The Last Thing Your Kid Needs Is To Take Another Class

You've been presented with a choice of activities for your kid: a structured, highly organized activity designed to teach them a specific skill or three, or a vague one-on-one-or-two apprenticeship/mentorship experience shaped by the intersection of your kid's interests and needs and real-world work. Which do you choose?

I'm guessing you probably choose the highly organized activity, as has pretty much every other parent that I've presented these choices to. It's easier to understand, it's more familiar, and it feels... safer. Your kid's not ready to be more or less left to their own devices yet with some random adult that expects them to actually do things, right? You know what you're getting into with a more structured activity, and you can see a clear path to some sort of beneficial outcome. And all of these other parents are signing their kids up too... so it can't be that bad, right?

There are at least two issues that parents are trying to solve with this line of thinking. The first is that they see their kids struggling to find motivation, engagement, and interest in anything that feels useful or productive. When left to their own devices, they float from one thing to another - tinkering with this, dabbling in that, with a lot of time spent on video games & YouTube. There may be strong interests in something like robotics, coding, art, music, or whatever, but there's a lack of focus behind their pursuits. This seems to be especially prevalent among boys, especially boys that struggle a little in school - whether it's ADHD or apathy or something else entirely, they just don't seem to be able to commit & do much of anything that doesn't immediately grab their attention. So the parents want to find something that will help their kids get interested and engaged in something productive, which typically means pushing them towards more things that looks like school - structured, adult-driven activities that are designed to teach specific skills, hoping that this time around, their kids will actually be able to focus and get something out of it.

The second issue that parents are trying to solve is that they see their kids struggling to develop a sense of agency, autonomy, and self-direction. This has been a little bit of a thing forever, then it really ramped up post-COVID, and it's still going strong now . We've got a bunch of very bright, very capable, very motivated kids who want to do good work - but they seem to have a mental block that stops them from actually doing much of anything without someone else telling them exactly what to do and how to do it. Their toolboxes are overflowing, but they don't know how to pick the right tool for the job, or even what job they want to do in the first place. And many well-meaning parents see this and want to help, but end up making the problem... worse. More structure, more guidance, more adult-driven activities feels like the right thing do do - after all, if their kids just had the right skills and knowledge, they'd be able to figure things out on their own, right? But that's not how it works, and the kids don't actually get what they need from doing more of the same thing.

In both cases, the instinct is to double down on structured, adult-driven activities that are designed to teach specific skills. More adult-driven after-school activities. More structured skill-building workshops. Something that ends with a sense of completion, accomplishment, and maybe some sort of tangible credential or "proof" of learning. Embracing liminoid experiences that provide shallow engagement over truly transformative liminal ones. More and more and more opportunities for their kids to be "productive" and "engaged" and "learning something useful."

And the results? A whole lot of nothing.

Here's the thing: people, especially kids, are all fundamentally different. They learn in different ways, at different paces, and have different interests, strengths, and needs. Some kids thrive in structured, group environments, while others need more individualized attention and support. Some kids need to move quickly and take on new challenges, while others need more time to process and reflect. Some kids are naturally curious and self-motivated, while others need more guidance and encouragement. Some kids could thrive in a given structured group setting, but they don't have the background knowledge, maturity, social skills, psychological stability, or confidence to do so yet. Some kids fit one of those profiles on one day and a completely different one the next. Trying to fit all of these kids into the same mold of structured classes and activities means nobody really gets what they need - at best, the kids closest to the profile that the program is designed for get what the program intends, which hopefully is what they were looking for.

And not only that, but they don't learn nearly as well in these structured group environments, either. Dr. Benjamin Bloom showed that responsive, mastery-style, one-on-one tutoring is the most effective way to learn something new back in the '80s. And yet, we generally refer to this research as the "two sigma problem" instead of the "two sigma solution" because all of the follow-up work has been on trying to replicate the results without the resources that make those results possible. In a typical class-type structure, the teacher needs to keep a certain pace in order to cover all of the material, which means that the faster students are bored and disengaged, while the slower students are left behind and frustrated because the instructor can't give them the attention they need. In a one-on-one or one-on-small-group mentorship/apprenticeship-type operation, the mentor can do a lot more to tailor each kid's experience to what they actually need. Working in this model, the kids are also way more likely to be working on projects that are meaningful and relevant to them and their community, which helps them stay engaged and motivated.

Over the years I've heard from several of our robotics parents that we should offer more structured classes to help build interest & engagement in our programs. And we always have parents who think they're signing their kids up for a some highly structured, adult-driven program where we just step the kids through a pre-planned curriculum and learn how to build a robot or whatever. There's a place for that, but that's not what we do. That's not what we want to do. We're all professionals in our respective fields, and we know that's not what these kids need to be successful & live meaningful, fulfilling lives down the road. And it's not just us. I've had engineering faculty tell me that they can always tell which students came through programs like ours because those students are so much better prepared to do real engineering work than their peers. They wish they could get their senior design students to work at the level that our 13 and 14-year-olds do. Not because our kids know more math and physics - they don't - but because they know how to actually do the work of identifying and solving problems.

We all work with too many people that are, at best, only as good as the processes and structures that they were trained to follow, and at worst are completely incapable of functioning without constant supervision and direction. That's not good for anybody, and we believe that not only are most people capable of so much more than that, but that they deserve to be able to do more than that. They just need the resources, support, and freedom to do so - so that's exactly what we try to provide. Yes, it's harder, messier, and more complicated than just running nothing but straightforward, pre-planned lessons. But it's also way more effective, way more engaging, and way more meaningful for everyone involved.

So yeah, the last thing your kid probably needs is to take another class. Find them a mentor, coach, or guru to follow - or a community that can provide that - and get out of their way. You might be surprised at what they can accomplish and how much they will grow when given the right support and resources.