Scott Noelle’s daily email today reminded me of one of my most-hated bits of conventional wisdom. It’s the one that goes: we have to put our children through unpleasant experiences, because that will toughen them up for “the real world”.

The “boiled frog” metaphor he uses is a myth, but the point is a sound one.  Subjecting children to daily unpleasantness - in the form of arbitrary rules, dysfunctional socialization, scholastic regimentation, age-segregation, teasing, bullying, verbal abuse, or what have you - in the name of acclimatization to the “real world” simply lowers their standards for the life they will accept.  It teaches them to assume that this is the best there is in life, and the only way to get ahead is to accept it and hope to someday come out on top of the game and at the top of the heap.

Supposedly, with my relatively sheltered, low-ceremony, low-socialization home-schooled background, I was “unprepared” to deal with the real world.  Which in a sense was true. For example, if I had had the expectation hammered into me that I would have to work a few years of shit jobs before embarking on my real career, or had accepted the fact that I had no professional prospects without a degree, I might not have had the chutzpah to waltz into Raytheon at age 18 and start working as a full-time engineer. Sure, there were other factors that contributed to my getting that job. But the fact that no one ever told me I had to “pay my dues” before getting the job I wanted helped give me the confidence to assume that I was a peer with more experienced programmers.  As it turned out, so long as I had the skill to back it up, the other engineers had no trouble accepting me as a peer. So much for the real world.

Now, Raytheon still had a lot in common with that much-vaunted “real world”. Like all large organizations, it was rife with politics. It was heavily bureaucratic, to a sometimes soul-destroying degree. It operated on a strict system of seniority and hoop-jumping - for instance, they made it clear that no matter how far above my pay grade I was performing, they wouldn’t promote me until I had a certain piece of paper or could at least show I was working towards it.

And if I had been taught that this is what the real world is all about, I would probably still be there. Jumping through hoops, paying my dues, working my way up on the prescribed course to middle-management. I knew a lot of people who were on this very path - not, as far as I could tell, because they enjoyed it; but because they seemed to have a sense that this was what was expected of them. This was the path to success.

But me with my ill-preparedness for real life, I eventually decided I wasn’t going to accept that anymore. I taught myself new skills, made new contacts, and jumped into a different sector of the software industry. I determined exactly the kind of work environment I wanted, and then found it. Now I’m working with technologies I love, with peers I respect, doing work I’m proud of, giving talks at user groups and generally enjoying more success, satisfaction, and notoriety than I probably would ever have gained working at a defense contractor. I didn’t accept the “real world” of industry that everyone tells me the more unpleasant parts of public school are supposed to prepare kids for, and found a better world instead.

I’ve been blessed, there’s no question. I’ve had innate ability, opportunities, and good luck. But I’m lucky enough to live in a society where opportunity is commonplace. And yet I’ve seen people with as much skill as myself languish in careers that they stuck to out of a sense of obligation or lack of alternatives, rather than any real love. And I wonder how much of that is because they were taught that that’s just what the “real world” is like.

The funny thing is, in other arenas parents have no trouble trying to instill high standards. Everyone wants their kids to have high standards when it comes to choosing a spouse, for instance. But when it comes to career and organisational affiliations, it’s fashionable to believe that it’s essential to expose children to unpleasant “realities” or they’ll never make it.

I’m sure there’s an element of history to this. Not everyone was or is lucky enough to be born into 21st-century middle-class America. A lot of our ancestors had no choice but to accept a harsh reality where they had to be good organisation men and women in order to provide for their children. I get that and I respect them for it. Thanks to their efforts, those of us in middle-class America have more opportunities than ever before to choose the life we want.

I believe that whatever you believe is the real world will become your world. If the world of class structure, vicious interpersonal politics, strict seniority, arbitrary hoops, dishonesty, make-work, and taking orders is what you expect out of life, then it’s exactly what life will give you. It’s easy enough to find that world, and once in it you may even be convinced that everyone else is in the same world with you.

It’s OK to give your children high standards in what they’ll accept as the real world. If they believe in it they will find it. And if they don’t, they might just build it.

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avdi on January 27th, 2010 | File Under Uncategorized | -