The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined

by Salman Khan

Of late there has been much hand-wringing about the state of mind of contemporary teenagers—a seemingly widespread malaise found everywhere from New York to Berlin to Bahrain, and whose symptoms run the gamut from mere slackerism all the way to suicide. I would suggest that at least a significant part of the problem is our failure to entrust adolescents with real responsibility. Yes, we stress them out with demands and competition… but only to do with themselves. We deny them the chance to mentor or help others, and we thereby conspire in their isolation and self-involvement. Biologically, kids start becoming grown-ups around the age of twelve. That’s when they can reproduce, and while I’m certainly not advocating teenage parenthood, I do believe that nature would not have made it possible unless adolescents were also wired to be ready to take responsibility for others. High school kids are burgeoning adults, but by narrowly restricting them to the companionship of their peers, responsible for no one but themselves, we treat them as children—and children they tend to remain.