Science & Tech Quote by James Hillman

The line lands like a diagnosis disguised as a complaint: adults have mistaken childhood for a risk-management project. Hillman isn’t nostalgically pining for some sepia-toned past; he’s indicting a cultural reflex that meets every anxiety about “kids today” with more structure, more surveillance, more productivity. His trio of fixes - longer school hours, earlier computer use, stricter curfews - reads like a checklist of institutional comfort, not child development. Each item soothes adult fear (falling behind, being unsafe, being uncompetitive) while quietly shrinking the territory where a self can form.

Hillman’s subtext is archetypal and psychological: childhood needs room for the irrational, the unoptimized, the unsupervised. When we replace that with schedules and screens, we don’t just steal time; we reshape imagination. “Earlier age at the computer” is especially pointed. It’s not anti-technology so much as anti-premature adulthood: a world of metrics, constant input, and performative identity arriving before the kid has a private interior life to protect.

The rhetorical question is the twist of the knife. It forces the listener to realize that the supposed reforms are not gifts but burdens - adult solutions to adult unease. In the late 20th century, as schooling intensified and digital life moved from novelty to necessity, Hillman saw a civilization training children to be compliant workers and vigilant consumers, then acting surprised when they seem less free. The question isn’t about whether kids can adapt; it’s whether we’ve made a world worth adapting to.