It occurs to me that “Following one’s passion” is terrible advice at least in part because of the lack of diversity in the activities we encourage children to pursue. It follows that encouraging children to participate in activities with very high-competition job markets (e.g. sports, the arts) may be a substantial drag on economic growth. After 5 minutes of search, I could not find research on this relationship. (It seems the state of scholarship on the topic is restricted to models in which participation in extracurriculars early in childhood leads to better metrics later in childhood.) This may merit a more careful assessment.
It occurs to me that “Following one’s passion” is terrible advice at least in part because of the lack of diversity in the activities we encourage children to pursue. It follows that encouraging children to participate in activities with very high-competition job markets (e.g. sports, the arts) may be a substantial drag on economic growth. After 5 minutes of search, I could not find research on this relationship. (It seems the state of scholarship on the topic is restricted to models in which participation in extracurriculars early in childhood leads to better metrics later in childhood.) This may merit a more careful assessment.