"Hell is a gift."

Interesting thread and worth reviving.

My comments:

"It is a bad message, one that sees no delineation between childhood and adulthood."

Yet nature/reality provides no such delineation. Lawmakers have set an age of majority, 18 in most countries, but it can be anywhere between 16 and 21. Does this mean that a person changes from a child to adult overnight?

"What if our children weren’t raised by random peers and (oft times) ideologue teachers? What if they actually shared our culture rather than being stratified into their own little worlds?"

In pre-modern societies, parents were the only source of information about the world. Now, there are many diverse sources. If parents want their children to stay in their culture, they need to make it look more attractive than the alternatives. A difficult task, but not impossible. Encouraging teens to play an active role in parents' culture might be helpful, but it won't stop them from looking at the wider world.

But there is another side to it. Nowadays more and more families are secular, so Christianity might be interesting to teens feeling frustrated with the spiritual emptiness at home and in the media.

"Extending childhood in the name of education is a failed experiment of catastrophic proportions."

America's extended childhood is not the norm worldwide, European countries have lower legal ages for most things (drinking, sex, etc.) yet they did not become cesspools of drunkenness and debauchery. At least not worse cesspools than the US. In Germany there are less alcoholics than in America, although one can drink beer at 16.

However, it is true that modern civilization requires longer education than medieval societies. I'm not sure if this feature can be fixed.