"Age segregation is ... a blind spot in today’s culture."

"Age segregation is weird and new.
    "This is a blind spot in today’s culture. While we abhor any other kind of segregation, we think of age segregation as natural. You don’t have an all-ages soccer team! [Instead y]ou have the 7-year-olds at 11 a.m. and the 8-year-olds at noon.... [D]on’t buy into the idea that a young kid around older kids will be bullied. Or that an older kid interacting with young ones will be socially or intellectually stunted. Kids are hardwired to grow up interacting with a wide swath of ages....
    "I am a research psychologist, interested in play. My work has convinced me that age-mixed play is qualitatively different from play among children who are all similar in age. It is more nurturing, less competitive, often more creative, and it offers unique opportunities for learning. Throughout most of human history, age-mixed play was the norm. Only with the advent of age-graded schooling and, even more recently, of age-graded, adult-supervised activities outside of school, have children and adolescents been deprived of opportunities to play with others across the whole spectrum of ages. In the course of human evolution, play came to serve its educational functions in age-mixed settings; I contend that it still serves those functions best in such settings....
    "In the name of fun, the older participants naturally, and often unconsciously, erect 'scaffolds' that allow younger ones to stretch and build their physical, social, and intellectual skills. Motivation is no problem in such learning....
    "The benefits of age-mixed play go in both directions. In interactions with younger ones, older children exercise their nurturing instincts and take pride in being the mature person in a relationship. They also consolidate and expand their own knowledge through teaching....
    "Age segregation deprives [children] not only of fun, but also of the opportunity to use fully their most powerful natural tools for learning."

~ combined quote from Lenore Skenazy's post 'How a 14-Year-Old Genius Developed Genius Social Skills' and Dr Peter Gray's post 'The Value of Age-Mixed Play'