 Now you're an opponent of what you call age segregation in education, and I think more generally in life. Tell us why I Think if you bought people from 300 years ago or 3,000 years ago to live among us Now if you drop them out of a time machine I think the first thing that would stun them is just simply our material abundance and our tools and especially our digital tools right we have we have more built stuff than anybody in human history by you know Huge magnitudes and so I don't think you could possibly arrive here and not first be surprised by our material abundance But I think if those folks stayed with us for a while 30 days later that would wear off And I think the thing that would be most striking to people from other times and places living among us is how age Segregated we live it is a really really weird thing to allow our 17 year olds to believe that the world is mostly made up of 17 year Olds right it's it's strange. It's not healthy, and it's not true, and that's the way we raise our kids They are hyper hyper age segregated as the father of you know 15 and 13 year old girls I get that the pure slight of a 13 or a 15 year old girl really hurts But it's not really enduring if you have any wisdom right if you if if you're 13 year old knows 60 year olds and 75 year olds and they've been through a lot of life experience another 13 or 15 year old girls saying something Trite mean to you like it just it's water off a duck's back if you have any perspective and I don't think we're serving our kids very well by allowing them to live these hyper age segregated lives And I think that's closely connected to the core Driver of I think our perpetual adolescents category, which is that our kids don't know the distinction in their belly They don't feel the distinction between production and consumption. They know Sort of aging through grades in school as they're kind of productive work time And then the rest of life is just different forms of consumption. That's really unsatisfying and it's really unfair to them Again, this book is not a blame-laying book But if I were laying blame in this book, I would not I would not I would not be blaming millennials I'm I would be blaming we parents and grandparents that we're not helping think with our kids about the fact that we're not celebrating scar tissue with them and scar tissue is the foundation of future character and They are able to persevere and they need to develop a work ethic and they just happen to live at the richest time and place in human history and so they live in a life they live a life that's almost entirely separated from productive work environments and that's never been the case of anybody who's ever grown up before that they didn't Grow up around work. Well, one of the most basic things that makes you happy in life Is thinking that you're needed My my work our work is needed not you know Not does my back hurt at the end of the day or not do I think I get paid enough money or not? Is there some annoying person three cubicles away who talks too loudly on his or her phone? But when I leave home on Monday morning or whatever day you begin your your work day or work week Do I think anybody needs me? If you think that if your work matters to somebody if you have a meaningful way to contribute to your neighbor You're basically going to be happy and if you don't have that you're almost certainly not going to be happy and right now We're raising our teens segregated from work and therefore segregated from any clear sense that they're needed now or going to be needed in the future and that ends up feeling a Lot like cotton candy. It's pretty Peter Pan like and pretty miserable I'm actually a fan of the elder 19th century British Lancastery and system where when possible You have the somewhat older children teach the younger children and the elder children also learn through teaching Not just by being students and you mix roles that way it gives you a natural way to mix ages whether some rationale for it I worry also with people aging and going more into nursing homes We will become a more age segregated society So there's a lot of worry about racial segregation gender segregation, but age segregation is hardly mentioned But if you think about it how old you are is a pretty fundamental fact about your life And I'm very glad to see your book is drawing attention to this issue. I hope that gains some traction Thanks, and it isn't just the older I think you're I want to underscore your point Tyler It isn't just 13 year olds being around 60 and 75 year olds though It should be that because the the pattern of life is you start needing diapers and you end up needing diapers, right? I mean we we ultimately become dependent again And that means there are a whole bunch of people that need us that they need our help and our kids shouldn't live the Narcissistic 13 year old consumer experience of thinking there's this sort of fountain of youth And if only they could consume more they'll be happy all the data shows that that doesn't actually make you happy And so there are older people who need us But they're also younger people who need us and it is a really good way to sort of get outside your own Education to think about how you pass along education. I do think there's a benefit to our family structure You know providentially just happens to be 15 year old girl 13 year old girl big gap providential surprise son and It is a gift from my daughters that they have to help teach my son as it pulls them out of the Narcissistic experience of being 13 or 15 He needs them they matter and they learn about their own learning by doing that one last point when I was a college president We used to host these sort of dinners for donors at our house we would do these kind of rolling salons of 8 and 10 and 12 people all the time and One of the questions that my wife and I started to ask people and it was fun If you were talking to a 45 year old or an 85 year old How do you recognize whether or not a kid or a grand kid is mature and one time? We were hosting this party and this woman said oh, that's easy for a boy I know for sure if a boy is old enough that I would trust him to be alone with my baby for 90 minutes Such that you might have to change a diaper during the time. He's there. He's a man and if he's not he's still a child There's all these 30 year old guys around the table Yes, I guess my man cave really is a place that I escaped to be a little kid again But it was amazing immediately every mom around the table said oh, yeah, that's it You know if there's a if there's a 11 or a 13 or a 15 or a 17 or a 19 year old boy And you'd think he could take care of a one year old for 90 minutes and not have the kid die He's mature. If not, he's immature