Newell-Fonda High School
Newell, Iowa
Teacher: Connie Doonan

 

 

 

American Youth: Past To Present

By Janelle Seagren

12th Grade

 

 

Over the years the definition of a teenager has changed dramatically.  In my grandparents teenage years, they used to have to get up at the crack of dawn to do their daily chores and then head off to a full day of school.  They didn’t get to have a lot of fun after school either.  Their time was spent doing more chores or holding down a job.  The older generations of teenagers were more family oriented.  They had to work extremely hard to prosper and to achieve things.  In my grandparent’s time period, teenagers were almost forced to grow up because their parents were relying on them to help with the family income.  In today’s world a teenager is the complete opposite.  They can barely drag themselves out of bed by 8:00 a.m. to make it to school on time.  After school most teenager’s lives are full of snacking in front of the television and playing Nintendo games.  Today’s teenager needs to get motivated and apply themselves to the best of their ability.

           

When asked the question, “Is it time for local communities to initiate a rite of passage for American youth?”, I totally agree.  I feel that there shouldn’t be a grand celebration, but a teenager should have to prove themselves before being passed into adulthood.  In today’s world I’m not so sure teenagers even understand what being an adult is all about.  Sure they know all the advantages, but when it comes to responsibility, I think today’s teen is totally blind.  They don’t realize all the bills they have to pay and how to maintain a steady job. 

           

I think in today’s world the media encourages teenagers to grow up too fast.  They show these successful, beautiful teenage movie stars, and teens are too eager to grow up and try to be just like them.  Some people have always said that their teenage years are the best years of their life, and they should learn to enjoy them to the fullest.  Teens today get so wrapped up in getting a job and having money they forget all about getting their priorities straight.  Teenagers that have after school jobs tend to let their homework slide; consequently, their grades go down dramatically.  If a teenager is going to have an after school job they need to learn to take responsibility for their grades.  I don’t think at this age a teenager is even ready for a responsibility like this.  Teenagers need to concentrate on being a kid.  They need to go and have fun at school events.

           

I think that by missing out on opportunities in their teen years, it makes a lot of adults very immature.  We have so many adults in the world that are unmotivated and just have things handed to them.  Most of these adults don’t even try to get a job and just depend totally on welfare.  By becoming an adult too early, it leads to many problems in society.  There are so many broken homes in the country right now.  Too many people are getting married too young that think that they are ready.  When really they are way to immature and haven’t even experienced all the situations of being a teenager. 

           

I have watched many television specials on young children that are extremely brilliant.  It is great that these children are this smart ,but there is a big problem.  The parents of these children don’t think it is right to hold their children back when their education level is so great.  The parents of these kids are sending them off to college when they are as young as ten years old.  This is absolutely ridiculous.  Intellectually the child is capable of going to college with twenty year olds, but emotionally they are not.  A ten year old should not have twenty year old friends.  At this age children need to find out who they are and not what they want to major in.

                       

I think that it is our communities’ responsibility to make sure that their teens are ready to be adults.  Each community needs to educate their youth with the correct morals to carry on to future generations.  Without being taught the correct morals, teenagers have nothing to look up to and don’t know how to become successful leaders.  I think that are country is in desperate need of good teenage leaders that can influence other teens to do to right thing.  These leaders need to teach other teens to stay away from drugs and alcohol.  By teaching correct morals, our country would be on a better track to more successful adults and in return a more successful world.

           

When teenagers are ready to travel into the world of adulthood, they should feel confident in themselves to be able to make the right decisions and to keep responsibilities.  To ensure that a teen is truly ready they should have to pass a series of tests.  These tests should be aimed at responsibility, moral goals, and maturity.  If the teenager passes with flying colors, then and only then, should a teenager be officially called an adult.

             

Questions

 

1.  In Margaret Mead’s opening paragraph it is saying that children today are not striving to  reach their full potential.  This is like the army’s commercial “Be All That You Can Be”.

 

2.  The effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love and death is an issue of the 1920’s that is no longer an issue today.  This issue is relevant in television shows today that are way to graphic in what they show.  Violence, drugs, sex, and other obscenities are all over the television shows today.  The media is showing kids that love is through sex and not through a strong connection of marriage.

 

3.  I agree with Margaret Mead that “culture is man-made and that man is free to design it closer to the desires of his own heart.”  I think culture is molded around a persons surroundings and how they were brought up.  I think a person’s culture can be changed in life to become more successful at what they are doing.

           

4.  In her writings Margaret Mead was advocating a greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process.

 

5.  In Susan’s speech about whether parents should recognize what is going on and to enforce “boundaries and structure”, I agree with her.  I believe that parents should take an active role in their child’s social life.  I don’t think they should be invading, but they should definitely know what is going on.  Most of the time I think parents are blind in what their children are doing and not accepting that their children may have problems.

 

6.  The things that I have seen in high school relating to drugs and alcohol are people smoking at lunch break, people drinking on the weekends, and people stealing cigarettes from the country store.

 

7.  I think that the solution for the plight of the black teenager is that it should all start with the parents at home.  They need to teach their children the right way to treat people by leading them with the proper examples.  They need to enforce what they are teaching their kids or else they just contradict themselves.

 

8.  I think I would feel a big relief if all I did was go to school and learn.  I would concentrate more during class and I think it would definitely help out my grades.  The part that I don’t like about going to a single-sex school  or being home-schooled is the social aspect.  I think people that attend these schools are behind in the real world socially when they graduate.

 

9.  I think that more classes in high school relating to the real world would be very beneficial to students after they graduate.  I think that by having some “real world” classes it would set students ahead and would prepare them when they are venturing out to find a job.

 

10.  The way that I feel about the “bottom line” is that if parents or authority always yell at their kids, they are going to become rebellious.  A child can only be told so many times before

it becomes monotonous.  I think parents need to pick their battles and not always be nagging at their children.