstances. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that anxiety and depression are a major concern for teens and that academics are a top stressor.
Governing Least: A Litany of Insight
“The reason France does not require aid is not because some external group took pity on the French, but that they were able to generate exponential economic growth themselves. This makes it puzzling that philosophers write long books about aid without mentioning economic growth, and generally seem to imply that the path to escaping poverty lies through individual altruism. Why ignore the only mechanism that has ever succeeded in lifting millions of people out of poverty when thinking about poverty?”