Opportunity Knocks #112 - Conventional Wisdom Often Fails Kids
Every week I share reflections, ideas, questions, and content suggestions focused on championing, building, and accelerating opportunity for children.
Happy Mother's Day to all those moms, stepmoms, grandmothers, and mom figures who nurture children’s growth, often by challenging conventional wisdom, which is the topic of today’s post.
In my 100th post, I shared 100 lessons and beliefs, including one of my favorites: “consistently consider what the consensus is probably wrong about.” Why? Because I’ve seen assumptions based on conventional wisdom lead tons of well-meaning people astray, especially policymakers. The tricky thing about conventional wisdom is that it feels intuitively correct, until reality intervenes.
For example, remember Scared Straight, the popular program that began in the 1970s and was supposed to deter juvenile crime by taking at-risk youth to prisons, where incarcerated people and corrections officers berated them in front of their peers, and sometimes, the camera?
Policymakers and the general public assumed that exposing kids to the ugliness of prison, and I guess, having people scream at them, would shock them into better behavior (and, over the longer run, reduce juvenile delinquency). However, rigorous evaluations have shown that the program had the opposite effect, increasing delinquent behavior and crime among participants. Here is the conclusion from a 2003 meta-analysis of Scared Straight programs:
“These randomized trials, conducted over a 25‐year period in eight different US states, provide evidence that Scared Straight and other 'juvenile awareness' programs are not effective as a stand‐alone crime prevention strategy. More importantly, they provide empirical evidence ‐ under experimental conditions ‐ that these programs likely increase the odds that children exposed to them will commit offenses in future. Despite the variability in the type of intervention used, ranging from harsh, confrontational interactions to tours of the facility, they converge on the same result: an increase in criminality in the experimental group when compared to a no‐treatment control. Doing nothing would have been better than exposing juveniles to the program.”
What happened? It’s probably worth lingering here for a second here. Often, the issue isn’t bad intentions but unchecked assumptions, especially assumptions about human behavior. The assumptions that informed the creation of Scared Straight programs were based on three pieces of false conventional wisdom:
Conventional Thinking: fear is a strong, reliable deterrent. Reality: adolescents process risks and consequences (inputs to fear) differently than adults.
Conventional Thinking: adolescents view criminal behavior, and thus people incarcerated, as net negative. Reality: adolescents often viewed prisoners as models of toughness, and so the programs inadvertently glamorized criminal behavior and the people that committed criminal acts.
Conventional Thinking: a confrontational, often over-the-top style of the incarcerated participants would scare teens into reflection and positive behavioral change. Realty: in-your-face tactics triggered defiance, rebellion, and resentment.
The failure of Scared Straight programs underscore the risks of intuitive, cultural, or moralistic approaches in policy formulation. And if we’ve gotten things so wrong about something as instinctively appealing as crime deterrence, we should ask ourselves: what else might we be missing? While we’ve been able to untangle erroneous conventional thinking on some issues—e.g., grade retention helps kids catch up academically, zero-tolerance policies in school deter bad behavior, sugar makes kids hyperactive—here are ten examples of conventional thinking about children, child development, education, and raising kids that deserve scrutiny (note: some of these examples are more broadly accepted that others):
Conventional Thinking: children need constant adult guidance and supervision. Reality: kids need periods of unstructured freedom to help them develop executive function, resilience, creativity, and critical-thinking skills. Excessive adult intervention can inadvertently stifle these qualities.
Conventional Thinking: routine, structure, and lack of stressors are always beneficial. Reality: routine and structure are critically important for young children, but as kids age, an overemphasis on routine may diminish adaptability. Occasional disruptions to routine, or even moderate challenges, can cultivate resilience, adaptability, and creativity, better preparing children for the unpredictability of adult life.
Conventional Thinking: children must always obey adults. Reality: teaching respectful questioning and critical thought encourages autonomy, which promotes healthy skepticism and personal responsibility. Respect can be mutual rather than hierarchical.
Conventional Thinking: play is secondary to structured education. Reality: play is essential for cognitive, emotional, and social growth. Unstructured play fosters creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence in ways structured academic learning—and even structured play—cannot.
Conventional thinking: academic achievement is the best predictor of future success. Reality: creativity, adaptability, emotional well-being, and pro-social behavior may be equally valid, if not better, predictors of future life success, happiness, and fulfillment. Yet schools and families still treat test scores as destiny.
Conventional Thinking: exposing children to competition early prepares them for life. Reality: early competition can create anxiety and stress rather than resilience. Collaboration may nurture empathy, teamwork, and self-esteem.
Conventional Thinking: preventing children from experiencing negative emotions protects them. Reality: exposure to manageable levels of disappointment, frustration, or sadness builds emotional resilience, coping skills, and realistic optimism. Children who navigate discomfort with supportive adults develop strong emotional skills.
Conventional Thinking: children should not be exposed to challenging issues or topics. Reality: kids are innocent, but they can also understand complex issues if those issues are presented honestly and age-appropriately. Insulating them from challenges may cultivate anxiety or confusion when they inevitably encounter these issues later in life.
Conventional Thinking: praise always builds self-esteem. Reality: random praise may foster dependency on external validation. Meaningful, specific feedback focused on effort rather than innate talent fosters genuine self-esteem and intrinsic motivation.
Evolving Conventional Thinking: technology and screens are inherently harmful to children. Reality: while excessive, passive consumption can be problematic, technology and digital tools used mindfully can support creativity, collaboration, and learning in previously unavailable ways.
It’s important to remember that conventional wisdom can be correct (after all, a belief doesn’t become conventional wisdom without having some modicum of essential truth to it, likely in its earliest stages). But it’s equally important to guard against conventional wisdom, and I think the best way to do that is to challenge it. If a belief holds up to a challenge—e.g., pressure testing the underlying assumptions, seeking diverse viewpoints on the issue, including those of non-experts, assessing the full scope of evidence—it's probably true.
Until next week, be calm and be kind,
Andrew