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Is the American Teenager Dead?

Is the American Teenager Dead?. Or What is adolescence?. Adolescence – Think-Pair-Share. What to you are the defining characteristics of adolescence? What would you consider as society’s defining characteristics?

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Is the American Teenager Dead?

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  1. Is the American Teenager Dead? Or What is adolescence?

  2. Adolescence – Think-Pair-Share • What to you are the defining characteristics of adolescence? • What would you consider as society’s defining characteristics? • Can you think of any ways society’s definition of adolescents in the U.S. have changed over time?

  3. Who are they?

  4. Questions • If society needs to protect teenagers from the world of work, why do we permit them to work 20 hours a week and form the foundation of the service industry? • If they are so ill prepared to assume responsibility, why do they close up businesses late at night nationwide? • If they are so consumed by "raging hormones," why are they given freedom to be overcome by these hormones?

  5. While we all have lived through it… • What do you know about the history of adolescence? • What is the relation between this history & the history of high schools?

  6. The contemporary teenager is a product of the Great Depression

  7. Public policy gave preference to men w/children. Most work programs during the Great Depression were set up to give priority to married men with children not single men or teenagers. • High school became an avenue for teens. Only in 1933 did a majority go to high school. By 1940 everyone expected to go to high school. • Stop & consider this statement – high schools, as we know them, are only 70 years old! • Graduation rate peaked in late 1960’s. Only in the past 40 years has the percentage of students relative to age their group remained relatively constant.

  8. What did change in societal expectations mean for adolescents?

  9. Once their role shifted from worker to student, they “seemed” younger Contrast 1920’s actresses like Gloria Swanson with that of… 1930’s actress like Judy Garland, roughly same age, yet…

  10. By WWII draft age was dictated, in part, by age of teenagers in high school – unlike other wars, 16 & 17 were too young • “there is in no truth to adolescence. At the close of boyhood, he is a man and begins to trace out his own path.” Alexis de Tocqueville • …and by the end of the 1800’s, less than 10% of high school age youth were in high school, the rest were working with families

  11. Consider life for youth at dawn of 20th century… • Most state laws required attendance until 12 or 13, yet most in the labor force by 10

  12. Then, adolescence was “invented” in 1904, or more appropriately, popularized • Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, & Education by Granville Stanley Hall • This man was the inventor and first president of the American Psychological Association and the founder of the American Journal of Psychology

  13. …and you thought that “raging hormones” was “modern” idea!?! • According to Hall, all of our ancestral adult stages were compressed into single life span – adolescence was time when moved from beast-like to civilized – time of “storm and stress”

  14. This book gave fuel to child labor laws & coincided with emergence of juvenile courts, which led to curfews & status offenses • Machinery reduced need for child workers, which made child labor laws more acceptable. • Youth seen more and more in need of protection, yet… • …one outgrowth of this movement though was to create impression that adolescents were unreliable, irresponsible & incompetent

  15. Margaret Mead sought to refute this impression, she argued that adolescence is culturally, not biologically based

  16. 1945-1970 heyday for teenagers, yet… • Half of all brides in ’60 were under 20 & in ’59 teenage pregnancy reached all time high, though nearly all married. • Yet little concern at time about teenage pregnancy…

  17. Did young people become teenagers because we had nothing better for them to do?

  18. Did high schools become custodial institutions?Why move to require school attendance until 18?

  19. Did society stop expecting youth to be productive members of society & begin to think of them as gullible consumers?…yet highly sought after by marketers!

  20. Since we define maturity in terms of being permitted adult vices, why is society surprised if you drink, smoke & have sex?

  21. Closing Questions • What does society expect of young adolescents? • What should society expect of young adolescents?

  22. …and the relevance to our class? Let me count the ways… …child labor laws & Progressivism…also where are young people in history? …what is rhyme & reason behind public policy related to youth in specific laws and as a whole? …how are youth perceived & portrayed in other cultures? …teenagers account, for example, for 20% of spending on clothes!

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