I think the mentality is shifting a little as millenials and gen z are slowly letting go of the meritocratic myth, but blaming internal motivations more than context is a problem in the American conception of the world we still suffer from as a nation. The inability of us to accept that our actions are not the only determining things in our lives seriously limit our ability to fully comprehend the world and how it really works which leads us to thinking ideas like work requirements are actually sane rather than completely counterproductive.
My house is cluttered, mostly because I'm frugal and we live in a house that is a bit too small for our hobbies (art for me, music for the spouse, though we both dabble in the other). I have more money this way.
I'm lazy.
And honeslty, the only time I've really gotten crap for this type of thing is when I'm poor and honestly too freaking tired to do any of this stuff. THere is nothing quite like working for 8 hours, using feet for transportation, and not being able to actually feed yourself well enough to have energy nor keep your house warm enough in the winter to do much. (I kept multiple blankets on). It is really easy to just give up. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without some help and getting really freaking lucky.
Many schools do not have a great library. That have a library adequate to the school needs. Being able to use said library at school is sometimes difficult. By the time I was in high school, the library was a rare treat in class. They weren't open after school. You could not go there during lunch. My senior year, the school I went to changed and sometimes you could go there during home room period. Before that, not really: It was only 15 minutes most times anyway.
Not everyone has a public library to use either, and even when you do, good luck. You might need transportation.
I will also assume you are talking about older children. Most 13-year olds just don't have a lot of maturity for what you describe. Perhaps a 16 or 17 year old, and hopefully they aren't so poor that they have to work to help support their family or take care of their younger siblings while their parents work.
All in all, it really kind of seems out of touch and looking from the outside in instead of the other way around.
I am as well. And have parents enabling this behavior, with an career outcome as bad as you could expect. I can totally understand that part of the political spectrum doesn't want to encourage this at all (favorable interpretation of them), even though they IMO often overshoot that goal and advance less optimal outcomes.
> I will also assume you are talking about older children. Most 13-year olds just don't have a lot of maturity for what you describe.
Your phrasing makes this seem like a natural fact. Finding ways to deeply engrave important values (work hard, strive for greatness, delayed gratification, stuff like that) into future generations seems like a real challenge right now. And what makes stories like [0] so interesting. Evolution doesn't take care of that job for us anymore in a "work or starve" way. Religious "work or go to hell" probably did an ok job for a while, but comes with a lot of other baggage. A very capitalistic "work if you want a decent live" society over many generations leads to increasingly unequal starting conditions for offspring and thus seems especially incompatible with democracy, since it will lead to "the system is rigged, lets burn it down" votes, as recently observed all over the western world.
So what's next? As mentioned in my prior anecdote, mostly letting your children do what they want, thinking this will naturally make them strive for greatness, will probably not work. What are the necessary environmental factors parents and society should provide to shape future humans into productive members of society? I'm sure with all our knowledge, mankind can do better than the earlier simple carrot & stick systems.