In Defense of Unwholesome, Disaffected Risk-Takers

Granville Stanley Hall, turn-of-the-century psychologist and founder and first president of the American Psychological Association, helped to establish the contemporary view of adolescents as unwholesome, disaffected risk-takers. Since then, piles of research and popular opinion have helped to create the underclass of teens that annoy, scare, and puzzle us grownups. We too often say good-bye to our children as they enter, say, seventh grade, hoping to see them again as human beings when they reach their late teens or early twenties.

No doubt teens are an enigma in our adolescent age—advertisers wish to sexualize and accelerate the development of children to that point in adolescence in which they realize their desires, can argue for them, but haven’t developed the forebrain skill of judgment necessary for the beginnings of wisdom. Advertisers then wish to keep all of us in this adolescent state until we die, consuming without thinking. You could say we are a culture obsessed with adolescence because we understand it so little, and that we understand it so little because we have created a culture that keeps us too close to it.

Because of their developmental stage, teens will usually act as we expect they will. Treat them with fear, and they’ll repay your trust; treat them with respect, and you’ll discover that they are more respectable than many of the adults you know. (These statements hold true for adults, too, but adults have enough self-control occasionally to ignore your trust—or your censure—if they choose.)

Teens, on the threshold of adulthood, defend themselves as they enter this new territory. Risk-taking is a mirror of idealism; what task or quest is worth putting myself on the line for? Disaffection is a mirror of feeling—life means so much; I can’t let it show. If we can see through the fronts that teens present, we discover intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful young men and women. I’ve taught four-year olds to swim and fifty-year olds social science research methods, but I enjoy and am privileged to teach open-minded, energetic, idealistic, humorous teenagers. Thanks, kids.