<p>I see several threads in the original Brooks piece. </p>
<p>I think the one I responded to most quickly was “life is about finding serious things to tie yourself to”. </p>
<p>I don’t argue with the immediate response that, whatever your particular serious thing is - if it isn’t attached to an instant huge income, go ahead and do it anyhow. </p>
<p>But I’m also interested in Brooks’ line of reasoning about team vs individual - outside of family and friends, the things that matter most to me do have something to do with being on a team - things for which the biggest return was seeing the job get completed, or at least pushed along - in what seemed like the right way rather than the wrong way. could be business, could be volunteer work, could be recreation (for my sins I run a couple of recreational sports teams). Eventually, there was/is some personal credit to be had - that’s good, everyone likes a pat on the back. But the real sense of accomplishment seems to have come from the accomplishment itself, and yes, there is some kind of extra thrill from being part of a group that made it happen. </p>
<p>I don’t want to argue for “either/or” - sometimes the approach needs to be individual, sometimes group. But if we are programmed to want to belong to groups (and I think there is some basis for that - not 100%, but certainly not 0% either), then let’s have it be a positive group rather than a negative group. </p>
<p>But how to get that into an education? </p>
<p>Work experience? I kind of like the idea of community service, but in practice it can deteriorate to “here are my hours”, rather than “what I learned in my CS job”. never-the-less, my kids’ community service (all from summer volunteer jobs) has been the making of them - possibly the best part of their education so far. </p>
<p>Responsibility? Older students responsible for younger students? </p>
<p>Well, still thinking.</p>