How did generations with unlimited TV and no enrichment…

[Anonymous]

…succeed in life? Not being snarky, I’m just trying to understand. When I was young, children just watched TV and had no academic “enrichment” outside of perhaps an instrument and a sport. Certainly no Kumon or academic acceleration. They went on to have successful careers and great lives. Were standards lower? Are children going to be a lot smarter because of screen time limits?

[Anonymous]

We had this years ago. Maybe not Kumon but tutors, parents working with us. You just had bad parents. We weren't allowed much tv.

[Anonymous]

It’s called a race to the top. No idea what triggered it but everyone doing so much more to impress for college than we had to growing up.

[Anonymous]

People had less money then to spend on all this enrichment. But kids still had drive and ambition and if they grew up poorer they were really driven to make money and improve their circumstances and hit the ground running once they finished college and got into the real world. The motivation and desire was there, just waiting for the opportunity.

[Anonymous]

We never watched unlimited tv. First of all, there wasn't much on. A couple shows throughout the week. Maybe 4 hours for the whole week, with 2 or those as family shows we watched together.

[Anonymous]

College is so much harder to enter than when you were a kid. It’s stupefying

[Anonymous]

There was a lot less competition because the world was not globalized and populations were smaller, and most state tuition was quite low so the need to chase aid was nothing like it is now. I watched TV constantly as a kid and did only 1-2 low-key activities of 1-2 hours per week until high school.

My elite alma mater is only ~10% larger than it used to be but receives an order of magnitude more applicants today. At the same time, the US population has increased by 100M people and international students have gone from 6 to 20% of the undergraduate student body. College applications were done in hand or by typewriter and the common app was in its infancy.

It isn’t surprising that when there is less opportunity to go around, people will do more extreme things to access it.

[Anonymous]

You actually think Kumon leads to greater success in life?

[Anonymous]

Generations? Maybe two generations, at most.

We didn't have cable when I was a kid. Cable existed of course but my parents didn't have a ton of money. Those five channels didn't exactly push out endless kids programing.

But, even if they had, my mom would limited me to 30 minutes a day. I could watch one sitcom a day during week plus Saturday morning cartoons and a movie on Sunday evening.

[Anonymous]

I think education was much, much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:College is so much harder to enter than when you were a kid. It’s stupefying

This. Yes, standards are higher now than they were for me and you, and were higher for us than for our parents.

Also, famously, "it's the economy, stupid." My parents didn't go to college but they provided a great life for me without working all that much, and they are wealthy compared to me, even though I'm more educated and work more.

[Anonymous]

PP, we weren’t allowed in the house let alone, watching TV all day. Even if we did, we didn’t have cable so 4 channels (and only 1 TV).

[Anonymous]

Also, public investment in education, from 1st through college. My public college tuition was 4 figures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had this years ago. Maybe not Kumon but tutors, parents working with us. You just had bad parents. We weren't allowed much tv.

I guess I had bad parents because I watched a ton of TV and had zero enrichment or help with school work. Schools were so much better then, with high expectations, no retakes, no late assignments, no phones to distract anyone during the school day. My school life was so separate from my home life—my parents were never involved. So it really didn’t matter how much TV I watched after school. I was learning a lot and working really hard while I was there.

[Anonymous]

When I was a kid in the 80s, every child that attended our public elementary had a very good chance of emerging a strong reader and speller with a command of math facts. If you were precocious you were tracked into a gifted program that achieved much more.

Now it’s hard to guarantee *anything* even at privates. Parents have to be involved to ensure a decent outcome.