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Entry: Adolescence: A Heresy Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_case_against_adolesence#10743 Post contents: My mother, God rest her soul, used to say "When I was a teenager, we didn't have teenagers!". (She was born in 1932). What do you mean, Mom, I would say. Well, we weren't teenagers, we were "young people" and we were expected to comport ourselves as young adults, she said. This is not to say that they didn't have popular fashions and music and such. I don't want to see kids working in mines and factories at age 12 but I think Mom had a point. The whole youth culture thing is really over the top. Mom also told me that "they" (the public schools) added 8th grade to keep kids out of the work force. She lived in Front Royal, Virginia and went to 12 years of public school, graduating from high school in 1950. My dad, born the same year, went to 11 years of public school and graduated in 1949 at age 17, finding himself one year later over in Korea. Mom said that 8th grade was just a repeat and that it was added to delay kids in the work force one year so there'd be more jobs available for the veterans after WWII. More so than the now 13 years of public school is the fact that "kids" (i.e., young adults) are often in college until 22 or 23, further delaying their entry into the "real world". I see no point in forcing the non academically inclined to sit through 4 years of high school taking geometry, trig, chemistry, etc. Let them pursue a vocational track, get out early and makes tons of money as plumbers. They will be happier and less of a discipline problem in school. Then, we really need to look at whether every smart middle class kid needs to go to college. There are professions for which college is necessary, medicine, law, things like that. But what good is a MBA or even a BS in Business Management? Couldn't a young person learn the necessary things with some sort of apprenticeship or internship? And save his or her parents thousands of dollars in tuition money as well. I am starting to feel that the whole go to college thing is largely a racket to separate parents from their money. I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books to my daughter and we were both astounded to find that Laura was teaching school at age 16. I don't know where I'm going with this but just to say that yeah, I think things are messed up with teens and education and and and something needs to change. Sent at: 2008 12 01