Education’s side effect (Hindustan Times, 26 Jun 2006, Page 18)

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Education’s side effect

Hindustan Times
26 Jun 2006

NEW RESEARCH has shown that grownups are increasingly showing more immature behaviour.

Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining behaviour and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry.

The theory’s creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.”

“The psychological neoteny effect of formal education is an accidental by-product — the main role of education is to increase general, abstract intelligence and prepare for economic activity,” he explained.

“But formal education requires a childlike stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility."

"When formal education continues into the early twenties," he continued, "it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age.”

ANI, London A STUDY by researchers at Cornell University has found that mothers aged 65 to 75 are almost four times more likely to... read more...