I agree with your upsides. On the failure modes though, I think the question of ‘what do the parents think’ is missing and important (I guess you maybe touch on it when saying it’s politically delicate?). I can imagine all sorts of things high schoolers decide to do because of something they read related to EA that parents might be unhappy about and rally around, from donating their pocket money to moving country, or changing career plans (which many parents are opinionated about).
Regardless of whether the changes teenagers make in their life as a result of getting into EA will be good or bad or whether their parents are right or wrong, parents might with reason start rallying on Twitter or in the school union or something, with potential reputation costs, and making it harder for the next person trying to do it.
Young adults don’t have this problem. Even though they may also do things that their parents disagree with as a result of getting into EA stuff, the parents will have a less strong mandate for rallying against it, especially in a public way.
I don’t think this risk rules it out completely in my view, and there are likely things that can be done to minimise the risk. I know a teacher who runs an EA club at a specialist maths sixth-form in the UK (16-18yo), and it seems to be going quite well. I’ll send him this post.
I agree with your upsides. On the failure modes though, I think the question of ‘what do the parents think’ is missing and important (I guess you maybe touch on it when saying it’s politically delicate?). I can imagine all sorts of things high schoolers decide to do because of something they read related to EA that parents might be unhappy about and rally around, from donating their pocket money to moving country, or changing career plans (which many parents are opinionated about).
Regardless of whether the changes teenagers make in their life as a result of getting into EA will be good or bad or whether their parents are right or wrong, parents might with reason start rallying on Twitter or in the school union or something, with potential reputation costs, and making it harder for the next person trying to do it.
Young adults don’t have this problem. Even though they may also do things that their parents disagree with as a result of getting into EA stuff, the parents will have a less strong mandate for rallying against it, especially in a public way.
I don’t think this risk rules it out completely in my view, and there are likely things that can be done to minimise the risk. I know a teacher who runs an EA club at a specialist maths sixth-form in the UK (16-18yo), and it seems to be going quite well. I’ll send him this post.