enlisted in the Corps on my eighteenth birthday. Middle of Nam conflict. Offered OCS in boot.
Why? I was a MAN, not a boy. a young man, I'll grant you; with a few foibles that aging would fix; but I was full on ready to be put in harms' way, and to lead.
"Young men deeds, middle-aged men plans, old men farts".
I noticed the "not an adult until 25" talk didn't really start until we hit peak "Boomers will never retire" talk. Now the Boomers have found out no matter how cushy your job and how long you keep your health, you will always get sick and die. So now we ostensibly have a labor shortage that can only be solved by importing unskilled, illiterate foreigners. Now that the biggest generation is passing, maybe it's time to give younger people more responsibility?
On a humorous note, one researcher said in regards to 25 as mental maturity, " Of course, your brain turns to rock, and you can't learn anything new".
"Ostensibly" being the key word. Yes, Boomers are aging out but if you look at the age adjusted labor force participation rate or wealth accumulation by generation, you find some disheartening trends for Millennials and Gen Z at the same points in their working careers.
The “not an adult until 25” talking was also driven by a desire on the part of anti-gunners who wanted to artificially increase the number of “children” killed.
For the more modern day, while we were homeschooling I had our kids following the exploits of Laura Dekker. She operates a foundation for youths 8 to 16 to get them involved in sailing. https://lauradekkerworldsailingfoundation.com/
Great article. Thought-provoking. So my thoughts begin w the idea of a “built environment.” Most chairs are a certain size cuz most people are a certain size. (Airline seats excepted.). Most ceilings are a certain height cuz must people are a certain height. Most cars are a certain size cuz…. And so on…
Which brings us to modern culture. Or… modern “built culture.” We have a school system (aka “skool”) that warehouses young people up to age 18 or so, within a certain type of methodical learning environment. Then a college system that ghettoizes way too many 18 - 22 yr olds, also within a certain type of methodical education/social environment. All hand in hand w a mass culture system of TV, Hollywood, music, so-called “influencers,” and much more that are designed — more importantly, financed! — to keep most people within a bubble of prolonged immaturity; if not to discourage the idea of objective usefulness in the world.
So… If we want large(er) numbers of young people to show some stuff at earlier ages, it’s not just important to set higher bars. It’s important to break away from failed forms of acculturation. Break down many elements of our poorly built environments. Modern culture delenda est.
On my way to the Sandbox, I stayed at Fort Bragg and had a rack in the rundown barracks on DeGlopper Avenue.
I remember the young soldiers dressed in full battle rattle conducting land navigation training in blistering heat. I also visited UNC, Chapel Hill and saw the students playing with frisbees on the campus lawn and having milk drinking contests.
I too am wondering if our educational system is preventing children from becoming adults.
Fullbore Friday is one of my favorite CDR Salamander events. Another uplifting example of a young person doing great things when given the opportunity.
Sadly, today we have an K-12 education system that appears to be deliberately designed to permanently infantilize the young (especially young males), cocooning them in an unchallenging environment that doesn't teach them useful skills (the three Rs, critical thinking) but instead indoctrinates them. The indoctrination constantly repeats the message that their nation sucks, is the only one that ever had slaves, and is a racist oppressor, etc. Also, the game is rigged against you.
Since the game is rigged, it isn't worth trying to better yourself. Since you can't succeed, why try?
Perhaps most importantly, why would you serve in the military of such a country, submitting yourself to physical and mental discomfort propping up an awful entity.
Oddly, it is a known medical "fact" that young male frontal lobes (which govern decision making) don't actually full mature until late 20s. So, the cohort that is traditionally used in direct combat activities hasn't historically made great risk decisions (some call young males societal "disposables" because they will make "bad" decisions, see Pickett's Charge, Normandy, etc). Our current educational system appears to be almost deliberately short circuiting normal young male development on some level. As a result, you don't see anywhere near as many individuals like the youngster in the article. It's almost like it's being done on purpose?
I joined the Marines on my seventeenth Birthday, quit school to do it.
Infantry field I grew up fast. Weapons handling means you really stop being a child.
I was released from Active duty at Twenty one years of age. I was a man by my Standards.
I got married in my last three months of service fresh off of my last deployment at the age of twenty.
My son was born two years later when I was Twenty two, and I would say at that point I was an adult.
Yet, I did not vote in any elections till I was Thirty Nine because frankly I was engaged trying to work, raise a son and keep my family healthy happy and fed! Plus I didn't quite know what to make of Politics. My first vote was for Bill Clinton, which shows my ignorance of politics.
I have voted in every election since, but not for democrats.
In 1965 I was sitting in class in my senior year of high school. I stood up walked out and used my lunch money to ride the bus to the AFEES Station on Canal St. in downtown New Orleans. Broke my heart when the recruiter said I could not join the Navy without parental consent. I was 17. Used the nickel left over to call my mom to come pick me up. Took a few days but both parents said they'd sign the consent form. Mom made me promise to finish high school and to never get a tattoo. As a drop-out, I enlisted with no guarantees. I do recall that just before the huge group of us took our oath, Sgt. Van Heertum asked, "A show uff hanz for those uff you who are wolunteers." Turns out that I was the only one with a raised hand. That got me looks of "What are you...crazy?" from the crowd and "Attaboy" from the staff. In bootcamp they classified me for the Radarman rating and in RD"A School they made me take the GED test. Made E-5 at 19 and transferred from my DE to a DDG, which promptly deployed to the Med without an RD1 or RDC. The senior RD2 became the "Chief" and took himself off the watch bill and snoozed for the whole cruise. They made me LPO. After the deployment, I became an Anti-Submarine Air Controller. Promoted to RD1 under my 4 year mark. Reenlisted for Vietnam duty, got sent to CLG-5 at 21. Was 1 of 2 NGFS Supervisors and whip hand for the Evaluator (TAO) while we did NSAR/PIRAZ duty in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was a 2 year tour until I got force converted to the new EW rating. And things always got better. More sea duty, promotions...up to E-8, W-3 and finally O-3E, staff duty as an E-8 in an O-4 billet, DIVO for 2 "A" schools, CICO on an Aegis Cruiser during Desert Storm. Growing up is a choice. Luck is real. You can make your own luck. My real luck was good parenting and some sturdy ancestral stock. Never got a tattoo. Did get an actual high school diploma to replace the GED and 3 college degrees in the bargain. Thanks, Mom.
You were much quicker than I was. My 17th birthday was on a Saturday, so I had to wait until Monday to join the Navy. I did attend the Navy vs. Notre Dame football game on my 17th birthday. I hung around a while getting out in my 40s.
All of our children had to have adult plans at age 18 and had to begin executing them. Otherwise, it was “I love you. Goodbye” because they weren’t going to just sit around the house, playing with their phones. All three are fully functional adults, contributing to society - one computer systems engineer, one mother of five, and one firefighter (who spends his off-hours volunteering as a firefighter in another county).
While visiting the S.S. JOHN W BROWN (https://www.ssjohnwbrown.org/) in Baltimore a few years ago, I was struck by a statement the docent made that most of the Liberty Ship captains were in their 20s during WWII. Indeed, we do not challenge our young men—and women— sufficiently in the years between 18-25 to have them matured and ready to take on meaningful roles in society.
I was enrolled in a UK naval training school at age twelve, moved to naval college at sixteen and was at sea as a navigating officer cadet at seventeen.
Recuperating ashore after an injury sustained aboard ship I decided, on a whim really, to join the police at nineteen years old.
By twenty-two I had seen, up close and personally, murder and mayhem (including an IRA bomb attack) on a scale that I had not imagined to be possible.
My experience was not remarkable; my Boomer cohort lived similar life stories.
Before me, my father had joined the British Army in India as a boy trumpeter, aged fourteen, with the cavalry in 1936. By nineteen he was engaged in WWII.
It seems that, shaped by our own experiences, we decided to protect and perhaps mollycoddle our children - because we could.
Yes. I really wanted to be a Naval officer shortly before I turned 15. Didn’t work out how I planned, and my own follies of youth worked against me. Instead, I enlisted and grew up.
Thanks to the Hornblower & Bolitho novels, I have at least a partial grasp on the life and times of English midshipmen in the late 18th/early 19th century.
Much was asked of those young men. They delivered.
There was a whiff of that in the Falklands War. I remember the RN putting out a statement that yes, the 16 year old sailors assigned to ships would be staying on board and fighting with their shipmates.
I was shocked and appalled by Ukraine’s initial draft policy of not drafting anyone below 27. They’ve only just lowered it to 25.
I read all the Royal Navy/Napoleonic War novels I can get my hands on. Sure wish I'd had those novels to read while I was on active duty. Such a rich history I knew so little about.
It's almost unfair to draw examples of precocity from the Royal Navy, where boyhood entry was the rule. At least it should be noted that in the RN, early development of adult competence was often accompanied by premature mental ossification. Fisher was a confirmed believer in early entry; but in his efforts to develop a naval staff, he came up against a naval career pattern in which — because only time in command at sea really counted — men often reached high rank without so much as having opened a book on strategy. Hence his despairing cry, "How many of our Admirals have got minds?" Anyone who in mid-life joins a bureaucracy in which "rising through the ranks" is the rule will find himself asking that question from time to time.
Please don't through the baby out with the bathwater in this particular discussion. - Having said that? Doesn't matter if it was the Admiralty or General Motors.
With the exception of a few exceptionally precocious tyros our culture generally no longer encourages youth towards responsibility or leadership at a young age. (See death of scouting.)
I do have to chuckle at the idea (said in jest I assume) that maybe voting age should be moved to 25. My children all feel that anyone over 75 not be allowed to vote because that will not be around long enough to see the fallout from their decisions…. As they remind me of all the debt my generation is piling on them when they’ve had no say in those decisions. True taxation without representation
Voting age was 21 until Vietnam War. Then came the argument that if people were old enough to fight in a war, they were old enough to vote. Problem w current state of age 18 voting rights is that the vast majority of this youthful cadre never serve in the military. And our governance reflects how politicians cater to campus fads.
Yep, and Charles XII became King of Sweden at the age of 15. Three years later he was fighting Denmark-Norway, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia in the Great Northern War.
Not enough "like" buttons for this one, Sir!
enlisted in the Corps on my eighteenth birthday. Middle of Nam conflict. Offered OCS in boot.
Why? I was a MAN, not a boy. a young man, I'll grant you; with a few foibles that aging would fix; but I was full on ready to be put in harms' way, and to lead.
Semper Fi Buddy!
"Young men deeds, middle-aged men plans, old men farts".
I noticed the "not an adult until 25" talk didn't really start until we hit peak "Boomers will never retire" talk. Now the Boomers have found out no matter how cushy your job and how long you keep your health, you will always get sick and die. So now we ostensibly have a labor shortage that can only be solved by importing unskilled, illiterate foreigners. Now that the biggest generation is passing, maybe it's time to give younger people more responsibility?
On a humorous note, one researcher said in regards to 25 as mental maturity, " Of course, your brain turns to rock, and you can't learn anything new".
"Ostensibly" being the key word. Yes, Boomers are aging out but if you look at the age adjusted labor force participation rate or wealth accumulation by generation, you find some disheartening trends for Millennials and Gen Z at the same points in their working careers.
Some of our youth can step up as adults, but many are unable to determine what sex and gender they are, what a woman is and which bathroom to use.
All roads lead to this comment - pls define “many”.
I don't know how many is many, but I know it is too many when I see it.
The “not an adult until 25” talking was also driven by a desire on the part of anti-gunners who wanted to artificially increase the number of “children” killed.
Veterans of Underage Military Service Association documented hundreds of boys and girls who served during WW2. Sadly they dissolved in December of 2022 due to so few of their members still surviving. Thanks to the hard work of their organizations, we get stories like this one from Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-12-year-old-boy-fought-on-a-world-war-ii-battleship-and-became-the-nations-youngest-decorated-war-hero-168104583/
The records of the organization were referenced in this dissertation from 2008.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1210&context=etd
For the more modern day, while we were homeschooling I had our kids following the exploits of Laura Dekker. She operates a foundation for youths 8 to 16 to get them involved in sailing. https://lauradekkerworldsailingfoundation.com/
"Too Young The Hero", a movie starring Rick Schroder, is about Calvin Graham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Young_the_Hero
Great article. Thought-provoking. So my thoughts begin w the idea of a “built environment.” Most chairs are a certain size cuz most people are a certain size. (Airline seats excepted.). Most ceilings are a certain height cuz must people are a certain height. Most cars are a certain size cuz…. And so on…
Which brings us to modern culture. Or… modern “built culture.” We have a school system (aka “skool”) that warehouses young people up to age 18 or so, within a certain type of methodical learning environment. Then a college system that ghettoizes way too many 18 - 22 yr olds, also within a certain type of methodical education/social environment. All hand in hand w a mass culture system of TV, Hollywood, music, so-called “influencers,” and much more that are designed — more importantly, financed! — to keep most people within a bubble of prolonged immaturity; if not to discourage the idea of objective usefulness in the world.
So… If we want large(er) numbers of young people to show some stuff at earlier ages, it’s not just important to set higher bars. It’s important to break away from failed forms of acculturation. Break down many elements of our poorly built environments. Modern culture delenda est.
On my way to the Sandbox, I stayed at Fort Bragg and had a rack in the rundown barracks on DeGlopper Avenue.
I remember the young soldiers dressed in full battle rattle conducting land navigation training in blistering heat. I also visited UNC, Chapel Hill and saw the students playing with frisbees on the campus lawn and having milk drinking contests.
I too am wondering if our educational system is preventing children from becoming adults.
Fullbore Friday is one of my favorite CDR Salamander events. Another uplifting example of a young person doing great things when given the opportunity.
Sadly, today we have an K-12 education system that appears to be deliberately designed to permanently infantilize the young (especially young males), cocooning them in an unchallenging environment that doesn't teach them useful skills (the three Rs, critical thinking) but instead indoctrinates them. The indoctrination constantly repeats the message that their nation sucks, is the only one that ever had slaves, and is a racist oppressor, etc. Also, the game is rigged against you.
Since the game is rigged, it isn't worth trying to better yourself. Since you can't succeed, why try?
Perhaps most importantly, why would you serve in the military of such a country, submitting yourself to physical and mental discomfort propping up an awful entity.
Oddly, it is a known medical "fact" that young male frontal lobes (which govern decision making) don't actually full mature until late 20s. So, the cohort that is traditionally used in direct combat activities hasn't historically made great risk decisions (some call young males societal "disposables" because they will make "bad" decisions, see Pickett's Charge, Normandy, etc). Our current educational system appears to be almost deliberately short circuiting normal young male development on some level. As a result, you don't see anywhere near as many individuals like the youngster in the article. It's almost like it's being done on purpose?
I joined the Marines on my seventeenth Birthday, quit school to do it.
Infantry field I grew up fast. Weapons handling means you really stop being a child.
I was released from Active duty at Twenty one years of age. I was a man by my Standards.
I got married in my last three months of service fresh off of my last deployment at the age of twenty.
My son was born two years later when I was Twenty two, and I would say at that point I was an adult.
Yet, I did not vote in any elections till I was Thirty Nine because frankly I was engaged trying to work, raise a son and keep my family healthy happy and fed! Plus I didn't quite know what to make of Politics. My first vote was for Bill Clinton, which shows my ignorance of politics.
I have voted in every election since, but not for democrats.
You were a quick learner. :)
In 1965 I was sitting in class in my senior year of high school. I stood up walked out and used my lunch money to ride the bus to the AFEES Station on Canal St. in downtown New Orleans. Broke my heart when the recruiter said I could not join the Navy without parental consent. I was 17. Used the nickel left over to call my mom to come pick me up. Took a few days but both parents said they'd sign the consent form. Mom made me promise to finish high school and to never get a tattoo. As a drop-out, I enlisted with no guarantees. I do recall that just before the huge group of us took our oath, Sgt. Van Heertum asked, "A show uff hanz for those uff you who are wolunteers." Turns out that I was the only one with a raised hand. That got me looks of "What are you...crazy?" from the crowd and "Attaboy" from the staff. In bootcamp they classified me for the Radarman rating and in RD"A School they made me take the GED test. Made E-5 at 19 and transferred from my DE to a DDG, which promptly deployed to the Med without an RD1 or RDC. The senior RD2 became the "Chief" and took himself off the watch bill and snoozed for the whole cruise. They made me LPO. After the deployment, I became an Anti-Submarine Air Controller. Promoted to RD1 under my 4 year mark. Reenlisted for Vietnam duty, got sent to CLG-5 at 21. Was 1 of 2 NGFS Supervisors and whip hand for the Evaluator (TAO) while we did NSAR/PIRAZ duty in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was a 2 year tour until I got force converted to the new EW rating. And things always got better. More sea duty, promotions...up to E-8, W-3 and finally O-3E, staff duty as an E-8 in an O-4 billet, DIVO for 2 "A" schools, CICO on an Aegis Cruiser during Desert Storm. Growing up is a choice. Luck is real. You can make your own luck. My real luck was good parenting and some sturdy ancestral stock. Never got a tattoo. Did get an actual high school diploma to replace the GED and 3 college degrees in the bargain. Thanks, Mom.
OOHHRRaa!
You were much quicker than I was. My 17th birthday was on a Saturday, so I had to wait until Monday to join the Navy. I did attend the Navy vs. Notre Dame football game on my 17th birthday. I hung around a while getting out in my 40s.
All of our children had to have adult plans at age 18 and had to begin executing them. Otherwise, it was “I love you. Goodbye” because they weren’t going to just sit around the house, playing with their phones. All three are fully functional adults, contributing to society - one computer systems engineer, one mother of five, and one firefighter (who spends his off-hours volunteering as a firefighter in another county).
BZ.
While visiting the S.S. JOHN W BROWN (https://www.ssjohnwbrown.org/) in Baltimore a few years ago, I was struck by a statement the docent made that most of the Liberty Ship captains were in their 20s during WWII. Indeed, we do not challenge our young men—and women— sufficiently in the years between 18-25 to have them matured and ready to take on meaningful roles in society.
I was enrolled in a UK naval training school at age twelve, moved to naval college at sixteen and was at sea as a navigating officer cadet at seventeen.
Recuperating ashore after an injury sustained aboard ship I decided, on a whim really, to join the police at nineteen years old.
By twenty-two I had seen, up close and personally, murder and mayhem (including an IRA bomb attack) on a scale that I had not imagined to be possible.
My experience was not remarkable; my Boomer cohort lived similar life stories.
Before me, my father had joined the British Army in India as a boy trumpeter, aged fourteen, with the cavalry in 1936. By nineteen he was engaged in WWII.
It seems that, shaped by our own experiences, we decided to protect and perhaps mollycoddle our children - because we could.
Here are some examples of "children" joining the Royal Navy and at what ages they joined:
Roger Keyes 13
Lord Louis Mountbatten 16
Jackie Fisher 13
John Jellicoe 13
David Beatty 13
Andrew Cunnigham 14
Prince Louis of Battenberg 14
Robert Falcon Scott 13
Ernest Shackleton 16 (Merchant Navy)
Nelson should be in there. A Parson's son!
Definitely, but wanted to keep it modern.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Axtell
Commanding Officer, VMF-323 Death Rattlers at the age of 22 ... Led a squadron with Marines significantly older into combat.. full bore...
Yes. I really wanted to be a Naval officer shortly before I turned 15. Didn’t work out how I planned, and my own follies of youth worked against me. Instead, I enlisted and grew up.
Thanks to the Hornblower & Bolitho novels, I have at least a partial grasp on the life and times of English midshipmen in the late 18th/early 19th century.
Much was asked of those young men. They delivered.
There was a whiff of that in the Falklands War. I remember the RN putting out a statement that yes, the 16 year old sailors assigned to ships would be staying on board and fighting with their shipmates.
I was shocked and appalled by Ukraine’s initial draft policy of not drafting anyone below 27. They’ve only just lowered it to 25.
Complete insanity.
I read all the Royal Navy/Napoleonic War novels I can get my hands on. Sure wish I'd had those novels to read while I was on active duty. Such a rich history I knew so little about.
It's almost unfair to draw examples of precocity from the Royal Navy, where boyhood entry was the rule. At least it should be noted that in the RN, early development of adult competence was often accompanied by premature mental ossification. Fisher was a confirmed believer in early entry; but in his efforts to develop a naval staff, he came up against a naval career pattern in which — because only time in command at sea really counted — men often reached high rank without so much as having opened a book on strategy. Hence his despairing cry, "How many of our Admirals have got minds?" Anyone who in mid-life joins a bureaucracy in which "rising through the ranks" is the rule will find himself asking that question from time to time.
Please don't through the baby out with the bathwater in this particular discussion. - Having said that? Doesn't matter if it was the Admiralty or General Motors.
With the exception of a few exceptionally precocious tyros our culture generally no longer encourages youth towards responsibility or leadership at a young age. (See death of scouting.)
If I were the CNO, Fisher would be my role model. My first act would be to scrap every worthless ship in the Navy and build a new fleet.
I do have to chuckle at the idea (said in jest I assume) that maybe voting age should be moved to 25. My children all feel that anyone over 75 not be allowed to vote because that will not be around long enough to see the fallout from their decisions…. As they remind me of all the debt my generation is piling on them when they’ve had no say in those decisions. True taxation without representation
Voting age was 21 until Vietnam War. Then came the argument that if people were old enough to fight in a war, they were old enough to vote. Problem w current state of age 18 voting rights is that the vast majority of this youthful cadre never serve in the military. And our governance reflects how politicians cater to campus fads.
In most, if not all, Canadian provinces alcoholic beverages may be legally purchased at age nineteen 🍻
Alexander the Great was 25 when he defeated Darius at Guagamela. He'd already conquered the eastern Mediterranean as an "extended adolescent."
Yep, and Charles XII became King of Sweden at the age of 15. Three years later he was fighting Denmark-Norway, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia in the Great Northern War.
He also was dead by 33. So, maybe the rush to grow up can be overdone.
Most people were probably dead by 35 in 300 BC. One can probably assume the concept of childhood as we know it wasn't a thing.