Teen-Age or Teenager?
I was looking at the TJED (Thomas Jefferson Education website) this evening, and came across this article. Yes, I've heard the speakers of TJEd say things like it over the times I've heard them speak, but not altogether in an article like this. This is part of it. The rest is on
http://www.tjedonline.com/free-article.php?id=32.
I would encourage you to read the rest.
"Youth v. Teenager" by Dr. Michael Platt
“We have two teenagers,” I sometimes hear parents say. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I sometimes reply. Although I say it with a smile, the truth is sad. Teenagers are not inevitable, natural, or God-given. The Teenager was invented, fashioned, permitted—let loose you might say—by the generation of our parents and grandparents. Discovering that may help us to raise our children differently.
There were no “teenagers” before World War II. Instead of Teenagers, there were Youths. Youths were young people who wanted to become adults. However confused, wayward, or silly they acted, however many mistakes they made, they looked to the future, wanted to make it different from their youth, and planned to. They were aware that life is more than youth. The Teenager has no such horizon. Beyond the “Teeny” world there is no adult life, no past with heroes, no future with goals.
And a new word was needed to describe them. Words such as “upstart,” “brat,” “tough,” “rogue,” and “slut,” described deviations from the general good of “youth,” not its characteristic features. The word “teenager” did not exist. Compare the entries in Webster’s II (1934) and III (1961); only after the war does the adjective “teen-age” become the noun, “teenager.”
When parents today say “We have two teenagers,” the reason why I can reply “I’m so sorry” is that they say this with a sigh. Indeed, there is a world of difference between having youths in your home and teenagers. Consider Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Author Tolstoy is honest to a fault; youth Tolstoy was a bag of vices, poses, and miseries. However, youth Tolstoy was never a Teenager, for in the midst of his confusion, he was always a striving to become a man. The world of grown-ups was there around and above him, not shut out. Youths associated with other youths, sometimes dressed alike, talked alike, but never separated entirely from their teachers and parents. When you saw youths with their parents, they were not pretending to be unrelated to the family. After all, they wanted one day to become like their parents, or like their grandparents, or like their teachers.
Their heroes and heroines were such people. Youths chose presidents, inventors, scientists, explorers, warriors, saints, and teachers for their heroes. In American history they looked to the likes of Washington and Jefferson, Boone and Crockett, Lincoln, Lee, and Grant, Fredrick Douglas and Booker T. Washington, and Clara Barton. In literature they looked to the likes of the Virginian, Robinson Crusoe, Hamlet, Odysseus, and Leather-stocking. The cowboy and the saint filled their imagination. Above these they looked to Abraham, Moses, Paul and Christ.
A youth wants to be trusted, given responsibility, and the opportunity to deserve esteem. Youths make more mistakes than adults, usually with less grave consequences, but they suffer more from them than adults; they like their mistakes less; they feel more shame. Shame is the other side of the respect they have for adults, for the virtues they see in them. Being immature, youths will always be tempted by pleasures, by flattery, and by illusions, but with an adult world around them, they will be able to make comparisons and judgments. Candy is candy, candy is sweet, candy can be given to you, but nothing in the world can substitute for knowing how to ride your bike. No one can give that to you. No one can do that for you.
Youths tend, then, to know the difference between the things that are really your own, the virtues, and the things that come from others, such as wealth, or come easy, such as the pleasures. Good youths like good tests. They want enjoy adult pleasures after performing adult duties.
The truth in this self-approval {of youths v. teenagers} is that we are often mixed beings; our experiences have not always been good, our deeds virtuous, our hearts true, our minds clear. If we were to acknowledge this, we might then forgive ourselves as we wish others to forgive us. Without acknowledging such things, I doubt that anyone is really o.k., can think clearly, live well, or help others to. The Prodigal Daughter I have imagined is a portrait of America at the present time, free but not brave enough to be virtuous, discontented but not enough to free herself from bondage.
The most potent impediment to acknowledging our negligence is the doctrine of choice. “Yes, we see rock music is bad, we don’t like it ourselves. Yes, we see TV is shallow. Yes, we see that loose money is not good for our children. They have so much more than we had, but, yes, they are not better off for it. Yes, perhaps we shouldn’t send peevish Pam and sleepy Sam to Europe when neither has worked hard enough at their French to order food in a restaurant, but what can you do? The kids have to have some responsibility. You have to give them some choice.” Thus runs the pro-choice excuse for negligence.
We know how welfare recipients often lose their spirit, unlearn responsibility, and fall into dependency. As a class Teenagers are less deserving of welfare and as debilitated by it. The parents who set up a “pro-choice” version of welfare, are as unlikely to exhort their children, discuss responsibility with them, give them maxims, or give them examples of responsibility, fiscal or otherwise as the current Federal Government is. And even if the parents do exhort their children, they are, by setting them up with discretionary money, showing them the way to avoid such discussions. Few such parents will exhort their children anyway. The advantage of welfare for them is that you don’t have to exhort your children, don’t risk a stormy argument, and can just forget them. To justify their negligence parents who “welfare” their children say “We are tired.” Recognize a “right to be tired” and you can justify anything."
Now, after reading all that... I'm not putting down those who lead the kind of lifestyle mentioned above. I am simply stating that there is something more to being in teen years. To learn from the life-styles of our founding fathers, of those we look up to and admire from the past. To act on our passions, not just dream of them. And yes, to be as youths were in the past- not feeling, "oh, you're out of school, time to party," but, "wow, I just served my country by doing such-and-such. I feel good about what I just did! I feel like I've reached my man (or woman, whichever the case may be)-hood.
Dr. Platt concludes with this statement:
"Nothing should make us more happy about our children today and more confident about our future public life than the number of parents who have chosen to educate their own children today. The benefits are immediate to the children, and immediate to the parents as well. In order to teach you must know and in order to know you must learn. The benefits last unto the third generation and beyond. A generation of parents whose good children could declare, “You set us on the good path you first trod” would constitute a mighty nation, might reconstitute this once almost chosen one, and would surely please God."
http://www.tjedonline.com/free-article.php?id=32.
I would encourage you to read the rest.
"Youth v. Teenager" by Dr. Michael Platt
“We have two teenagers,” I sometimes hear parents say. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I sometimes reply. Although I say it with a smile, the truth is sad. Teenagers are not inevitable, natural, or God-given. The Teenager was invented, fashioned, permitted—let loose you might say—by the generation of our parents and grandparents. Discovering that may help us to raise our children differently.
There were no “teenagers” before World War II. Instead of Teenagers, there were Youths. Youths were young people who wanted to become adults. However confused, wayward, or silly they acted, however many mistakes they made, they looked to the future, wanted to make it different from their youth, and planned to. They were aware that life is more than youth. The Teenager has no such horizon. Beyond the “Teeny” world there is no adult life, no past with heroes, no future with goals.
And a new word was needed to describe them. Words such as “upstart,” “brat,” “tough,” “rogue,” and “slut,” described deviations from the general good of “youth,” not its characteristic features. The word “teenager” did not exist. Compare the entries in Webster’s II (1934) and III (1961); only after the war does the adjective “teen-age” become the noun, “teenager.”
When parents today say “We have two teenagers,” the reason why I can reply “I’m so sorry” is that they say this with a sigh. Indeed, there is a world of difference between having youths in your home and teenagers. Consider Tolstoy’s Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Author Tolstoy is honest to a fault; youth Tolstoy was a bag of vices, poses, and miseries. However, youth Tolstoy was never a Teenager, for in the midst of his confusion, he was always a striving to become a man. The world of grown-ups was there around and above him, not shut out. Youths associated with other youths, sometimes dressed alike, talked alike, but never separated entirely from their teachers and parents. When you saw youths with their parents, they were not pretending to be unrelated to the family. After all, they wanted one day to become like their parents, or like their grandparents, or like their teachers.
Their heroes and heroines were such people. Youths chose presidents, inventors, scientists, explorers, warriors, saints, and teachers for their heroes. In American history they looked to the likes of Washington and Jefferson, Boone and Crockett, Lincoln, Lee, and Grant, Fredrick Douglas and Booker T. Washington, and Clara Barton. In literature they looked to the likes of the Virginian, Robinson Crusoe, Hamlet, Odysseus, and Leather-stocking. The cowboy and the saint filled their imagination. Above these they looked to Abraham, Moses, Paul and Christ.
A youth wants to be trusted, given responsibility, and the opportunity to deserve esteem. Youths make more mistakes than adults, usually with less grave consequences, but they suffer more from them than adults; they like their mistakes less; they feel more shame. Shame is the other side of the respect they have for adults, for the virtues they see in them. Being immature, youths will always be tempted by pleasures, by flattery, and by illusions, but with an adult world around them, they will be able to make comparisons and judgments. Candy is candy, candy is sweet, candy can be given to you, but nothing in the world can substitute for knowing how to ride your bike. No one can give that to you. No one can do that for you.
Youths tend, then, to know the difference between the things that are really your own, the virtues, and the things that come from others, such as wealth, or come easy, such as the pleasures. Good youths like good tests. They want enjoy adult pleasures after performing adult duties.
The truth in this self-approval {of youths v. teenagers} is that we are often mixed beings; our experiences have not always been good, our deeds virtuous, our hearts true, our minds clear. If we were to acknowledge this, we might then forgive ourselves as we wish others to forgive us. Without acknowledging such things, I doubt that anyone is really o.k., can think clearly, live well, or help others to. The Prodigal Daughter I have imagined is a portrait of America at the present time, free but not brave enough to be virtuous, discontented but not enough to free herself from bondage.
The most potent impediment to acknowledging our negligence is the doctrine of choice. “Yes, we see rock music is bad, we don’t like it ourselves. Yes, we see TV is shallow. Yes, we see that loose money is not good for our children. They have so much more than we had, but, yes, they are not better off for it. Yes, perhaps we shouldn’t send peevish Pam and sleepy Sam to Europe when neither has worked hard enough at their French to order food in a restaurant, but what can you do? The kids have to have some responsibility. You have to give them some choice.” Thus runs the pro-choice excuse for negligence.
We know how welfare recipients often lose their spirit, unlearn responsibility, and fall into dependency. As a class Teenagers are less deserving of welfare and as debilitated by it. The parents who set up a “pro-choice” version of welfare, are as unlikely to exhort their children, discuss responsibility with them, give them maxims, or give them examples of responsibility, fiscal or otherwise as the current Federal Government is. And even if the parents do exhort their children, they are, by setting them up with discretionary money, showing them the way to avoid such discussions. Few such parents will exhort their children anyway. The advantage of welfare for them is that you don’t have to exhort your children, don’t risk a stormy argument, and can just forget them. To justify their negligence parents who “welfare” their children say “We are tired.” Recognize a “right to be tired” and you can justify anything."
Now, after reading all that... I'm not putting down those who lead the kind of lifestyle mentioned above. I am simply stating that there is something more to being in teen years. To learn from the life-styles of our founding fathers, of those we look up to and admire from the past. To act on our passions, not just dream of them. And yes, to be as youths were in the past- not feeling, "oh, you're out of school, time to party," but, "wow, I just served my country by doing such-and-such. I feel good about what I just did! I feel like I've reached my man (or woman, whichever the case may be)-hood.
Dr. Platt concludes with this statement:
"Nothing should make us more happy about our children today and more confident about our future public life than the number of parents who have chosen to educate their own children today. The benefits are immediate to the children, and immediate to the parents as well. In order to teach you must know and in order to know you must learn. The benefits last unto the third generation and beyond. A generation of parents whose good children could declare, “You set us on the good path you first trod” would constitute a mighty nation, might reconstitute this once almost chosen one, and would surely please God."