"Nienawidzę tenisa".
Tak brzmi pierwsze przesłanie biografii Andre Agassiego "Open. Agassi był synem despotycznego ojca, który nie dbał o nic poza stworzeniem ze swojego małego chłopca mistrza tenisa. Kierowany ciężką ręką ojca i często wbrew jego woli, Agassi stał się graczem numer jeden na świecie. Dla innych szczyt był nieosiągalnym marzeniem. Dla Agassiego była to toksyczna kula ognia.
Sława, kpiny i dekady życia, którym gardził, dopadły Agassiego. Jego gniew przerodził się w niechęć, uraza przerodziła się we wściekłość, a wściekłość przerodziła się w decyzję o wylaniu metamfetaminy na stolik do kawy, przecięciu jej i wciągnięciu proszku do nozdrzy z szybkością serwu na US Open.
Dlaczego Agassi załamał się pod presją dyscypliny? W jaki sposób jego historia reprezentuje tak wielu z nas?
Dlaczego narkojemy dzieci
Nienawidziłem szkoły. Cykl wczesnego wstawania, chodzenia do szkoły, bycia zdyscyplinowanym, poczucia nieadekwatności do tego, że nie jest się mądrym, i pędzenia na obowiązkowy trening piłki nożnej po szkole sprawił, że krew się we mnie zagotowała. Sport, muzyka, teatr, wystąpienia publiczne, praca społeczna. Obowiązkowe zajęcia nigdy się nie kończyły. Rutyna sprawiła, że stałem się apatyczny. W dzieciństwie miałem tak wiele rzeczy w harmonogramie, że przestałem chodzić na bar micwy i przyjęcia urodzinowe.
W klasie moja osobowość nie pasowała do tradycyjnego systemu edukacji. Moja matematyka była okropna, nie mogłam wykonywać poleceń i miałam zdolność czytania ze zrozumieniem wiewiórki. Większość czasu spędzałem za tarczą samoobronnego odrętwienia, tylko po to, by po powrocie do domu wybuchnąć wulkaniczną wściekłością.
Przez lata nie miałam słów, by opisać moją frustrację. Moja rodzina wzięła na swoje barki ciężar mojego gniewu. Uwięziona w systemie brutalnej kontroli, krzyczałam na rodziców z krzykiem rozpaczy.
Z perspektywy czasu widzę, że zachowywałem się, bo nie mogłem być dzieckiem. W gimnazjum wysyłano mnie do gabinetu dyrektora tyle razy, że liczyłem swoje wizyty na podłokietniku krzesła przed jego gabinetem. Do dziś odczłowieczamy dzieci, zamykając je w klasach, którymi pogardzają, z nauczycielami, którzy muszą działać jak opiekunki do dzieci, dając im przerwy, dopóki się nie zamkną i nie będą przestrzegać zasad.
Gdybyśmy zrobili to samo dorosłym w wieku 45-60 lat, mielibyśmy bunt. Ale kiedy robimy to dzieciom, usprawiedliwiamy to "przygotowaniem ich do prawdziwego świata". Po pierwsze, ignorujemy ich wołanie o wolną wolę. Następnie tłumimy ich ciekawość za pomocą sztywnych programów nauczania, takich jak AERO i Common Core, które poruszają się zbyt wolno dla znudzonych i zbyt szybko dla ciekawskich. Co gorsza, tyrańska struktura programu nauczania uczy dzieci akceptować świat takim, jaki istnieje. Uczniowie nie mogą modyfikować programu nauczania. Muszą ją zaakceptować taką, jaka jest im dana. W ten sposób zabijamy radość z uczenia się, odbieramy naszym dzieciom wolną wolę, a w konsekwencji okradamy je z człowieczeństwa.
Przestaliśmy traktować dzieci jak ludzi.
The rigidity of childhood is a new phenomenon. It began in the 1990s, when the number of hours devoted to childcare began to rise after three decades of decline. The increase in parenting time was the largest among college-educated mothers who increased their childcare time by more than nine hours per week. Much of the culprit goes back to parents who spend two decades biting their nails about their children’s college prospects. Ivy League or failure.
Why are parents so anxious?
Why Parents Are Anxious About College Acceptances
Boomers grew up in a credentialed world where people were defined by the school on their college diploma. Students benefited from college not because of the education they received, but because of sexy diplomas and tight personal networks.
Personal networks matter too. One Union College study found that fraternity students saw a 0.25 drop in GPA, but a 36 percent rise in lifetime income known as the “Bro Wage Premium.”
Meanwhile, the average college diploma isn’t the signal of prestige it once was. The number of Americans with a college degree has risen by more than 300% since 1970, leading to credential inflation where people need more and more education just to stay in place.
The knife fight for college admission has spawned a bitter legacy debate. Now that so many people work for big companies, parents can’t always give their kids the family business. Instead, the best that parents who want to leave an easter egg for their children can do is use their legacy status to help children get into their alma mater. Some donate buildings, and others bribe the admissions officers.
More and more parents are encouraging more and more children to fight zero-sum battles like the college admissions process. This childhood rat race is packaged as ambitious, even though it actually rests behind a facade of sheep-like, anxiety-creating complacency.
How Kids Respond to Anxiety
In an article in The Atlantic, George Packer quotes an anxious seventh-grader who said, “If you fail a math test you fail seventh grade, if you fail seventh grade you fail middle school, if you fail middle school you fail high school, if you fail high school you fail college, if you fail college you fail life.”
Parents stress over college acceptance, which creates stress for teachers who teach to the test, which creates stress for kids who can’t experience the creativity of traditional childhood. According to one Pew Research study, 70% of teens list “anxiety and depression” as a major problem in their local community. Another study found that half of PhD students experience psychological distress. All these emotional struggles lead to an overmedicated society.
To their credit, my parents didn’t drug me. I had all the features of a kid who would have binged ADHD medications like shots at a New Year’s party. No matter how badly I acted, my parents never caved into the twisted logic that leads doctors to hand out prescription pills faster than candy on Halloween. For years, I looked as unhealthy as I felt. Face-peeling acne. Uncontrollable anger. No self-esteem. By middle school, my behavior was so bad that we stopped going on family trips. To silence the stress of it all, I found ways to escape reality (thank the lord for Madden and RollerCoaster Tycoon) without popping a single pill.
School taught me the wrong lessons.
As Ivan Illich wrote in Deschooling Society: “The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.” My grade school teachers said the tough standards would prepare me for high school, my high school teachers said the tough standards would prepare me for college, and my college teachers said the tough standards would prepare me for the professional world. But it was a lie. As I sat in class, I felt like a domesticated animal, training to serve the needs of institutions instead of myself.
Kids who don’t conform to the narrow demands of the education system are diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed addictive psychoactive drugs. As Peter Gray, the author of Free to Learn, has observed, these drugs are designed to suppress a child’s instincts so they can sit down, shut up, and slave through busywork:
“Nobody knows the long-term effects of these drugs on the human brain, but research with animals suggests that one effect may be to interfere with the normal development of the brain connections that lead children generally to become more controlled, less impulsive, with age and maturity. Perhaps that helps to explain why today we see more and more cases of ADHD extending into adulthood. As with lots of psychoactive drugs, the drugs used to treat ADHD may be creating long-term dependency.”
Tragically, the growth in ADHD prescriptions has accelerated since the turn of the century. In an article called “The Drugging of the American Boy,” Ryan D’Agostino argues that many of these diagnoses are false. Today, 6.4 million children between the ages of 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. Almost 20 percent of all American boys will now be diagnosed with ADHD by high school, a 37 percent increase since 2003. Instead of building a system that respects the biology of kids, we are destroying childhood — one synthetic pill at a time.
Just as high schoolers numb their passions so they can beat their classmates on the SAT, adults trade joy for money by answering emails until their head hits the pillow.
Why Adults Live for the Weekend and Binge Alcohol
New York, where I live, is defined by its live-for-the-weekend culture. Young professionals who move to New York have dreams of building fame, wealth, or power by climbing the corporate ladder. The most talented university graduates disproportionately fall into sectors like law, investment banking, and management consulting. To numb the pain of sitting at a desk for 50-80 hours per week and the Hunger Games levels of competition for a small number of competitive positions, New York’s social scene revolves around a culture of binge drinking.
Recently, I had dinner with a friend in Manhattan who is frustrated with his management consulting job and looking for a way out. We’ll call him Justin. Since the moment I met him, he’s justified his heavy alcohol consumption with unwavering persistence towards societally valued goals — good grades and a job to make his parents proud. Justin graduated top of his class in high school, magna cum laude in college, and now works for one of the big four accounting firms. In service of his job, he travels more than Carmen San Diego. In each destination, he executes the same security audit for the same kinds of companies in the same kinds of industries. Three years out of college, Justin sees no path towards autonomy or away from hyper-specialization.
Over chicken dumplings and ramen noodles, my friend said, “My parents tried so hard to make me successful but never stopped to ask if I was enjoying myself. They are proud of what I’m doing, and since I work for an impressive company, they just assume I’m happy.”
I can relate, even though I’ve only had one job (which lasted seven months). I distinctly remember the dusky December days I worked there, when the dark night came early and the winter winds blew cold. Every morning, before I stepped into the office at 9 am, I said goodbye to the blue sky of liberty. I’d push a button to the fifth floor, stammer towards my desk, and stare into my computer until half my co-workers had left and there were three stars in the sky. From Monday through Friday, I saw less than 30 minutes of sun per day.
To combat my sedentary routines, I lived for the weekend. Drinks on Friday? I’d be there. How about Saturday? You bet.
The madness of weekends made up for the lethargy of the weekdays. Instead of tying myself to a chair, I paraded around Manhattan with a choir of friends and a drink in my hand. Eventually, I learned about New York’s culture of after-work happy hours where yes-men take their edge off with Heinekens and vodka sodas.
In retrospect, I’m not proud of these habits. But I can’t blame myself. New York’s substance-ridden culture is a natural reaction to the stress and trappings of life in a 43rd-floor cubicle.
Success shouldn’t be synonymous with how good you are at forcing yourself to do what you don’t want to do. We should rebel against a world that rewards mechanical levels of specialization. In the will to succeed, we subject ourselves to toxic and health-destroying work environments. Instead of questioning our habits, we counterbalance the pain of work with a ritual of reckless bar crawls. Instead of conforming the system to human nature, we conform human nature to the system.
Too many of my close friends are on antidepressants. They also suppress the body to the mind. Most of them don’t have time to exercise, the freedom to soak up the sun, or control over how they spend their time. In the face of rising drug use, we give people antidepressants instead of re-thinking the system that leads to depression in the first place. Without the drugs, they won’t be able to tolerate their intolerable work environments.
That’s not to mention self-medication. American alcoholism is a worsening problem. Since the 1990s, the percentage of Americans who drank at all increased by nearly half, while high-risk and disorderly drinking rose by 20 percent and 12 percent respectively. Meanwhile, according to the Gallup Poll below, the number of Americans who report that drinking has been a cause of trouble in their family has tripled since 1974. Here we see a pattern among children and adults. The same routines that create high-achieving students and later, successful professionals, can cause people to respond in dangerous and unintended ways.
“The Suite Life of Zack & Cody”: It Turns Out Having Nothing But Fun Isn’t So Much Fun
Conventional wisdom says both kids and adults will waste their time if you give them total freedom. I take the opposite perspective. We underestimate the number of people who will indulge in hedonism for a short while before realizing its emptiness and embracing a life of purpose and direction.
I’m reminded of an episode of “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” a Disney Channel show about two hyperactive teenage boys who live in a hotel. In one of my favorite episodes, they are tired of adults who tell them what to do: “Eat your veggies,” “Do your homework,” “Don’t play hockey in the lobby.” The boys travel to an alternate reality where there are no rules, so they can do whatever they want. At first, they celebrate with reckless play. They binge on room service and gallons of Jelly Beans. Then they play basketball in the hotel ballroom. But after a few days, the endless play loses its luster. Zack and Cody miss their mother’s “do your homework” discipline and the “stop running in the lobby” strictness of the hotel manager. Bored by endless freedom, they escape the alternate reality in favor of a normal life, and a forward-learning embrace of personal responsibility.
When we discipline people against their will, we create negative repercussions. In that way, stringent rules are like the First Law of Thermodynamics. Also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy, it says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred from one form to another. The First Law of Thermodynamics comes to life whenever you boil water. As you crank up the fire on the stove, heat is transferred from the stove to the kettle. You can’t cheat the laws of physics, no matter what you do. As the water boils, the kettle begins to whistle and condensation begins to build like a San Francisco fog. Likewise, suffocating a person’s free will for too long will result in harmful second-order effects for individuals and society at-large. This is the price of discipline.
My Motivation
My process of becoming an adult is a story of overcoming my childhood rage. I’ve learned to channel my hyperactive tendencies into healthy habits like a daily gym routine and writing on this website.
Furthermore, my vendetta against the education system has driven me to build two schools: one for adults and another for young kids. Both are responses to the tyranny of childhood education. Unlike the all-too-familiar compliance mindset of traditional schools, my schools have no grades, diplomas, or mandatory assignments. We encourage students to trust their instincts and tackle projects of their own choosing. As we do, we operate with a hand heavy enough to orient them but light enough for them to march with agency.
The Choice of Focus
Sports hold a mirror to the human condition. The beauty, the struggle, and the pain of it all. Through competition, we learn morality, patience, persistence, sacrifice, and discipline. But by hitting a small yellow ball, Agassi suffered from the cacophony of resentment that accompanies a life of hostile discipline.
Agassi writes:
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.”
Stuck in the depths of despair, Agassi made a choice to play instead of quit. For the first time, Agassi marched to the beat of his own drum instead of his father’s. Once he chose tennis, his mindset shifted. He said:
“Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.”
Moved by his decision, Agassi escaped the valley of addiction. He climbed the rankings to become the number one player in the world for a second time. This time, he did it with panache and a light spirit.
Reckless freedom is an empty enterprise. People want to be productive members of society. In the end, the eternal meaning of self-directed purpose triumphs over the hollow ephemerality of pleasure. But like Andre Agassi, people need to realize this truth through the hard knocks of personal experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for a world of careless anarchy where people are slaves to their instincts. We need teachers to keep children safe and parents to keep them healthy. But children don’t need the minute-by-minute schedules of a Fortune 500 CEO.
If we want to raise healthy, high-agency children, we should give them the freedom to make decisions without removing them from the consequences of those decisions. Giving children agency now will help them avoid a dark cycle of work, pain, and reckless release in the future. Even if a life of indulgent hedonism is fun in the short-term, it ultimately leaves a void in the heart.
Thanks for Ana Fabrega for co-writing this essay with me.
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