Adolescence: Not easy, but no need to end it
November 9, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Let’s End Adolescence writes Newt Gingrich in the October 30th Business Week. Adolecense, argues Gingrich, is a 19th century invention and, indeed, a “social experiment” that has largely failed. Why keep supporting a “system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives”? Why not skip the whole notion of some kind of transition stage between childhood and young adulthood and stop (as Gingrich seems to suggest) delaying the inevitability of adulthood, and have kids “shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30″?
Well, Newt, let me tell you something.
At 11 1/2, my son Charlie’s definitely in the throes of adolescence. Almost all the clothes he wore last summer have either gone into the Goodwill pile, or been hand-me-upped to my drawers and (you’re gonna gasp) Jim’s. Every night when I look at the reflection of Charlie and me in the bathroom mirror as he’s brushing his teeth, he seems taller than the week before (the day before?). Jim’s been using the electric shaver on Charlie’s upper lip and, as noted before, the hormonal thing has hit big time. We had dinner last night with friends whose baby isn’t even 6 months old: Needless to say, a lot of memories were stirred up of what it was like to hold a long-limbed big-head boy in the crook of my left arm. Now he’s the one looking down at me.
I’m not sure adolescence can be done away with—-it’s part of the process of growing up. Gingrich proposes having children (I guess he wouldn’t say “adolescents” since he’s calling for the end of such a notion) start job-training earlier and start taking on the professional and financial responsibilities involved. But there’s a reason for “adolescence,” for extending childhood or (if you want to think of it this way) delaying adulthood.
Charlie, not even in his teenage years, just having started middle school, and the youngest in his middle school classroom, has already started pre-vocational training. Folding laundry, cooking, food prep, vacuuming—-these are “life skills” on his IEP, but they also fall under the “pre-voc” category. We continue to teach him writing, reading, simple arithmetic; we often have to really emphasize how he needs to keep studying these things: Because everything about Charlie’s learning has to, already, be “functional.”
The purpose of Charlie’s education doesn’t have to automatically be to teach him to “get a job” and “use his skills.” I continue to teach him cello and piano. Just as much as any child, Charlie needs to have all areas of his education addressed and not only those that are “functional.” For a child like Charlie—whose academic program is far different from that of his peers and who’s going to be in special education for the rest of his schooling—-there’s just as much a need to develop his abilities and his interests and to expose to the arts, to music; to provide him with what you could call as much of a liberal arts education as possible. It’s music and sports that play a role in helping Charlie to allay some of his anxieties, do something he’s good at, and develop interests that could potentially be lifelong. Sure Charlie needs to learn skills for a job that will drawn on his abilities, like that of 22-year-old Andrew Janusz, but work is one part of the big picture.
When the talk turns too much to teaching Charlie “pro-voc” skills and our requests for music lessons are greeted with “oh sure” and bland nods and suppressed rollings-of-eyes, I hear the voice of “hurry hurry hurry.” Adolescence is not turning out to be the easiest of times for Charlie, who I suspect must often be feeling like the same kid he’s always been, but in a body that’s becoming an adult’s. Charlie needs time to grow up. It’s taken him longer than most kids to learn to do so much, why push him (not to mention other children) ahead so fast? What’s the rush?
Good Lord. Has the man ever spent any time around adolescents? And what he’s really talking about is funneling children early on into tracks that become ruts from which they can’t escape. They do it in China. Is that what we want for American children? “Adolescence” is not an “invention,” it’s a gin-u-wine developmental stage that has its own special physiology (just look at the black box warnings of anti-depressants as one of many many examples), its own special issues that are unrelated to childhood or adulthood, its own biological pathways and manifestations that differ from those at any other life stage. You can’t “do away” with something nature developed and that nature developed for a reason. Ask anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about, and they’ll tell you that adolescence isn’t just a social construct; even mice and other animals are considered to have an adolescent stage. It’s highly relevant to maintain this as a developmental construct.
If I recall, this is the same fella who thought that women would get some sort of vague-ish “female” infections if they had to hang in the trenches during war and that they wouldn’t be any good at war anyway because they hadn’t historically been evolved to “hunt giraffes.” So…I’d take anything Prof. Gingrich has to offer with about an ocean’s worth of salt.
OMG, I am laughing so hard at the notion of Newt Gingrich knowing squat about this subject that I’m not sure I can comment yet. But I *can* say that I agree with Emily’s final words!
He throws in something about a program one of his children started towards the end of the article……
Emily hit the nail on the head on this one. Do we really want to consider what Newt Gringrich has to say about much of any population that isn’t white, male, heterosexual, and… oh, heck basically about any population that isn’t *him*?
Cliff
I’m finding adulthood to be a total drag. All of the responsibility…bills…work…it’s miserable. Can we abolish that too while we’re at it?
And old age, with it’s physical ailments…right out.
Let’s take this rhetorical movement to it’s logical extreme. Let’s expand the definition of childhood so that it includes one’s entire lifespan.
Pro-childists unite.
actually, the first page is frigging scary, but his suggestions in the second are pretty interesting. I mean paying children in school a wage would give them more time to study and less looking for jobs after they turn 16 so they can pay for their prom because their parents couldn’t… and giving a kid that graduates early a scholarship equal to the cost of schooling sounds pretty interesting as well. Of course here in Lansing, the school districts just let those kids graduate on time and pay for college courses for them.
Newt cracks me up. He thinks he has all the answers!!
OK,I got lotsa problems with this.The fact I am 48 years old,have yet to go through puberty, have finally been able to get a diagnosis of full blown autism,have a number of severe childhood infections that became permanent,gives me a very unique perspective.
(Sort of sounds like Klinefelter’s don’t it?That’s where I want to go next.)
I have matured intellectually,but not physically, or psychologically,and I still don’t understand adults.All those hormones must really do a number on you psychologically.
Newt is a prime example of what became of most baby boomers.The generation that gave us teenage wastelands,and juvenile delinquent wrecks,and told us not to trust anybody over thirty,now personifies the absolute worst of what used to be called “the establishment”,and magnified hundredfold.
For a real sobering experience,go rent movies like “Blackboard Jungle”,or “Wild In the Streets” and reflect on what the kids of that generation became.
That’s just one level,of what makes this article so creepy and disgusting.
Note there is nothing said about bringing schools up to the level of,say China,like there was 51 years ago after Sputnik.Universal college level work in high schools or even middle schools,if the students can handle it,would be a start,but for years we have just the reverse,with universities providing remedial classes of middle school level work.
Nor is there anything said about what sort of jobs these young people are going to do instead of going to school.It ain’t 1776 any more,a fact that is lost on far too many on the right.
DAMN! I love having my cognitive function back. That’s what three weeks of continual fever does for you.
@Roger, your comment gives me too much to respond to—-have seen Blackboard Jungle a few times, for one thing………..and there are more than a few students in remedial classes where I teach (sometimes in more than a few remedial classes…….). Many of our students have come out of not much too much academic preparation and “being in school” is enough of a challenge in itself.
Hope you are better and over that fever………
It seems to me that he’s confusing societal problems with “teenage” problems. Kids don’t do drugs and get STDs and do badly in school because they’re teenagers- they do so largely in part because of societal and economic forces that they largely can’t control. Those things don’t magically disappear when you start working.
While he is pretty much right on the historical path of adolescence as a recent invention, it doesn’t seem like any of the solutions that he’s proposing would be any better. Perhaps kids are doing badly in school because of the way that they’re taught (as well as the actual physical danger a large group of children/adolescents seem to have to deal with on a daily basis at school).
As far as technology making it possible for children to learn more quickly- I haven’t met any high school or elementary teacher who doesn’t think that children are already forced to learn too quickly (often to fulfill the school’s need for testing scores or to get through impossible curriculum demands by the state/province).
I think that there are huge problems with our schooling system in North America on a number of levels, but this article just strikes me as “off” in a lot of ways, not the least of which his apparent total ignorance of adolescent development.
I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that most college-educated Americans have been voting Democratic in recent elections.
Newt wants to keep kids ignorant and put ‘em to work early… then maybe they’ll vote Republican.
Most of the comments have to do with Mr. Gingrich and not his ideas. However, consider this
Numbers 1: 2-3
“Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel after their families by the house of their fathers, with the numbers of their names, every male by their polls. From 20 years old and upwards, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel; thou Aaron shall number them by their armies.”
So the Israelites at the time of Moses built their armies from men 20 years of age and older. This gives pause to the claim that full adulthood past adolescence was a 19th century concept.
He is right in stating mathematical and scientific concepts could be taught much earlier than they are.
I don’t see how this can be seen as an effort to grow Republicans. Youths tend to be liberal and giving them more responsibility should tilt things to the left.
He’s trying to come up with an answer to things such as the amount of crime in the country so much of which is committed by adolescents by doing away with adolescence. I don’t see how one puts such an idea into practice.
If you look at the “history of childhood” as Newt Gingrich espouses it, he’s not actually that far off. It wasn’t until after the abolition of child labour and the recognition of childhood as a separate stage of development that any kind of concept of adolescence became common. Before that the common concept was that you went straight from being a child to being an adult, thus children went into the workforce and army extremely early. Even before that (if you look at the Tudor period in England, for example, up until the post-Victorian age), children were considered to be “little adults”. That was evidenced not only by their clothing but by their duties and responsibilities (espousal at young ages, ability to converse with adults outside of the home at extremely early ages, the expectation that they would work, etc.)
Children weren’t children for a longer period of time- they were forced to become adults earlier. Once the idea of childhood changed and they were no longer forced to act like miniature adults, go to work, or hold other adult responsibilities, then the idea of adolescence began to evolve.
Mayfly, I’m curious as to what your sources are to say that teaching mathematics and scientific concepts could be taught earlier. What do you mean by “earlier”? Up here, they’re taught starting in pre-school, and a lot of kids enter pre-school already knowing 1-10, and basic concepts of science (baby bear comes from a mommy bear etc.). Which mathematical and scientific concepts do you start with, and when?
Jen: As far as math is concerned, simple single-variable equation solving could be introduced before middle school.
Some simple physics such as
F=ma, how simple machines work.
It seems to me that not much happens between 3rd and 6th grade, but that was long, long ago for me.
Adolescence is not only a social construct. Just because people didn’t figure that out until 100 years ago doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Kind of like autism.
Our kids have been studying science since preschool, too. These days, kindergarten is the new first grade, first grade is the new second grade, etc. You’re practically expected to enter kindergarten as a reader. They do accelerated math in second grade, which is basically third-grade math in second grade. We’ve been making change, considering things out to several orders of magnitude, and otherwise engaging in things mathematical and scientific for several years around here, and our oldest is in second grade. They’ve changed the curriculum a lot since I was in school (elementary in the 70s), that much I know for sure.
When the talk turns too much to teaching Charlie “pro-voc” skills and our requests for music lessons are greeted with “oh sure” and bland nods and suppressed rollings-of-eyes, I hear the voice of “hurry hurry hurry.”
I believe that no one, no matter how expert, is omniscient enough to know absolutely where anyone will be 10, 20 or 30 years hence. It might be me, but having enriched and leisure activities, apart from such as watching TV, that one enjoys when not doing the “vocational” or basic survival stuff, also counts as “functional”. (See, “Rebecca” and “A Walking Grove” from ” The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales”)
To discount those without serious consideration could raise some questions about person-centered programming and social validity.
As far as Mr. Gingrich, I can see some point in giving young people opportunities for active learning, and maybe even practical experience as part of the enterprise of education, although my personal bugaboo is with very young children perhaps being goaded too early into academics (others might disagree with that one).
I won’t comment further except to wonder what he did between 13-19, and what he thought of his own adolescence?
Newt sure blew this one. He didn’t even consult with pediatricians or endocrinologists or neurologists or gynecologists on the wide body of science that exists on the very real physiologic changes that occur during adolescence. The human brain is not even fully developed until the mid-20’s.
But then, why anyone would listen to him is beyond me.
One thing he could have noted is the general downcast look of people (my college students for instance) at the mention of middle school. Not a happy time for many students—–
things are taught earlier in the more affluent districts… not necessarily in others.
See, for example two of the comments:
What do you mean by “earlier”? Up here, they’re taught starting in pre-school, and a lot of kids enter pre-school already knowing 1-10, and basic concepts of science (baby bear comes from a mommy bear etc.). Which mathematical and scientific concepts do you start with, and when?
and
Our kids have been studying science since preschool, too. These days, kindergarten is the new first grade, first grade is the new second grade, etc. You’re practically expected to enter kindergarten as a reader. They do accelerated math in second grade, which is basically third-grade math in second grade.
two very contrasting examples of what ‘early’ education is, the way I read them.
teaching things earlier may have caused my daughter to have more of an interest in math earlier. She hated the subject until she got to fractions, and didn’t mind the algebra lesson she recently got in 5th grade. However, timing how fast she can write the answers to addition and subtraction questions? She hated it.
Frankly earlier learning, so long as it is in a manner the children find interesting could be beneficial. Earlier learning doesn’t necessarily mean more work, however. Differentiated learning however, is the true way to go. Unfortunately, it’s typically only the schools with Gifted Education programs that provide that and only to their ’smart’ students.