Not less capable, less trusted

Children did not become less capable. They became less trusted, and the years they were built to learn in were moved to a desk.

In plain words

For most of history a real share of childhood went into doing: helping in a trade, working the farm, making and fixing and selling. A boy was apprenticed at about fourteen and could earn a living at twenty-one. Girls ran households that were skilled work. When farm kids were handed a real challenge, some beat the adults. We were right to take children out of the coal breakers. We were wrong to assume the only other place for them was a desk.

Evidence and sources

• Colonial apprenticeships commonly began around fourteen and ran about seven years. Economic History Association, "Apprenticeship in the United States."
• In 1910 Jerry Moore, a South Carolina boy not yet fifteen, grew 228 bushels of corn on one acre when typical yields were about 26. Contemporary reports; Purdue University Agronomy.
• American teenagers live under more than ten times as many restrictions as ordinary adults, and tested as competent or nearly as competent as adults in fourteen areas. Robert Epstein, Scientific American Mind 18, no. 2 (2007).
• About two-thirds of young people in Switzerland start an apprenticeship at fifteen or sixteen. Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation.
• High school enrollment rose from about one in five teenagers in 1910 to about seven in ten in 1940. Claudia Goldin, Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (1998).

Questions this answers

• What could children do in the past that they can't do now?
• Are teenagers capable of real work?
• At what age can a child start an apprenticeship?
• Why are teenagers so restricted today?

Where this falls short

None of this is a case for going back. In 1900 about 1.75 million American children aged ten to fifteen were working, many in mills and mines, and some of that work maimed and killed them.

In the book

In Four Weeks, Not Four Years: Chapter 4.

Related ideas