26 June 2006

Higher Education makes people immature.

According to Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, Immaturity Levels Rising [Discovery Channel], and higher education can take a big chunk of the blame.

Charlton argues that because of society's need for a working population with a "childlike flexibility," able to change jobs and retrain many times, that they never fully reach adult maturity.

"People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”

Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, “immature” people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift.


Wow. So, um, game on folks, we apparently never have to leave college -- at least not in our minds.

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And... in the spirit of things immature, how about a blog devoted to eating and reviewing a different breakfast cereal every day for 100 days. [Well, it's particularly funny when you compare it to the earnest Vegan Lunchbox.]


tags: peterpan syndrome, blog review

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The thought of my parents at my age spending a bored-beyond-belief moment blogging kids' cereals . . . unthinkable.

Hmmm. Is the REVERSE of what Charlton describes as psychological immaturity (immature = a short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness") being stuck in a rut, afraid of/resistant to change, unable/unwilling/uninterested in keeping up with changes, PLUS tribal, exclusionary and clique-ish behaviour?

Tomorrow: Chocolate Lucky Charms

Tim Bailey said...

Seems like Charlton is using his status as a professor to foist his opinions about society on us in the guise of a study. Kind of immature, don't you think?

Xolo said...

Aha! So now my behavior makes sense...

That damn PhD will never allow me to grow up!