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An Empirical Introduction to Youth
Everyone has heard that "we only use 10% of our brains" is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood. Here we add another myth to the pile: that the brain develops until the age of 25. This groundbreaking new work exposes the institution of Science as unfaithful to its own data, existing in a subverted state subordinate to the political aspirations of the class that controls it. Bronski tears the narrative apart piece by piece, ripping through and debunking every major writing that supports the myth of the teen brain. In addition, he shows that the ideology regarding youth which exists today is totally ahistorical, and that the US education system is massively exploitative and was founded by the ruling classes against the will of the people. The work's culminating thesis is that the class which resides at the top of the education system, the paid brains of the rich, have proliferated wrong ideas about youth in order to strengthen then influence over the minds of young, their pocketbooks, and the pocketbooks of their families. No dogma regarding contemporary youth survives this devastating, piercing work; it is a must-read for anyone who wants to be knowledgeable on youth development and education -- anyone who has not read it is officially behind the times as of this moment.
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 30, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 15, 2023
This book unravels and debunks the core arguments that are the basis for why mandatory schooling exists. This is done with extensive citations and data. According to the author, he has been working on this book for many years, even decades. Perhaps this is what’s required to take on such a task, an obsessive meticulousness and unbreakable passion. And it’s quite a task indeed. The neuroanatomical and psychological pre-suppositions that have been ingrained into our minds to justify public schooling seem unbreakable.
We start off with a historical perspective of how youth was treated before mandatory schooling. For example, in ancient Rome and Greece, boys were treated as young adults from the beginning of their teen years, at 14, when they also started their apprenticeships. A well regarded lawyer or physician at the age of 17-18 was nothing unusual. Similar trends appear in pre-industrial Europe where boys and girls were sent away from home at the beginning of their teen years to apprenticeships or work as servants at other households. A side-effect of this is also that richer people got married in their teens and had more children, while poorer people spent their teens in apprenticeships, married later and had less children, which essentially reduces poverty in a society.
Now, one might say that it’s ludicrous that a 17-year-old doctor could be a well-regarded professional in the adult world. In fact, it’s actually what 99.99% of people most likely would say nowadays. The problem is, though, that this view of youth has most often been propagated by people with special interests in maintaining and extending mandatory schooling and this view has little, if any, basis in factual data. The standard line is that teen’s brains are not fully developed yet and that they are not psychologically mature enough to be let into the adult world. Thus they need mandatory schooling, because they are not really fit for anything else.
As far as youth’s neuroanatomical development, to summarize, gray matter in the prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain accumulates until puberty and starts continuously declining from there on. White matter accumulates fastest at about age 1, continues accumulating at an increasingly slower rate until about age 45. Anatomically, there is no significant difference between the brains of 15 year-olds and 20-30-year-olds. There is definitely no factual significance about the age 25, which is widely assumed to be when the brain reaches maturity.
Furthermore, with regard to the functioning of the brain, to summarize again, the data on psychometric and neurometric functioning shows the brain reaches adult level performance at the end of puberty, which is 14 for girls and 15 for boys. These functions include inhibitory control, memory, selective attention and processing speed, impulse control, sensitivity to reward, cognitive understanding and IQ among others. In addition, according to the data, teens show an increased judgement to avoid harmful situations compared to the adults. These include unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancies, contracting STD’s, getting into car crashes, when controlled for years of driving experience, and drunk driving.
This book is packed with so much data so it’s impossible to include all the most important parts in a review but another major argument for public schooling, that is disintegrated, is that learning random facts and subjects develops our minds and teaches us how to think. Data shows that there is no correlation between being good in one subject and therefore being good at other subjects in school. So having good grades at math for example, doesn’t transfer to having good grades at other subjects. The data also shows conclusively that schooling doesn’t increase G, the metric that is measured by IQ.
With regard to data from the real world, we can refer to a study done with air-traffic controllers, one of the most cognitively demanding jobs out there. These professionals were tested on a number of general memory and attention tasks, for example keeping track of floating numbers on screen. They did no better than anyone else. This shows quite convincingly that skills acquired for a specific task do not transfer into other areas or into general ability to think. Thus school teaches youth how to learn random topics that are not useful or applied elsewhere, not much else. Keep in mind that this is mandatory for everyone and youth with perfectly functioning adult level brains are kept out of the workforce by memorizing useless information for years on end. This is a massive loss for the economy and everyone except the teacher and regulators keeping the education factory running, feeding on young people.
Furthermore, most of the random knowledge gained from schooling is forgotten as it’s not used, so most adult effectively never had any schooling at all. One study showed that people forget 50% of the math and geometry taught in school after 5 yers and almost everything after 25 years. Another interesting fact from the book is that before mandatory education, in America, schools were mostly free, supported by private philanthropy, or by the state. Poor people could always get an education, if they wanted. Thus, mandatory education has nothing to do with helping poor people.
Many more interesting aspects in the book about the historical development and special interests behind mandatory schooling. It’s really quite a remarkably horrible achievement that certain individuals groups have succeeded in establishing a world-wide mandatory schooling system despite the public never having wanted it. They are even looking to even extend this to a mandatory university education.
A great original work packed with relevant data providing a new perspective on a major aspect in the functioning of society. I recommend it to everyone, especially teachers.
We start off with a historical perspective of how youth was treated before mandatory schooling. For example, in ancient Rome and Greece, boys were treated as young adults from the beginning of their teen years, at 14, when they also started their apprenticeships. A well regarded lawyer or physician at the age of 17-18 was nothing unusual. Similar trends appear in pre-industrial Europe where boys and girls were sent away from home at the beginning of their teen years to apprenticeships or work as servants at other households. A side-effect of this is also that richer people got married in their teens and had more children, while poorer people spent their teens in apprenticeships, married later and had less children, which essentially reduces poverty in a society.
Now, one might say that it’s ludicrous that a 17-year-old doctor could be a well-regarded professional in the adult world. In fact, it’s actually what 99.99% of people most likely would say nowadays. The problem is, though, that this view of youth has most often been propagated by people with special interests in maintaining and extending mandatory schooling and this view has little, if any, basis in factual data. The standard line is that teen’s brains are not fully developed yet and that they are not psychologically mature enough to be let into the adult world. Thus they need mandatory schooling, because they are not really fit for anything else.
As far as youth’s neuroanatomical development, to summarize, gray matter in the prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain accumulates until puberty and starts continuously declining from there on. White matter accumulates fastest at about age 1, continues accumulating at an increasingly slower rate until about age 45. Anatomically, there is no significant difference between the brains of 15 year-olds and 20-30-year-olds. There is definitely no factual significance about the age 25, which is widely assumed to be when the brain reaches maturity.
Furthermore, with regard to the functioning of the brain, to summarize again, the data on psychometric and neurometric functioning shows the brain reaches adult level performance at the end of puberty, which is 14 for girls and 15 for boys. These functions include inhibitory control, memory, selective attention and processing speed, impulse control, sensitivity to reward, cognitive understanding and IQ among others. In addition, according to the data, teens show an increased judgement to avoid harmful situations compared to the adults. These include unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancies, contracting STD’s, getting into car crashes, when controlled for years of driving experience, and drunk driving.
This book is packed with so much data so it’s impossible to include all the most important parts in a review but another major argument for public schooling, that is disintegrated, is that learning random facts and subjects develops our minds and teaches us how to think. Data shows that there is no correlation between being good in one subject and therefore being good at other subjects in school. So having good grades at math for example, doesn’t transfer to having good grades at other subjects. The data also shows conclusively that schooling doesn’t increase G, the metric that is measured by IQ.
With regard to data from the real world, we can refer to a study done with air-traffic controllers, one of the most cognitively demanding jobs out there. These professionals were tested on a number of general memory and attention tasks, for example keeping track of floating numbers on screen. They did no better than anyone else. This shows quite convincingly that skills acquired for a specific task do not transfer into other areas or into general ability to think. Thus school teaches youth how to learn random topics that are not useful or applied elsewhere, not much else. Keep in mind that this is mandatory for everyone and youth with perfectly functioning adult level brains are kept out of the workforce by memorizing useless information for years on end. This is a massive loss for the economy and everyone except the teacher and regulators keeping the education factory running, feeding on young people.
Furthermore, most of the random knowledge gained from schooling is forgotten as it’s not used, so most adult effectively never had any schooling at all. One study showed that people forget 50% of the math and geometry taught in school after 5 yers and almost everything after 25 years. Another interesting fact from the book is that before mandatory education, in America, schools were mostly free, supported by private philanthropy, or by the state. Poor people could always get an education, if they wanted. Thus, mandatory education has nothing to do with helping poor people.
Many more interesting aspects in the book about the historical development and special interests behind mandatory schooling. It’s really quite a remarkably horrible achievement that certain individuals groups have succeeded in establishing a world-wide mandatory schooling system despite the public never having wanted it. They are even looking to even extend this to a mandatory university education.
A great original work packed with relevant data providing a new perspective on a major aspect in the functioning of society. I recommend it to everyone, especially teachers.
October 21, 2025
"An Empirical Introduction to Youth" takes on a very interesting topic that I haven't seen covered anywhere else. The idea is that, generally, the human brain reaches maturity far earlier than is widely believed. The author provides strong evidence for this hypothesis (the book has near 300 references) and posits some suggestions as to why the myth of the undeveloped adolescent brain is perpetuated in modernity.
I thought that book was well written and it is clear that this is something the author is especially passionate about. Overall, it is a thought-provoking read. The author's case is well made and consistent. I don't know if I would say that I have been convinced absolutely of the argument's accuracy, however I think it certainly has some merit and is worth further investigation.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Firstly, the author (rarely) includes anecdotal evidence, such as how useful he found most of high school after 8th grade, and then uses this to make broader assumptions about how useful school is. It's rare that he does this, and in most cases he also has other supporting evidence. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel that anecdotal evidence should be offered purely as supplementary/contextual material and generally can be discounted as supportive to large-scale arguments such as is found within this book. Secondly, there were more than a couple of mistakes in the text, with words misspelled or missing, and in one case a mislabelled graph. In the grand scheme of things, these issues were minor in comparison to the overall text, and I highly recommend it for parents and educators who are unfamiliar (or even who think they are familiar) with the relevant literature.
4.5 out of 5
I thought that book was well written and it is clear that this is something the author is especially passionate about. Overall, it is a thought-provoking read. The author's case is well made and consistent. I don't know if I would say that I have been convinced absolutely of the argument's accuracy, however I think it certainly has some merit and is worth further investigation.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. Firstly, the author (rarely) includes anecdotal evidence, such as how useful he found most of high school after 8th grade, and then uses this to make broader assumptions about how useful school is. It's rare that he does this, and in most cases he also has other supporting evidence. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel that anecdotal evidence should be offered purely as supplementary/contextual material and generally can be discounted as supportive to large-scale arguments such as is found within this book. Secondly, there were more than a couple of mistakes in the text, with words misspelled or missing, and in one case a mislabelled graph. In the grand scheme of things, these issues were minor in comparison to the overall text, and I highly recommend it for parents and educators who are unfamiliar (or even who think they are familiar) with the relevant literature.
4.5 out of 5
February 3, 2025
A profoundly important book, as someone formerly in the public school system, many of the students themselves agree that they are learning practically nothing, also I agree that our brains stabilize at a young age, it is practically common sense that this is true has historically in other countries younger people have had professional jobs and were independent, in my home country (which I will not name), you can be a Lawyer at a very young age compared to in certain countries and you don't have to be some genius to achieve this, the school system is failing to meet the goals it hitherto claimed it was going to meet and we are witnessing the slow decline of this idea propagated by Leftists and the such.
December 19, 2024
Amazing, just amazing. A great piece.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews