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How We Might Raise Adults 2010/01/25 (12)
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Jun 5, 2025
Jon Roland explains how building civic virtue is undermined by the street culture and how we might overcome that. With Lela Pittenger. Austin Constitution Meetup Jan. 25, 2010.
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now when i was a kid growing up we had
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scouting
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almost everybody was in boy scouts or
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girl scouts
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very few exceptions
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uh that was militia training
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um
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what we need to do
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i think
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is to have that kind of
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extra academic
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uh training
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with a militia with a militia focus
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kids won't form gangs if they're
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provided a gang the right kind of gang
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initially right teach them how to
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enforce the law they won't be
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organizing among themselves to break the
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law
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and i also think that
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to break the cycle of
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the culture of
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the street culture
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that now infests young people
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we need to put most at-risk kids in
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military boarding schools
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maybe not in the
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small towns and suburbs but in the inner
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cities
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most of those kids ought to be
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marching and drilling and you know
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picking wind off the grass and
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you know
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standing for inspection and
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you know doing the kinds of things that
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good military boarding schools do right
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i think they can you know maybe go home
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on weekends that kind of thing but
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uh
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they need to be
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separated from
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the gangs from the streets from the
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bullies from
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uh television from video games you know
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from all sorts of devices that they
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would otherwise indulge in
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and uh
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be given structure and discipline and
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leadership and
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uh
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then if if all that is done maybe you
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can break the cycle of adolescence that
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my grandfather warned about
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because
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the essence of what my grandfather
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warned about
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that i write about in that essay my
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grandfather in public education
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is that if
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we
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educate kids in classes graded by
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age
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there will be too much under the
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influence of
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kids our own age and not under enough
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under the influence
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of adults
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and we will wind up with is raising a
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nation of adolescence
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and that's what i've seen happen
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the kids
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leaving public school today are much
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less prepared
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not just to be
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members of society
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but to play ordinary roles like spouse
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and parents and so forth
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they are
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children
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having children right
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when i was in school
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kids were taught how to be parents
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and how to be spouses
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that was part of the education their
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parents
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and usually extended families
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imparted to them
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now they got that in part of course by
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caring for younger siblings
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for doing household chores
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for
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doing as kids a lot of the things that
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would or had
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corresponded
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to the duties of spouse that in
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parenthood a successful spouse of care
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right
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so then not only did they have both
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parents as role models
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but they were also taught how to play
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those roles while they were still kids
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so by the time they you know
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became adults they would actually be
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emotional adults and not emotional
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adolescents right
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um
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and allah follows from that my
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grandfather started
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in 1899
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in one room school albus
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he transitioned to
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modern public schools about 1920 or so
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he taught in those until about 1935
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so he had a chance to observe
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the transition
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now the the transition was intended was
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sold
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as a way of making
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education more efficient
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it was supposed to be modeled on like a
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production line right
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well
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that model doesn't really work for
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educating kids
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they don't all
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develop at the same rate
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on a case in point i was you know a
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little
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quite far ahead of my fellow students
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but what my grandfather did he was one
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school master
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at the top of a pyramid
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he had the most advanced students
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teaching the less advanced students who
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in turn taught less advanced students
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and all the way down to the bottom
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now that
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they weren't sorted by age they were
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sorted by
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their achievement level
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so that my mother and her siblings were
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in general
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often teaching kids older than
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themselves because they were more
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advanced
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but it worked
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because
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the schoolmaster being on top
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propagated adult values all the way down
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the chain and could observe them in the
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behaviors in the classroom and correct
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any that were inappropriate or harmful
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right
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he also he he had some sort of it's been
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a charming remark once
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about kids that were jumping
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he called them
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uh he put him to work chopping woods
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there was always a need for wood even
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even not just in winter right because uh
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uh he had a stove was used for cooking
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too didn't quick meals for the kids at
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lunch you know right they'd bring their
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food with them and and some of them
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would they would cook for the others and
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so it was a uh
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very constructive exercise exactly now
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imagine if we took every add kid in
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modern schools and gave them a little
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bit of manual labor i'm sure we wouldn't
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need janitorial staff
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well
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and remember too that there's no longer
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a pe requirement right they no longer
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get recessed no outlet for that energy
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yeah
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a kids need resa need exercise first
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thing in the morning
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they need to burn off all that surplus
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energy so they can settle down
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and
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sit in a seat and focus on education
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so a lot of the things that people you
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know
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at high levels think are improvements
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they have not really thought through
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right
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and they can often be disastrous
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so we it's time for us to re-examine
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what has really been going on
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through all those improvements
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and see it maybe we ought to not go back
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to
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older methods
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