Don't wig out, but the young are in danger of being mis-educated

A few months ago I had lunch with a former student named Lucy Fleming, one of the best writers I've taught. I asked her what she had learnt in her first year out of college. She said she had been forced to think differently.

While in school, her thinking was station to station: take that test, apply to that college, aim for a degree. But in young adulthood, there are no more stations. Everything is open seas. Your main problems are not about the assignment right in front of you; they are about the horizon far away. What should you be steering towards? It requires an entirely different set of navigational skills.

This gets at one of the oddest phenomena of modern life. Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been.