Are kids being forced to grow up too fast? And what can schools do about it?

Today’s 10-year-olds come across as far more mature than kids used to be when they hit college. Why? Bob Cooke, head of school at Community School, sums it up simply: “They’re far more connected to what’s going on in the world”—even to the issues—climate change, global terror, overt sexuality—that overwhelm grown-ups. Kids are also more poised when it comes to presenting themselves on social media; they learn early to construct a self. But that doesn’t mean it’s sturdy enough to handle everything that’s thrown at them.

The acceleration starts around fifth grade, Cooke’s noticed. “There’s not a huge change in the little guys.” Community School is already preparing them, though: “We gently and very deliberately introduce them, starting in first and second grade, to conversation and the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable.”

How do you preserve childhood innocence at the same time? Cooke chuckles, remembering a vigorous second-grade debate on the merits and miseries of mopping. The fourth grade, meanwhile, was deciding whether Columbus Day should be celebrated. And in the fifth grade, kids were throwing slips of paper into the Questioning and Wondering box. Their teacher curated, weeding out topics the other kids might not be ready for. Every individual’s different. Overall, you wind up teaching kids as though they’re two ages at once—still wide-eyed and joyful and silly yet with serious questions churning inside. 

At Maplewood–Richmond Heights Elementary School, principal Jason Adams sees “younger children dealing with anxiety and issues related to societal trauma.” They bring questions about natural disasters to science class, current events to social studies, relationships to literature. In the morning, every classroom has a meeting “where kids can get things off their mind and teachers can know where the kids are coming from that particular day. They might hear half of a story, not all the facts. They don’t have the context or the backstory.” Because kids’ ability to Google anything has shifted curriculum from a recitation of facts to a probing of sources, much of today’s content is about digging deeper, finding other perspectives, verifying. But Adams also worries about the anxiety and perfectionism that are growing with Google: “When kids can’t find an answer immediately, we have more meltdowns.”

Peter Schroeder is head of The Lower School at Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School, part of the Sacred Heart network that’s been educating since the 1800s, and he sees their approach “getting more relevant by the day.” Rather than isolate children from the adult world, the staff provides a foundation of love, support, and self-respect that makes them larger than its influences. “We don’t have to chase whims to find our values, and society doesn’t have to define us,” he says. Access is inescapable—“we’re all free to choose and see and experience—but how can we be wise about it?” Teachers network tightly with parents: “The societal fabric that would have bound us together is disappearing,” Schroeder says, “but let’s make our own fabric and hold our kids up. They’ll explore and probably uncover things they shouldn’t, but they don’t have to stay there. It doesn’t have to affect them so deeply.”

The big mistake, says Cooke, is going to either extreme: throwing every adult issue at them because they’ll see it anyway or encasing them in bubble wrap that’s bound to pop someday.