Lying in bed, I started to think of the differences between childhood and adult life in the modern world. Ofcourse, there are similarities between both phases of life, you are after all the same person. What I was wondering was about the experiences of higher stress in adult life than during childhood. There are many reasons that one can discuss at length but what I started thinking about is the effect of higher education on the thought process as an adult.

As an adult, you gather information about the whole around you. But as a child, you do the same. The differences is ofcourse in the nature of information, i.e., more inquisitive nature of a child learning perhaps languages and early human customs and traditions followed by adults surrounding him compared to gathering of information in a more structured manner as an adult. And considering that the amount of work a brain does is the same during both periods of the time, same 24 hours per day, I wonder what is the major difference between a child and an adult.

opinion seems to come first and foremost in my mind. I seem to have an opinion on everything from the Palestine-Israel war and Kashmir to how I want my hot tea to what is the best method to run a company. Opinion forming is encouraged in higher education, if you don't have an opinion, then you don't know knowledge in that matter and visa versa. You need to have a opinion on the discovery of United States by Columbus, why slave plantations worked in certain parts of the world where as they failed in others, why were salves liberated. I could go on and on about various issues the society expects an educated, well informed adult to have. The society at large determines your evaluation by the opinions you give. The more variety of subjects you have opinions about, the better. The more informed your opinions are, the better.

In the quest of finding more information, knowledge and thus more opinions, human beings routinely fall into categories that speak more about them as a society than as individuals. A typical scenario played out nowadays is if you are against war, you are against American soldiers in the war. Or even worst still, if you are against bush, you are against democracy in the united states. The race towards becoming more "opinionated" is leading to becoming more "stereotyped".

Stereotyping can have both negative aspects as well as positive ones. In the positive side, you expect say, "teachers and nurses to be honest and friendly" where as "lawyers and salesperson to be dishonest and untrustworthy". And we are repeatedly taught that more information would lead to less stereotyping. Tell that to an three year old. He or she might not even know the word stereotype, but would act in a manner that would put all the educated and opinionated world to shame.