LESSON 7
PEDAGOGICS OF AGE
Theme: Pedagogics
of Age
v Age Periodization.
v Childhood as a “Golden Age”.
v Adolescence.
v Perform periodization
of personality development based on the analysis of theoretical and empirical
evidence of psychological literature
v Identify the crisis moments of
personal development
Short
Account of the Topic:
The view that moral development takes
place in function of the formation of a political outlook originates from
certain social deformations. In fact, the spirituality of both society and the
individual can be morally deficient and the moral crisis is rather one of
values. This is due to the fact that morality pushed to the fringes of the
spiritual life of man and society and was subordinated to politics and its
value system. With the development of social activity and relations, society's
value system is restructured and enriched. In these processes morality plays a
key role: compared to religion, politics and law, it is the bearer of the
greatest human potential. Therefore, the processes of humanization and
dehumanization in society are related to the change in the place and the
importance of morality in the structure of public values.
MORAL FORMATION AND THE POLITICAL
ORDER
The process of moral formation takes
place within the framework of action where religion, law, politics and the arts
together exert moral influence. These forms of public consciousness intertwine,
each being the bearer of particular values which may be reciprocally
complementary, incompatible or contradictory. Their adjustments show to what
extent morality, politics, law, the arts and religion, as intrinsic values,
orient, regulate and shape the personality.
Where one is oriented by a particular
kind of value as a norm or ideal (whether moral, legal, political or other) one
or another value becomes dominant in the hierarchy of values. Religious, legal or moral forms of social consciousness, which are
the bearers of concrete values, "move" either to the center or to the fringe of spiritual life.
Depending on which consistently gives
meaning to human activity we may speak of "religious righteousness",
"political maturity", "law-abiding person", or "moral
maturity". Political maturity may be defined as a stable political
orientation, and moral maturity as a stable moral orientation. Such stability
comes as a result of the qualitative changes in one's entire development: in
one's system of values, needs and motivation, and character traits.
When politics comes to be the nucleus
of the social value system the formation of a definite political orientation
assumes particular importance and the person's political evolution is
stimulated. This creates a situation in which moral development is seen as
minor and subordinate to political development and its natural follow-up.
Criteria for the moral evaluation of social processes and of personality become
politicized. Such politicization of the spiritual life of society stimulates
the shaping of a personal world outlook in which political norms, ideals,
evaluations, principles and notions are central.
Together, political and moral values
essentially orient the person towards socially important targets and are
mutually complementary. But does this mean that by molding
political views, a person comes to a higher moral level? Does the political
evolution lead to moral perfection? The significance of political values should
not be belittled, all the more when the activity is oriented to such highly
human political objectives as revolutionary restructuring, abolition of slavery,
liberation from national and social oppression, etc. The molding
of political views and the person's political activity are of essential
importance above all to the development of social and class moral values. They
create a true sense of social justice, public duty, and the like.
The most turbulent historic processes
and the most sudden changes in moral outlook are associated with social and
class relations. Motives are of central importance for moral evolution, whether
these are moral motives of personal expression or such utilitarian motives as
ambition for power, material wealth, social prestige, etc. This rule is valid
also for political activity and relations: political evolution is a positive
factor in the person's formation when accompanied by a respective evolution of
moral values, motives, and virtues. When political goals are achieved at the
cost of mass repressions, moral deformation marks the social atmosphere, the
harmony between universal and class attitudes is broken in favor
of class oriented values, and moral ideals lose touch with real life. Under
such conditions, the moral sphere becomes idealized and stimulates normative behavior; the moral norm is raised to a cult and any
deviation is rejected. Moral criteria of evaluation are substituted by the
political and the universal criteria of a class; the balance between goals and
means is disturbed in favor of the former with the
result that acts which contradict universal morality are committed in the name
of lofty social goals.
These common features of the
deformation of the social values effect social moral ideals, evaluative norms
and principles. Moral ideals, and social moral
patterns in particular, are adapted to the cliches of
the deformed conception of the priority of class values over universal ones.
The estrangement of these patterns from the truth about society both originates
from and intensifies the lack of correspondence between the ideal and the
social reality. The absolutization of social values
is amplified and becomes total: ideals turn into idols. The principle of social
equality is raised to the level of a social value, whereas in social practice
inequality is the case. The privileged position of certain strata breeds such
immoral phenomena as bribes, protection, etc. In economics there is a slogan
that says "everybody gets what he earns," but in real life this
principle is substituted by another one: "everybody is paid according to
his political and social status."
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND MORAL GROWTH
Deformations of social values affect
the processes of personality formation. In social practice a number of alarming
facts emerge: crime among youth is on the increase; a greater part of graduates
from schools and universities is not prepared to participate in real life; skepticism is on the rise among young people, along with
estrangement from the ideals of society and the pursuit of social activities
outside social life (hippies, rockers, punks, etc.). All these bespeak serious
perturbation in personal value systems and show that political stability is not
a criterion for personal morality.
Investigations show that, when there
is a discrepancy between ideals and reality, formalism on the part of elders in
the upbringing of young people engenders in them deep personal conflict. They
are torn between, on the one hand, what is inherent in the age as they strive
towards fulfillment in the "elders' world",
and, on the other hand, a negation of the concrete patterns found in the ideals
and idols. This causes feelings of insincerity and estrangement from actual
social life. Striving towards social activity is expressed in informal groups
formed by young people between fourteen and twenty-four on the basis of common
interests and activities and is oriented towards an alternative way of life.
The rejection of social values may also assume such undesirable forms as in the
absence of an ideal regulating behavior. Decisions
are taken on the spur of the moment and impulsively. This implies a step
backward in young people's personal development.
One-sidedness and inadequacy in one's
concept of values cause a deformation of the regulative aims and their impact
on the person. If certain values of universal importance are not moulded, one's system of values remains internally contradictory
and underdeveloped; this, in turn, affects one's motivation, the development of
inner needs and the peculiarities of moral character. Deformations in personal
values are usually associated with immaturity in the moral motivation along
with the formation of mercenary or other attitudes. The human character
acquires such negative traits as hypocrisy, indifference, cruelty, arrogance, a
proclivity towards a symbolic solution of real problems, despotism and
irresponsibility. Steady changes set in and are expressed in both individual
activity and social behavior in critical situations.
Personal values can specifically
regulate behavior only when they are woven into the
inner motivations which influence the formation of the human character.
Ontogenesis requires change, both in content and inner structure. The most
prominent of all expressions of structural development in the sphere of
motivation and needs is the building of a hierarchy of motivations. According
to A.N. Leontiev, this formation is due to two
circumstances. First, in one's activity one is involved in complex social
relations--with objective reality, other people with whom one works, one's
social group and society itself; thus an activity may have several motivations.
Second, these motives have unequal functional weight within the framework of a
concrete activity so that one motive may be meaning-forming while another may
be an incentive only in a given activity. The hierarchical structure of motives
is formed not according to the scale of their proximity to biological needs,
but according to their functional significance in a particular activity. In
hierarchical relations the meaning-forming motive has higher status than does
the incentive power.
Inclusion of personal moral motives
in the motivational hierarchy introduces an entirely new meaning. When the
moral motive takes a leading place in the activity, it becomes the bearer, not
only of an incentive, but also of a meaning-forming function. This has the
highest status with respect to other motives, for the aspiration to the good,
to moral perfection, justice, etc., gives meaning to activity and lends it
moral value.
The formation of the moral
purposefulness of behavior is an important step in
the moral development of the person. At the same time, for a complete moral
formation, it is necessary to take yet another step towards stability in moral behavior. Every time a person is placed in new, untypical
conditions he or she must make a decision governed by the socio-moral
requirement that already had been assimilated as an inner motive. Thus, moral behavior involves building of a strong, variable and
super-situational system, which makes possible decisions in specific situations
that correspond to moral social requirements but, nevertheless, are not
immediately and one-sidedly determined. Such value-factors are present in the
decision as a genetic source of its moral charge. These characteristics of
morality suggest that the process of moral formation is above all the creation
of an approach to the solution of moral problems in concrete situations and is
not reduced to the adoption of ready-made formulas for behavior.
Moral motives are stabilized during
the process of development. The unfolding of this tendency contributes to
building a so-called "moral approach" to life. The stabilization of
moral motives, in turn, is built on the basis of the development of a personal
system of values. This would be impossible without the development of moral
ideals, norms, and values, as well as of moral thinking and concepts of good
(versus bad), duty, responsibility, justice, etc. The formation of a steady
moral orientation is possible due to the transformation of moral values into
motives of behavior. This is the personal mechanism
which ensures the formation of a "moral approach". Without
development of this motivational system, which includes personal moral motives
as part of the hierarchy, moral values cannot have a tangible effect upon the
personality, for moral values and moral motives cannot be stabilized in the
motivational hierarchy. While behavior reaches for
the ideal, values "come down to earth", to real behavior,
in order to "meet" and "construct" a moral orientation.
This orientation of behavior turns into a general
orientation--what we called a "moral approach"--as soon as the person
"breathes" life into his or her intentions and convictions and desire
becomes reality. In this process man's moral character occupies an important
place.
Morality unites in itself to the
highest degree those universal human values which reflect both man's and
mankind's value; this is the most intimate point of the human soul. The shift
of morality to the fringe of social life is soon followed by negative social
and personal aftereffects. Almost irreversible moral
deformations set in for the person, social institutions and public
sensibilities.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The transformation of morality into a
spiritual center of personal development is not a
theoretical abstraction. Its foundations are laid as early as preschool age
when the need of the child to be a "grownup" is being formed. This
need has its moral dimension, for in the eyes of the three-year-old and
six-year-old, "grownup" and the "good" are synonymous. An
elder's model behavior stimulates the development of
the personal system of values in the child, its evolution of both motivation
and needs, and hence, its whole shaping as a person.
Therefore, we may assert that morality is the nucleus of the evolution of the
person.
Social development can create
particularly favorable conditions for the
establishment of morality as a center of spiritual
development. Democratization of society liberates morality from the power of
political objectives, assessments and criteria, from political intolerance and
lack of compromise, and from subjection to the political positions being
defended. Thus, universal human moral values and morality as a universal human
regulator of social behavior are being revived. The
social prerequisites in order for morality to take a worthy place in the life
of man and society are being created.
Moral upbringing suffers yet another
weakness, namely, the prejudice that problems are solved mainly through
intellectual development, which would be the function of education. In fact,
the primary task of education is the accumulation of knowledge and erudition as
reflected in high grades. In this process, moral education is shifted into the
background of seminars or class instruction and is reduced to a moralizing
lecture.
In its place, cognitive psychology
becomes the theoretical criterion of moral development. Both Jean Piaget and L.
Kohlberg investigated the capacity of persons at different ages to carry out
moral reasoning regarding norms and prescriptions. They studied reasoning
regarding respect for moral norms ("behavior
criterion"), and the feeling of guilt when violating the moral
requirements ("emotional criterion"). Essentially, we may speak of behavioral and emotional criteria only approximatively,
since they have been studying not a real behavior and
emotional experience, but moral reasonings with
specific content.
Piaget1 and Kohlberg
present two types of reasons for introducing intellectual criteria in the
analysis of moral development: theoretical and experimental. By means of
parallel analysis of the intellectual-cognitive and motivational-need spheres
they sought a direct correspondence between intellectual and moral development.
The Russian psychologist, D.B. Elkonin notes,2 rightly, a number of basic defects in
this naturalistic approach to psychic (mental) development:
(1) The child is looked upon as an
isolated individual, in relation to whom society is considered to be only its
surroundings.
(2) Mental development is interpreted
as a process of adaptation to the conditions of society.
(3) Society is divided into two
separate spheres: "the world of things" and "the world of
people".
(4) The mechanisms of adaptation to
"the world of things" and to "the world of people" are
totally different.
Piaget's and Kohlberg's approach to
the experimental study of moral reasoning in search of parallels between the
development of the reasoning and morality of children,
relies mainly on the child's intellectual insight into unaccustomed spheres of
knowledge. The complex of notions used in this analysis of children's morality
depends upon an integral philosophical conception. Analyzing the development of
the child as a component of the "child-society" system, Piaget and
Kohlberg evolve the thesis that human development consists in the elaboration
of mechanisms of adaptation to the "world of things". This adaptation
unites the multiple aspects of a child's development and is the law or
universal mechanism of human development. The axis of this adaptive mechanism
is one's logical development which implies the introduction of intellectual
criterion into the investigation of morality. Their method of investigation is
in full harmony with this.
INTEGRATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL AND
THE MOTIVATIONAL
In D.B. Elkonin's
hypothesis regarding regularity of the processes of mental development, he
examines the formation of personality in a "child in society",
not a "child and society" system. This new vision
radically changes the connection of "child-and-thing" and
"child-and-grownup". From two independent systems, they are
transformed into a unified system, within which the content of each is changed.
The system "child-thing" becomes in reality "child-social
object", and "child-social grown-up" represents a united process
of forming the child's personality.
Analysis of primary activity and its
psychological essence indicates that during mental development there are
regular periods of the predominant development of the motivation-need sphere
which alternate with periods in which the formation of operational-technical
abilities of the child are primary. The process of personality development
follows an ascending spiral, rather than being linear.
D.B. Elkonin's
hypothesis shows, in the first place, the inconsistency of a parallel analysis
of the intellectual-cognitive and the motivational-need development of the
personality. Secondly, this is important for critical analysis because it
shifts the accent from intellectual development as the center
of all personality development--including its moral aspect--to the specific
characteristics and changes of the social situation in which one's personality
is moulded.
Regarding moral development as
strongly linked to the development of the intellectual processes it should be
noted that this is based on certain irrefutable facts concerning the early
evolution of the child's moral reasoning. But to what extent can the maturity
of separate moral phenomena be a criterion for the moral maturity of the
personality; and more concretely, to what extent could intellectual development
in the sphere of morality be an indicator of the entire moral molding of the personality? In our opinion, the early
development of a child's moral reasoning is not the key to one's overall
process moral development.
The functional, genetic and historio-heterogeneity of the processes characterizing the
complete molding of the personalities determine the heterochroneity of physical, mental and social development.
Heterochroneity is a characteristic feature not only of
the integral and harmonious development of the person, but also one's physical,
mental and social aspects. Thus, for example, B.G. Ananiev
focuses on the heterochroneity in mental processes,
and I.S. Konn shows it to be a characteristic of the
person's social development.
Experimental data in psychology3 provide
grounds for assuming that the separate phenomena typical of morality also are
formed in a heterochronological way. Therefore, it is
necessary to distinguish between the development of a separate moral phenomenon
such as moral reasoning, on the one hand, and moral maturity as an overall
feature of the moral development of the person, on the other.
Moral reasoning is one of the
earliest moral expressions of the child. In the communication process a child
appraises his or her own deed and the deeds of the others, his or her own
personality and that of partners; in game situations the child evaluates the
performers.
A main conclusion of our
investigation4 is that reasoning regarding an action is differentiated
from personality in the child's moral thinking. Experiments show that moral
reasoning about the person is built on the basis of the maturity of moral
reasoning about actions. It is proven convincingly that estimative moral
reasoning reaches its maturity at a later stage, though some forms of
estimative moral reasoning (eg. regarding the deed)
are being shaped at the end of preschool and at the beginning of school age,
when personality is still in its initial stages of moral development. As this
comparatively early formation of children's moral reasoning is an adequate
indicator of the development of moral thinking and of moral intellect, the heterochroneity in moral development devalues estimative
moral reasoning as a criterion for the overall moral development of the
personality.
Moral development could be
characterized by only one criterion, namely, the intellectual, if the
functioning and development of the cognitive and moral processes were parallel
or if the cardinal issues regarding the functioning and development of morality
were resolved in the intellectual-cognitive sphere.
However, the heterochroneity
there is an indicator of a rather complicated structure of morality, which is
reflected also in differences in the phenomena of action, interpersonal
relations, values and thinking, language and mentality. Morality is reflected
throughout all these moral phenomena, each of which appears to store in itself
the richness of the moral phenomena. The reason for their intermingling in any
one moral phenomena should be sought in their proper
requirements. Thus, development in moral thinking is inconceivable without a
corresponding development in moral action and social relations. Specific moral
problems and situations of conflict stimulate the rationalization and analysis
of values, the elaboration of moral estimative capabilities, and the
development of personal moral reasonings,
conclusions, conceptions, etc. Each new step in the development of moral
thinking and understanding contributes to a further development in the other
moral phenomena.
Such interrelated character of the
phenomena in the moral sphere is the main reason for the illusion that, by
analyzing one of them, morality as an over all phenomenon is also being analyzed, as with Piaget and Kohlberg.
In the sphere of moral thinking, personal motives, moral feelings and
experiences, personal values and phenomenon in the world of morality are all
reflected in moral language. Similarly, they are reflected by and through
thought or cognition without being reduced thereto.
Because moral and cognitive processes
do not develop in parallel, we cannot study the sphere of morality by analogy
to the intellectual processes. Analysis and synthesis, deduction and moral
conceptualization, etc., are necessary moments of shaping moral behavior, social relations, moral motivation and personal
value systems. The study of moral motivation reveals the cognitive processes to
be of primary importance, for moral thinking and intellect determine the
possibility for knowledge of moral values. At the same time, just knowing moral
motives and an ability for value analysis are not
sufficient to provide moral motivation for human behavior.
Intellectual development alone in the sphere of morality cannot bring about the
formation of the moral convictions which will provide steady motivation for the
person's behavior.
Thus, the significance of the
cognitive processes in the moral development of the personality could be
characterized by the following specific features:
-The development of social relations
and social activity, of estimative characteristics, and of value orientation in
the concrete situation result in advancing intellectual development in the
sphere of moral thinking. General intellectual development, the formation of
moral knowledge, the development of moral reasoning and conclusions, etc., give
new meaning to moral values.
-The development of the moral
intellect, in turn, is instrumental in the further development of each moral
phenomenon. For this reason it is a necessary condition for moral molding of the person.
-At the same time, intellectual
development alone is not enough to shape the person morally. Hence, an
intellectual criterion is not an entirely reliable indicator of the person's
moral formation.
-The interrelation between
intellectual and moral evolution is determined by the development of social
activity and social relations, where the person is situated due to its overall
evolution as a social being.
To overcome the purely intellectual
orientation in the moral upbringing we should transform the entire system of
education, which should be turned into a formative system, using educative
means. The fact that in any moral activity choice is free in no way implies
that moral upbringing does not have its own subject matter and its own tasks.
It must overcome its own dependence on politics and intellectual development;
it must overcome its lack of specific definition and find and defend its
specific moral character and "identity". Undoubtedly, the theory of
moral education has cultural and social value of its own.
All over the world, the forces of neoliberalism are on the march, dismantling the historically
guaranteed social provisions provided by the welfare state, defining
profit-making and market freedoms as the essence of democracy while diminishing
civil liberties as part of the alleged "war" against terrorism.
Secure in its dystopian vision that there are no alternatives to a market
society, free-market fundamentalism eliminates issues of contingency, struggle
and social agency by celebrating the inevitability of economic laws in which
the ethical ideal of intervening in the world gives way to the idea that we
"have no choice but to adapt both our hopes and our abilities to the new
global market."[1] Coupled with an ever-expanding culture of fear, market
freedoms seem securely grounded in a defense of
national security and the institutions of finance capital. Under such
circumstances, a neoliberal model now bears down on
American society, threatening to turn it into an authoritarian state. The
script is now familiar: there is no such thing as the common good; market
values become the template for shaping all aspects of society; the free,
possessive individual has no obligations to anything other than his or her
self-interest; profit-making is the essence of democracy; the government, and
particularly the welfare state, is the arch-enemy of freedom; private interests
trump public values; consumerism is the essence of citizenship; privatization
is the essence of freedom; law and order is the new language for mobilizing
shared fears rather than shared responsibilities; war is the new organizing principle for
organizing society and the economy; theocracy now becomes the legitimating code
for punishing women, young people, the elderly, and those groups marginalized
by class, race and ethnicity when religious moralism
is needed to shore up the war against all social order.[2]
Given this current crisis, educators need a new
political and pedagogical language for addressing the changing contexts and
issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence
of resources - financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military
and technological - to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control. If
educators and others are to counter global capitalism’s increased ability to
separate the traditional nation-state-based space of politics from the transnational reach of power, it is crucial to develop
educational approaches that reject a collapse of the distinction between market
liberties and civil liberties, a market economy and a market society. This
suggests developing forms of critical pedagogy capable of challenging neoliberalism and other anti-democratic traditions, such as
the emerging religious fundamentalism in the
The search for a new politics and a new critical
language that crosses a range of theoretical divides must reinvigorate the
relationship between democracy, ethics, and political agency by expanding the
meaning of the pedagogical as a political practice while at the same time
making the political more pedagogical. In the first instance, it is crucial to
recognize that pedagogy has less to do with the language of technique and
methodology than it does with issues of politics and power. Pedagogy is a moral
and political practice that is always implicated in power relations and must be
understood as a cultural politics that offers both a particular version and
vision of civic life, the future, and how we might construct representations of
ourselves, others, and our physical and social environment. As Roger Simon
observes:
As an introduction to, preparation for, and legitimation of particular forms of social life, education
always presupposes a vision of the future. In this respect a curriculum and its
supporting pedagogy are a version of our own dreams for ourselves,
our children, and our communities. But such dreams are never neutral; they are
always someone's dreams and to the degree that they are implicated in
organizing the future for others they always have a moral and political
dimension. It is in this respect that any discussion of pedagogy must begin
with a discussion of educational practice as a form of cultural politics, as a
particular way in which a sense of identity, place, worth, and above all value
is - informed by practices which organize knowledge and meaning.[3]
An oppositional cultural politics can take many
forms, but given the current assault by neoliberalism
on all aspects of democratic public life, it seems imperative that educators
revitalize the struggles to create conditions in which learning would be linked
to social change in a wide variety of social sites, and pedagogy would take on
the task of regenerating both a renewed sense of social and political agency
and a critical subversion of dominant power itself. Making the political more
pedagogical rests on the assumption that education takes place a variety of
sites outside of the school. Under such circumstances, agency becomes the site
through which power is not transcended but reworked, replayed and restaged in
productive ways. Central to my argument is the assumption that politics is not
only about power, but also, as Cornelius Castoriadis
points out, "has to do with political judgements
and value choices,"[4] indicating that questions of civic education and
critical pedagogy (learning how to become a skilled citizen) are central to the
struggle over political agency and democracy. In this instance, critical
pedagogy emphasizes critical reflexivity, bridging the gap between learning and
everyday life, understanding the connection between power and knowledge, and
extending democratic rights and identities by using the resources of history.
However, among many educators and social theorists, there is a widespread
refusal to recognize that this form of education is not only the foundation for
expanding and enabling political agency, but also that it takes place across a
wide variety of public spheres mediated through the very force of culture
itself.
One of the central tasks of any viable critical
pedagogy would be to make visible alternative models of radical democratic
relations in a wide variety of sites. These spaces can make the pedagogical
more political by raising fundamental questions such as: what is the
relationship between social justice and the distribution of public resources
and goods? What are the conditions, knowledge and skills that are a
prerequisite for civic literacy, political agency and social change? What kinds
of identities, desires and social relations are being produced and legitimated
in diverse sites of teaching and learning? How might the latter prepare or
undermine the ability of students to be self-reflective, exercise judgment,
engage in critical dialogues, and assume some responsibility for addressing the
challenges to democracy at a national and global level? At the very least, such
a project involves understanding and critically engaging dominant public
transcripts and values within a broader set of historical and institutional
contexts. Making the political more pedagogical in this instance suggests
producing modes of knowledge and social practices in a variety of sites that
not only affirm oppositional thinking, dissent and cultural work, but also offer
opportunities to mobilize instances of collective outrage and collective
action. Such mobilization opposes glaring material inequities and the growing
cynical belief that today's culture of investment and finance makes it
impossible to address many of the major social problems facing both the
In taking up these questions and the challenges
they pose, critical pedagogy proposes that education is a form of political intervention
in the world and is capable of creating the possibilities for social
transformation. Rather than viewing teaching as technical practice, pedagogy,
in the broadest critical sense, is premised on the assumption that learning is
not about processing received knowledge, but actually transforming knowledge as
part of a more expansive struggle for individual rights and social justice.
This implies that any viable notion of pedagogy and resistance should
illustrate how knowledge, values, desire and social relations are always
implicated in relations of power, and how such an understanding can be used
pedagogically and politically by students to further expand and deepen the
imperatives of economic and political democracy. The fundamental challenge facing
educators within the current age of neoliberalism,
militarism and religious fundamentalism is to provide the conditions for
students to address how knowledge is related to the power of both
self-definition and social agency. In part, this means providing students with
the skills, knowledge and authority they need to inquire and act upon what it
means to live in a substantive democracy, to recognize anti-democratic forms of
power, and to fight deeply rooted injustices in a society and world founded on
systemic economic, racial and gendered inequalities.
The Responsibility of Teachers as Public
Intellectuals
In the age of irresponsible privatization, it is
difficult to recognize that educators and other cultural workers bear an
enormous responsibility in opposing the current threat to the planet and
everyday life by bringing democratic political culture back to life. While
liberal democracy offers an important discourse around issues of "rights,
freedoms, participation, self-rule, and citizenship," it has been mediated
historically through the "damaged and burdened tradition" of racial
and gender exclusions, economic injustice and a formalistic, ritualized
democracy, which substituted the swindle for the promise of democratic
participation.[6] At the same time, liberal and republican traditions of
Western democratic thought have given rise to forms of social and political
criticism that at least contained a "referent" for addressing the
deep gap between the promise of a radical democracy and the existing reality.
With the rise of neoliberalism, referents for
imagining even a weak democracy, or, for that matter, for understanding the
tensions between capitalism and democracy, which animated political discourse
for the first half of the 20th century, appear to be overwhelmed by market
discourses, identities and practices, on the one hand, or a corrosive cynicism
on the other. And, of course, at the present moment a kind of political lunacy
that testifies to the rise of extremism in
Critical Pedagogy as a Project of Intervention
If educators are to revitalize the language of
civic education as part of a broader discourse of political agency and critical
citizenship in a global world, they will have to consider grounding such a pedagogy in a defense of what I
have called in the past, "educated hope."[7] Such hope is built upon
recognizing pedagogy as part of a broader attempt to revitalize the conditions
for individual and social agency while simultaneously addressing critical
pedagogy as a project informed by a democratic political vision while conscious
of the diverse ways such a vision gets mediated in different contexts. Such a
project also suggests recasting the relationship between the pedagogical and
political as a project that is indeterminate, open to constant revision and constantly
in dialogue with its own assumptions. The concept of the project in this sense
speaks to the directive nature of pedagogy, the recognition that any
pedagogical practice presupposes some notion of the future, prioritizes some
forms of identification over others and upholds selective modes of social
relations. At the same time, the normative nature of such a
pedagogy does not offer guarantees as much as it recognizes that its own
position is grounded in modes of authority, values and ethical considerations
that must be constantly debated for the ways in which they both open up and
close down democratic relations, values and identities. Central to both keeping
any notion of critical pedagogy alive is the recognition that it must address
real social needs, be imbued with a passion for democracy and provide the
conditions for expanding democratic forms of political and social agency.
Critical Pedagogy as a Matter of Context, Ethics
and Politics
In opposition to the increasingly dominant views
of education and cultural politics, I want to argue for a transformative
pedagogy rooted in the project of resurgent democracy, one that relentlessly
questions the kinds of labor, practices and forms of
production that are enacted in public and higher education. Such an analysis
should be relational and contextual, as well as self-reflective and
theoretically rigorous. By relational, I mean that the current crisis of
schooling must be understood in relation to the broader assault that is being
waged against all aspects of democratic public life. As Jeffrey Williams has
recently pointed out, "the current restructuring of higher education is
only one facet of the restructuring of civic life in the US whereby previously
assured public entitlements such as healthcare, welfare, and social security
have evaporated or been 'privatized,' so no solution can be separated from a
larger vision of what it means to enfranchise citizens or our
republic."[8] But as important as such articulations are in understanding
the challenges that public and higher education face in the current historical
conjuncture, they do not go far enough. Any critical comprehension of those
wider forces that shape public and higher education must also be supplemented
by an attentiveness to the conditional nature of
pedagogy itself. This suggests that pedagogy can never be treated as a fixed
set of principles and practices that can be applied indiscriminately across a
variety of pedagogical sites. Pedagogy is not some recipe that can be imposed
on all classrooms. On the contrary, it must always be contextually defined,
allowing it to respond specifically to the conditions, formations and problems
that arise in various sites in which education takes place. Schools differ in
their financing, quality of teachers, resources, histories and cultural
capital. Recognizing this, educators can both address the meaning and purpose
that schools might play in their relationship to the demands of the broader
society while simultaneously being sensitive to the distinctive nature of the
issues educators address within the shifting contexts in which they interact
with a diverse body of students, texts and institutional formations.
Ethically, critical pedagogy requires an ongoing
indictment "of those forms of truth-seeking which imagined themselves to be eternally and placelessly
valid." [9] Simply put, educators need to cast a critical eye on those
forms of knowledge and social relations that define themselves through a
conceptual purity and political innocence that not only clouds how they come
into being, but also ignores that the alleged neutrality on which they stand is
already grounded in ethico-political choices.
Neutral, objective education is an oxymoron. It does not exist outside of
relations of power, values and politics. Thomas Keenan rightly argues that
ethics on the pedagogical front demands an openness to the other, a willingness
to engage a "politics of possibility" through a continual critical
engagement with texts, images events, and other registers of meaning as they
are transformed into public pedagogies.[10] One consequence of linking pedagogy
to the specificity of place is that it foregrounds the need for educators to
rethink the cultural and political baggage they bring to each educational
encounter; it also highlights the necessity of making educators ethically and
politically accountable for the stories they produce, the claims they make upon
public memory and the images of the future they deem legitimate. Pedagogy is
never innocent, and if it is to be understood and problematized
as a form of academic labor, educators must not only
critically question and register their own subjective involvement in how and
what they teach, they must also resist all calls to depoliticize pedagogy
through appeals to either scientific objectivity or ideological dogmatism. Far
from being disinterested or ideologically frozen, critical pedagogy is
concerned about the articulation of knowledge to social effects and succeeds to
the degree in which educators encourage critical reflection and moral and civic
agency, rather than simply mold it. Crucial to the
latter position is the necessity for critical educators to be attentive to the
ethical dimensions of their own practice.
Critical Pedagogy and the Promise of
Democratization
But as an act of intervention, critical pedagogy
needs to be grounded in a project that not only problematizes
its own location, mechanisms of transmission and effects, but also functions as
part of a larger project to contest various forms of domination and to help
students think more critically about how existing social, political and
economic arrangements might be better suited to address the promise of a
radical democracy as an anticipatory rather than messianic goal. The late
Jacques Derrida suggested that the social function of intellectuals, as well as
any viable notion of education, should be grounded in a vibrant politics which
makes the promise of democracy a matter of concrete urgency. For Derrida,
making visible a "democracy" which is to come, as opposed to that
which presents itself in its name, provides a referent for both criticizing
everywhere what parades as democracy - "the current state of all so-called
democracy" - and for critically assessing the conditions and possibilities
for democratic transformation.[11] Derrida sees the promise of democracy as the
proper articulation of a political ethics and by implication suggests that when
higher education is engaged and articulated through the project of democratic
social transformation, it can function as a vital public sphere for critical
learning, ethical deliberation and civic engagement. Moreover, the utopian
dimension of pedagogy articulated through the project of radical democracy
offers the possibility of resistance to the increasing depoliticization
of the citizenry, provides a language to challenge the politics of
accommodation that connects education to the logic of privatization, commodification, religious dogma, and instrumental
knowledge. Such a pedagogy refuses to define the citizen
as simply a consuming subject and actively opposes the view of teaching as
market-driven practice and learning as a form of training. Utopianism in this
sense is not an antidote to politics, a nostalgic yearning for a better time,
or for some "inconceivably alternative future." But, by contrast, it
is an "attempt to find a bridge between the present and future in those
forces within the present which are potentially able to transform it."[12]
In opposition to dominant forms of education and
pedagogy that simply reinvent the future in the interest of a present in which
ethical principles are scorned and the essence of democracy is reduced to the
imperatives of the bottom line, critical pedagogy must address the challenge of
providing students with the competencies they need to cultivate the capacity
for critical judgment, thoughtfully connect politics to social responsibility,
and expand their own sense of agency in order to curb the excesses of dominant
power, revitalize a sense of public commitment, and expand democratic
relations. Animated by a sense of critique and possibility, critical pedagogy
at its best attempts to provoke students to deliberate, resist and cultivate a
range of capacities that enable them to move beyond the world they already know
without insisting on a fixed set of meanings.
Against the current onslaught to privatize public
schools and corporatize higher education, educators
need to defend public and higher education as a resource vital to the
democratic and civic life of the nation. Central to such a task is the
challenge of academics, young people, the Occupy movement and labor unions to find ways to join together in broad-based
social movements and oppose the transformation of the public schools and higher
education into commercial spheres, to resist what Bill Readings has called a
consumer-oriented corporation more concerned about accounting than
accountability.[13] The crisis of public schooling and higher education - while
having different registers - needs to be
analyzed in terms of wider configurations of economic, political and social
forces that exacerbate tensions between those who value such institutions as
public goods and those advocates of neoliberalism who
see market culture as a master design for all human affairs. The threat
corporate power poses can be seen in the ongoing attempts by neoliberals and other hypercapitalists
to subject all forms of public life, including public and higher education, to
the dictates of the market while simultaneously working to empty democracy
itself of any vestige of ethical, political and social considerations. What
educators must challenge is the attempt on the part of neoliberals
to either define democracy exclusively as a liability, or to enervate its
substantive ideals by reducing it to the imperatives and freedoms of the
marketplace. This requires that educators consider the political and
pedagogical importance of struggling over the meaning and definition of
democracy and situate such a debate within an expansive notion of human rights,
social provisions, civil liberties, equity and economic justice. What must be
challenged at all costs is the increasingly dominant view, propagated by neoliberal gurus such as Ayn Rand
and Milton Friedman, that selfishness is the supreme value in shaping human agency, profit-making is the most important practice in a
democracy and accumulating material goods the essence of the good life.
Defending public and higher education as vital
democratic spheres is necessary to develop and nourish the proper balance
between public values and commercial power, between identities founded on
democratic principles and identities steeped in forms of competitive,
self-interested individualism that celebrate selfishness, profit-making and
greed. Educators also must reconsider the critical roles they might take up
within public and higher education so as to enable them to oppose those
approaches to schooling that corporatize, privatize
and bureaucratize the teaching process. A critical pedagogy should, in part, be
premised on the assumption that educators vigorously resist any attempt on the
part of liberals and conservatives to reduce their role in schools to either
that of technicians or corporate pawns. Instead, educators might redefine their
roles as engaged public intellectuals capable of teaching students the language
of critique and possibility as a precondition for social agency. Such a
redefinition of purpose, meaning and politics suggests that educators
critically interrogate the fundamental link between knowledge and power,
pedagogical practices and social consequences, and authority and civic
responsibility. It also means eliminating those modes of corporate governance
in the public schools and higher education that reduce teachers to the status
of clerks, technicians, and, with respect to higher education, to a subaltern
class of part-time workers, with little power, few benefits and excessive
teaching loads.
By redefining the purpose and meaning of schooling
as part of a broader attempt to struggle for a radical democratic social order,
educators can begin to vigorously challenge a number of dominant assumptions
and policies currently structuring public and higher education, including but
not limited to: ongoing attempts by corporate culture to define educators as
multinational operatives; escalating efforts by colleges and universities to
deny students the loans, resources and public support they need to have access
to a quality education; the mounting influence of corporate interests in
pressuring universities to reward forms of scholarship that generate corporate
profits; increasing attempts to deny women and students of color
access to higher education through the reversal of affirmative action policies,
the raising of tuition costs, and a growing emphasis on classroom pedagogies
designed to create marketable products and active consumers. Rather than
providing students with an opportunity to learn how to shape and govern public
life, education is increasingly being vocationalized,
reduced to a commodity that provides privileges for a few students and low-skill industrial training for
the rest, especially those who are marginalized by reason of their class and
race. Republican Party presidential candidate Rick Santorum has recently argued
that public education is a form of government intrusion and that higher
education is simply irrelevant because it is doing the work of Satan by
allowing leftist educators to indoctrinate students.[14] That such ideological
and political idiocy passes as a legitimate discourse in a presidential race
tells us something about the devalued state of public and higher education, not
to mention how vulnerable it is to the most extreme authoritarian pressures and
policies.
What has become clear in this current climate of
religious fundamentalism and casino capitalism is that the corporatization
of education functions so as to cancel out the democratic values, impulses and
practices of a civil society by either devaluing or absorbing them within the
logic of the market. Educators need a critical language to address these
challenges to public and higher education. But they also need to join with
other groups outside of the spheres of public and higher education in order to create
a national movement that links the defense of noncommodified education with a broader struggle to deepen
the imperatives of democratic public life. The quality of educational reform
can, in part, be gauged by the caliber of public
discourse concerning the role that education plays in furthering not the
market-driven agenda of corporate interests, but the imperatives of critical
agency, social justice and an operational democracy. In this capacity,
educators need to develop a language of possibility for raising critical
questions about the aim of schooling and about the purpose and meaning of what
and how educators teach. In doing so, pedagogy draws attention to engaging
classroom practice as a moral and political consideration animated by a fierce
sense of commitment to expanding the range of individual capacities that enable
students to become critical agents capable of linking knowledge, responsibility
and democratic social transformation.
Approaching pedagogy as a critical and
political practice suggests that educators refuse all attempts to reduce
classroom teaching exclusively to matters of technique and method. In
opposition to such approaches, educators can highlight the performative
character of education as an act of intervention in the world - focusing on the
work that pedagogy does as a deliberate attempt to influence how and what
knowledge and experiences are produced within particular sets of classroom
relations. Within this perspective, critical pedagogy foregrounds the diverse
conditions under which authority, knowledge, values and subject positions are
produced and interact within unequal relations of power; it also problematizes the ideologically laden and often
contradictory roles and social functions that educators assume within the classroom.
Pedagogy in this view can also be reclaimed as a form of academic labor that bridges the gap between individual
considerations and public concerns, affirms bonds of sociality and reciprocity,
and interrogates the relationship between individual freedom and privatized
notions of the good life and the social obligations and collective structures
necessary to support a vibrant democracy.
Classroom Authority and Pedagogy as the Outcome
of Struggles
The question of what educators teach is
inseparable from what it means to locate oneself in
public discourses and invest in public commitments. Implicit in this argument
is the assumption that the responsibility of critical educators cannot be
separated from the consequences of the subject positions they have been
assigned, the knowledge they produce, the social relations they legitimate and
the ideologies they disseminate to students. Educational work at its best
represents a response to questions and issues posed by the tensions and
contradictions of the broader society; it is an attempt to understand and
intervene in specific problems that emanate from those sites that people
concretely inhabit and actually live out in their lives and everyday existence.
Teaching in this sense becomes performative and contextual,
and it highlights considerations of power, politics and ethics fundamental to
any form of teacher-student-text interaction.
It is crucial to reiterate that any pedagogy that
is alive to its own democratic implications is always cautious of its need to
resist totalizing certainties and answers. Refusing the pull of dogmatism,
ideological purity and imperious authority, educators must at the same time
grasp the complexity and contradictions that inform the conditions under which
they produce and disseminate knowledge. Recognizing that pedagogy is the
outgrowth of struggles that are historically specific, as are the problems that
govern the questions and issues that guide what and how we teach, should not
suggest that educators renounce their authority. On the contrary, it is
precisely by recognizing that teaching is always an act of intervention
inextricably mediated through particular forms of authority that teachers can
offer students a variety of analytic tools, diverse historical traditions, and
a wide-ranging knowledge of dominant and subaltern cultures and how they
influence each other - for whatever use students wish to make of these tools
and knowledge. This is
a far cry from suggesting that critical pedagogy define itself either within
the grip of a self-righteous mode of authority or completely remove
itself from any sense of commitment whatsoever. On the contrary, at stake here
is the need to insist on modes of authority that are directive but not
imperious, linking knowledge to power in the service of self-production, and
encouraging students to go beyond the world they already know to expand their
range of human possibilities.
Academics must deliberate, make decisions, and
take positions, and, in doing so, recognize that authority "is the very
condition for intellectual work" and pedagogical interventions.[15]
Authority in this perspective in not simply on the side of oppression, but is
used to intervene and shape the space of teaching and learning to provide
students with a range of possibilities for challenging a society's commonsense
assumptions, and for analyzing the interface between its members' own everyday
lives and those broader social formations that bear down on them. Authority, at
best, becomes both a referent for legitimating a commitment to a particular
vision of pedagogy and a critical referent for a kind of auto-critique. It
demands consideration of how authority functions within specific relations of
power regarding its own promise to provide students with a public space where
they can learn, debate and engage critical traditions in order to imagine
otherwise and develop discourses that are crucial for defending vital social
institutions as a public good.
While pedagogy can be understood performatively as an event where many things can happen in
the service of learning, it is crucial to stress the importance of democratic
classroom relations that encourage dialogue, deliberation and the power of
students to raise questions. Moreover, such relations don't signal a retreat from
teacher authority as much as they suggest using authority reflexively to
provide the conditions for students to exercise intellectual rigor, theoretical
competence and informed judgments. Thus, students can think critically about
the knowledge they gain and what it means to act on such knowledge in order to
expand their sense of agency as part of a broader project of increasing both
"the scope of their freedoms" and "the operations of
democracy."[16] What students learn and how they learn should amplify what
it means to experience democracy from a position of possibility, affirmation
and critical engagement. In part, this suggests that educators develop
pedagogical practices that open up the terrain of the political while
simultaneously encouraging students to "think better about how
arrangements might be otherwise."
At its best, critical pedagogy must be
interdisciplinary, contextual, engage the complex relationships between power
and knowledge, critically address the institutional constraints under which
teaching takes place, and focus on how students can engage the imperatives of
critical social citizenship. Education is not simply about the transmission of
knowledge; it is about the producing of subjects, identities and desires - no
small matter when recognizing what such a struggle suggests about preparing
students for the future. Once again, critical pedagogy must be self-reflexive
about its aims and practices, conscious of its ongoing project of democratic
transformation, but openly committed to a politics that does not offer any
guarantees. But refusing dogmatism does not suggest that educators descend into
a laissez-faire pluralism or an appeal to methodologies designed to "teach
the conflicts." On the contrary, it suggests that, in order to make the
pedagogical more political, educators afford students with diverse
opportunities to understand and experience how politics, power, commitment and
responsibility work on and through them both within and outside of schools.
This, in turn, enables students to locate themselves, within an interrelated
confluence of ideological and material forces, as critical agents who can both
influence such forces and simultaneously be held responsible for their own
views and actions. Within this perspective, relations between institutional
forms and pedagogical practices are acknowledged as complex, open and
contradictory - though always situated within unequal relations of power.[18]
To read more article by
Henry A. Giroux and other writers in the Public Intellectual Project, click
here.
Making the Pedagogical More Meaningful
Any analysis of critical pedagogy must stress the
importance of addressing the role that affect and emotion play in the formation
of individual identity and social agency. Any viable approach to critical
pedagogy suggests taking seriously those maps of meaning, affective investments
and sedimented desires that enable students to
connect their own lives and everyday experiences to what they learn. Pedagogy
in this sense becomes more than a mere transfer of received knowledge, an
inscription of a unified and static identity, or a rigid methodology; it
presupposes that students are moved by their passions and motivated, in part,
by the affective investments they bring to the learning process. This suggests,
as Paulo Freire points out, the need for a theory of
pedagogy willing to develop a "critical comprehension of the value of
sentiments, emotions, and desire as part of the learning process."[19] Not
only do students need to understand the ideological, economic and political
interests that shape the nature of their educational experiences, they must
also address the strong emotional investments they may bring to such beliefs.
For
Conclusion
In the current historical conjuncture, the
concept of the social and the common good is being refigured and displaced as a
constitutive category for making democracy operational and political agency the
condition for social transformation. The notions of the social and the public
are not being erased as much as they are being reconstructed under
circumstances in which public forums for serious debate, including public
education, are being eroded. Within the ongoing logic of neoliberalism,
teaching and learning are removed from the discourse of democracy and civic
culture - defined as a purely private affair. How else to
explain Rick Santorum's rants against higher education, the elites, and that
old phantom, the liberal media.
Divorced from the imperatives of a democratic society, pedagogy is
reduced to a matter of taste, individual choice, home schooling and job
training. Pedagogy as a mode of witnessing, a public engagement in which
students learn to be attentive and responsible to the memories and narratives
of others, disappears within a corporate-driven notion of learning in which the
logic of market devalues the opportunity for students to make connections with others
through social relations which foster a mix of compassion, ethics and hope. The
crisis of the social is further amplified by the withdrawal of the state as a
guardian of the public trust and its growing lack of investment in those
sectors of social life that promote the public good. With the Supreme Court
ruling that now makes vouchers constitutional, a deeply conservative government
once again will be given full reign to renege on the responsibility of
government to provide every child with an education that affirms public life,
embraces the need for critical citizens and supports the truism that political
agency is central to the possibility of democratic life.
The greatest threat to our children does not come
from lowered standards, the absence of privatized choice schemes or the lack of
rigid testing measures. On the contrary, it comes from a society that refuses
to view children as a social investment, that consigns 16.3 million children to
live in poverty, reduces critical learning to massive testing programs,
promotes policies that eliminate most crucial health and public services, and
defines masculinity through the degrading celebration of a gun culture, extreme
sports and the spectacles of violence that permeate corporate-controlled media
industries. Students are not at risk because of the absence of market
incentives in the schools; they are at risk because, as a country, we support
an iniquitous class-based system of funding education and, more recently, are
intent on completely destroying it precisely because it is public. Children and
young adults are under siege in both public and higher education because far
too many of these institutions have become breeding grounds for commercialism,
racism, social intolerance, sexism, homophobia and consumerism, spurred on by
the right-wing discourse of the Republican Party, corporations, conservative
think tanks and a weak mainstream media. We live in a society in which a
culture of punishment and intolerance has replaced a culture of social
responsibility and compassion. Within such a climate of harsh discipline and
disdain, it is easier for states such as
Adolescence
(from Latin adolescere, meaning "to grow up")[1] is a transitional
stage of physical
and psychological human
development that generally occurs during the
period from puberty to legal adulthood (age of majority).[1][2][3] The period
of adolescence is most closely associated with the teenage years,[3][4][5][6] though its
physical, psychological and cultural expressions may begin earlier and end
later. For example, although puberty has been historically associated with the
onset of adolescent development, it now typically begins prior to the teenage
years and there has been a normative shift of it occurring in preadolescence,
particularly in females (see early and precocious puberty).[4][7][8] Physical
growth, as distinct from puberty (particularly in males), and cognitive
development generally seen in adolescence, can also extend into the early
twenties. Thus chronological age provides only a rough marker of adolescence,
and scholars have found it difficult to agree upon a precise definition of
adolescence.[7][8][9][10]
A thorough understanding of
adolescence in society depends on information from various perspectives, most
importantly from the areas of psychology, biology, history, sociology, education, and anthropology. Within all
of these perspectives, adolescence is viewed as a transitional period between
childhood and adulthood, whose cultural purpose is the preparation of children
for adult roles.[11] It is a
period of multiple transitions involving education, training, employment and
unemployment, as well as transitions from one living circumstance to another.[12]
The end of adolescence and the
beginning of adulthood varies by country and by function, and furthermore even
within a single nation state or culture
there can be different ages at which an individual is considered (chronologically
and legally) mature enough for society to entrust them with certain privileges
and responsibilities. Such milestones include
driving a vehicle, having legal sexual relations, serving in the armed forces
or on a jury, purchasing and drinking alcohol, voting,
entering into contracts, finishing certain levels of education, and marriage. Adolescence
is usually accompanied by an increased independence allowed by the parents or
legal guardians and less supervision as compared to preadolescence.
In popular culture, adolescent
characteristics are attributed to physical changes and what is called raging hormones.[13][14][15] There is little
evidence that this is the case, however. In studying adolescent development,[16] adolescence
can be defined biologically, as the physical transition marked by the onset of
puberty and the termination of physical growth; cognitively, as changes in the
ability to think abstractly and multi-dimensionally; or socially, as a period
of preparation for adult roles. Major pubertal and biological changes include
changes to the sex organs, height,
weight, and muscle mass, as well as
major changes in brain structure and organization. Cognitive advances
encompass both increases in knowledge and in the ability to think abstractly
and to reason more effectively. The study of adolescent development often
involves interdisciplinary collaborations. For example, researchers in neuroscience or bio-behavioral
health might focus on pubertal changes in brain
structure and its effects on cognition or social relations. Sociologists interested
in adolescence might focus on the acquisition of social roles (e.g., worker or
romantic partner) and how this varies across cultures or social conditions.[17] Developmental
psychologists might focus on changes in relations
with parents and peers as a function of school structure and pubertal status.[18]
Biological
development
Puberty in
general
Puberty is a period of several years
in which rapid physical growth and psychological changes occur, culminating in
sexual maturity. The average onset of puberty is at 10 or 11 for girls and age
11 or 12 for boys.[19][20][21] Every
person's individual timetable for puberty is influenced primarily by heredity, although
environmental factors, such as diet and exercise, also exert some influence.[20][22][23] These factors
can also contribute to precocious
and delayed puberty.[10][23]
Some of the most significant parts of
pubertal development involve distinctive physiological changes in individuals'
height, weight, body composition, and circulatory
and respiratory
systems.[24] These
changes are largely influenced by hormonal activity. Hormones play an
organizational role, priming the body to behave in a certain way once puberty
begins,[25] and an
activational role, referring to changes in hormones during adolescence that
trigger behavioral and physical changes.[26]
Puberty occurs through a long process
and begins with a surge in hormone production, which in turn causes a number of
physical changes.[20] It is the
stage of life in which a child develops secondary sex
characteristics (for example, a deeper voice and
larger adam's apple in boys, and
development of breasts and more
curved and prominent hips in girls) as his or her
hormonal balance shifts strongly towards an adult state. This is triggered by
the pituitary gland, which
secretes a surge of hormonal agents into
the blood stream, initiating a chain reaction. The male and female gonads are subsequently activated,
which puts them into a state of rapid growth and development; the triggered
gonads now commence the mass production of the necessary chemicals. The testes
primarily release testosterone, and the
ovaries predominantly dispense estrogen. The
production of these hormones increases gradually until sexual maturation is
met. Some boys may develop gynecomastia due to an
imbalance of sex hormones, tissue
responsiveness or obesity.[27][28]
Facial hair in males
normally appears in a specific order during puberty: The first facial hair to
appear tends to grow at the corners of the upper lip, typically between 14 to
17 years of age.[29][30] It then
spreads to form a moustache over the
entire upper lip. This is followed by the appearance of hair on the upper part
of the cheeks, and the area under the lower lip.[29] The hair
eventually spreads to the sides and lower border of the chin, and the rest of
the lower face to form a full beard.[29] As with most
human biological processes, this specific order may vary among some
individuals. Facial hair is often present in late adolescence, around ages 17
and 18, but may not appear until significantly later.[30][31] Some men do
not develop full facial hair for 10 years after puberty.[30] Facial hair
continues to get coarser, darker and thicker for another 2–4 years after
puberty.[30]
The major landmark of puberty for
males is the first ejaculation, which
occurs, on average, at age 13.[32] For females,
it is menarche, the onset
of menstruation, which occurs, on average, between ages 12 and 13.[22][33][34][35] The age of
menarche is influenced by heredity, but a girl's diet and lifestyle contribute
as well.[22] Regardless
of genes, a girl must have a certain proportion of body fat to attain menarche.[22]
Consequently, girls who have a high-fat diet and who are not physically active
begin menstruating earlier, on average, than girls whose diet contains less fat
and whose activities involve fat reducing exercise (e.g. ballet and gymnastics).[22][23] Girls who
experience malnutrition or are in societies in which children are expected to
perform physical labor also begin menstruating at later ages.[22]
The timing of puberty can have
important psychological and social consequences. Early maturing boys are
usually taller and stronger than their friends.[36] They have
the advantage in capturing the attention of potential partners and in becoming
hand-picked for sports. Pubescent boys often tend to have a good body image,
are more confident, secure, and more independent.[37] Late
maturing boys can be less confident because of poor body image when comparing
themselves to already developed friends and peers. However, early puberty is
not always positive for boys; early sexual maturation in boys can be
accompanied by increased aggressiveness due to the surge of hormones that
affect them.[37] Because they
appear older than their peers, pubescent boys may face increased social
pressure to conform to adult norms; society may view them as more emotionally
advanced, despite the fact that their cognitive
and social development
may lag behind their appearance.[37] Studies have
shown that early maturing boys are more likely to be sexually active and are
more likely to participate in risky behaviors.[38]
For girls, early maturation can
sometimes lead to increased self-consciousness, though a typical aspect in
maturing females.[39] Because of
their bodies' developing in advance, pubescent girls can become more insecure.[39]
Consequently, girls that reach sexual maturation early are more likely than
their peers to develop eating disorders. Nearly half
of all American high school girls' diet to lose weight.[39] In addition,
girls may have to deal with sexual advances from older boys before they are
emotionally and mentally mature.[40] In addition
to having earlier sexual experiences and more unwanted pregnancies than late
maturing girls, early maturing girls are more exposed to alcohol
and drug abuse.[41] Those who
have had such experiences tend to perform less well in school than their
"inexperienced" age peers.[42]
Girls have usually reached full
physical development by ages 15–17,[3][21][43] while boys
usually complete puberty by ages 16–17.[21][43][44] Any increase
in height beyond the post-pubertal age is uncommon. Girls attain reproductive
maturity about 4 years after the first physical changes of puberty appear.[3] In contrast,
boys accelerate more slowly but continue to grow for about 6 years after the
first visible pubertal changes.[37][44]
Growth spurt
The adolescent growth spurt is a
rapid increase in the individual's height
and weight during puberty resulting from the simultaneous release of growth
hormones, thyroid hormones, and androgens.[45] Males
experience their growth spurt about two years later, on average, than females. During
their peak height velocity (the time of most rapid growth), adolescents grow at
a growth rate nearly identical to that of a toddler—about
The accelerated growth in different
body parts happens at different times, but for all adolescents it has a fairly
regular sequence. The first places to grow are the extremities—the head, hands
and feet—followed by the arms and legs, then the torso and shoulders.[47] This
non-uniform growth is one reason why an adolescent body may seem out of
proportion.
During puberty, bones become harder
and more brittle. At the conclusion of puberty, the ends of the long bones
close during the process called epiphysis. There
can be ethnic differences in these skeletal changes. For example, in the United
States of America, bone density increases significantly more among black than
white adolescents, which might account for decreased likelihood of black women
developing osteoporosis and having
fewer bone fractures there.[48]
Another set of significant physical
changes during puberty happen in bodily distribution of fat and muscle. This
process is different for females and males. Before puberty, there are nearly no
sex differences in fat and muscle distribution; during puberty, boys grow
muscle much faster than girls, although both sexes experience rapid muscle
development. In contrast, though both sexes experience an increase in body fat,
the increase much more significant for girls. Frequently, the increase in fat
for girls happens in their years just before puberty. The ratio between muscle
and fat among post-pubertal boys is around three to one, while for girls it is
about five to four. This may help explain sex differences in athletic
performance.[49]
Pubertal development also affects circulatory
and respiratory
systems as an adolescents' heart and lungs increase in both size and capacity. These
changes lead to increased strength and tolerance for exercise. Sex differences
are apparent as males tend to develop "larger hearts and lungs, higher
systolic blood pressure, a lower resting heart rate, a greater capacity for
carrying oxygen to the blood, a greater power for neutralizing the chemical
products of muscular exercise, higher blood hemoglobin and more red blood
cells".[50]
Despite some genetic sex differences,
environmental factors play a large role in biological changes during adolescence.
For example, girls tend to reduce their physical activity in preadolescence[51][52] and may
receive inadequate nutrition from diets that often lack important nutrients,
such as iron.[53] These
environmental influences in turn affect female physical development.
Reproduction-related
changes
Primary sex characteristics are those
directly related to the sex organs. In males,
the first stages of puberty involve growth of the testes and scrotum, followed
by growth of the penis.[54] At the time
that the penis develops, the seminal vesicles,
the prostate, and the bulbourethral
gland also enlarge and develop. The first ejaculation
of seminal fluid generally occurs about one year after the beginning of
accelerated penis growth, although this is often determined culturally rather
than biologically, since for many boys first ejaculation occurs as a result of
masturbation.[47] Boys are
generally fertile before they have an adult appearance.[45]
In females, changes in the primary
sex characteristics involve growth of the uterus, vagina, and other aspects of
the reproductive system. Menarche, the
beginning of menstruation, is a relatively late development which follows a
long series of hormonal changes.[55] Generally, a
girl is not fully fertile until several years after menarche, as regular
ovulation follows menarche by about two years.[56] Unlike
males, therefore, females usually appear physically mature before they are
capable of becoming pregnant.
Changes in secondary sex
characteristics include every change that is not
directly related to sexual reproduction. In males, these changes involve
appearance of pubic, facial, and body hair, deepening of the voice, roughening
of the skin around the upper arms and thighs, and increased development of the
sweat glands. In females, secondary sex changes involve elevation of the
breasts, widening of the hips, development of pubic and underarm hair, widening
of the areolae, and elevation of the nipples.[57] The changes
in secondary sex characteristics that take place during puberty are often
referred to in terms of five Tanner stages,[58] named after
the British pediatrician who devised the categorization system.
Changes in
the brain
The human brain is not fully
developed by the time a person reaches puberty. Between the ages of 10 and 25,
the brain undergoes changes that have important implications for behavior (see Cognitive development
below). The brain reaches 90% of its adult size by the time a person is six
years of age.[59] Thus, the
brain does not grow in size much during adolescence. However, the creases in
the brain continue to become more complex until the late teens. The biggest
changes in the folds of the brain during this time occur in the parts of the
cortex that process cognitive and emotional information.[59]
Over the course of adolescence, the
amount of white matter in the brain
increases linearly, while the amount of grey matter
in the brain follows an inverted-U pattern. Through a process called synaptic pruning, unnecessary
neuronal connections in the brain are eliminated and the amount of grey matter
is pared down. However, this does not mean that the brain loses functionality;
rather, it becomes more efficient due to increased myelination (insulation
of axons) and the reduction of unused pathways.[60]
The first areas of the brain to be
pruned are those involving primary functions, such as motor and sensory areas. The
areas of the brain involved in more complex processes lose matter later in
development. These include the lateral and prefrontal
cortices, among other regions.[61] Some of the
most developmentally significant changes in the brain occur in the prefrontal cortex,
which is involved in decision making and
cognitive control, as well as other higher cognitive functions. During
adolescence, myelination and synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex
increases, improving the efficiency of information processing, and neural
connections between the prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain are
strengthened.[62] This leads
to better evaluation of risks and rewards, as well as improved control over
impulses. Specifically, developments in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are
important for controlling impulses and planning ahead, while development in the
ventromedial prefrontal cortex is important for decision making. Changes in the
orbitofrontal cortex are important for evaluating rewards and risks.
Two neurotransmitters that play important roles in adolescent brain development are glutamate and dopamine. Glutamate
is an excitatory neurotransmitter. During the synaptic pruning that occurs
during adolescence, most of the neural connections that are pruned contain
receptors for glutamate or other excitatory neurotransmitters.[63] Because of
this, by early adulthood the synaptic balance in the brain is more inhibitory
than excitatory.
Dopamine is associated with pleasure
and attuning to the environment during decision-making. During adolescence,
dopamine levels in the limbic system increase and
input of dopamine to the prefrontal cortex increases.[64] The balance
of excitatory to inhibitory neurotransmitters and increased dopamine activity
in adolescence may have implications for adolescent risk-taking and
vulnerability to boredom (see Cognitive development
below). Development in the limbic system plays an important role in determining
rewards and punishments and processing emotional experience and social
information. Changes in the levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin in the
limbic system make adolescents more emotional and more responsive to rewards
and stress. The corresponding increase in emotional variability also can
increase adolescents' vulnerability.
Cognitive
development
Adolescence is also a time for rapid
cognitive development.[65] Piaget describes
adolescence as the stage of life in which the individual's thoughts start
taking more of an abstract form and the egocentric thoughts decrease. This
allows the individual to think and reason in a wider perspective.[66] A
combination of behavioural and fMRI studies have demonstrated
development of executive
functions, that is, cognitive skills that enable the
control and coordination of thoughts and behaviour, which are generally
associated with the prefrontal cortex.[67] The
thoughts, ideas and concepts developed at this period of life greatly influence
one's future life, playing a major role in character and personality formation.[68]
Biological changes in brain structure
and connectivity within the brain interact with increased experience,
knowledge, and changing social demands to produce rapid cognitive growth (see Changes in the brain
above). The age at which particular changes take place varies between
individuals, but the changes discussed below generally begin at puberty or
shortly thereafter and some skills continue to develop as the adolescent ages.
Theoretical
perspectives
There are two perspectives on
adolescent thinking. One is the constructivist
view of cognitive development. Based on the work of Piaget, it takes a
quantitative, state-theory approach, hypothesizing that adolescents' cognitive
improvement is relatively sudden and drastic. The second is the information-processing
perspective, which derives from the study of
artificial intelligence and attempts to explain cognitive development in terms
of the growth of specific components of the thinking process.
Improvements
in cognitive ability
By the time individuals have reached
age 15 or so, their basic thinking abilities are comparable to those of adults.
These improvements occur
in five areas during adolescence:
1. Attention.
Improvements are seen in selective attention,
the process by which one focuses on one stimulus while tuning out another. Divided attention, the ability
to pay attention to two or more stimuli at the same time, also improves.[69][70]
2. Memory.
Improvements are seen in both working memory
and long-term memory.[71]
3. Processing
speed. Adolescents think more quickly than children. Processing speed improves
sharply between age five and middle adolescence; it then begins to level off at
age 15 and does not appear to change between late adolescence and adulthood.[72]
4. Organization.
Adolescents are more aware of their own thought processes and can use mnemonic
devices and other strategies to think more efficiently.[73]
5. Metacognition.
Hypothetical and abstract thinking
Adolescents' thinking is less bound
to concrete events than that of children: they can contemplate possibilities
outside the realm of what currently exists. One manifestation of the
adolescent's increased facility with thinking about possibilities is the
improvement of skill in deductive
reasoning, which leads to the development of hypothetical
thinking. This provides the ability to plan ahead, see the future consequences
of an action and to provide alternative explanations of events. It also makes
adolescents more skilled debaters, as they can reason against a friend's or
parent's assumptions. Adolescents also develop a more sophisticated
understanding of probability.
The appearance of more systematic,
abstract thinking is another notable aspect of cognitive development during
adolescence. For example, adolescents find it easier than children to
comprehend the sorts of higher-order abstract logic inherent in puns, proverbs,
metaphors, and analogies. Their increased facility permits them to appreciate
the ways in which language can be used to convey multiple messages, such as
satire, metaphor, and sarcasm. (Children
younger than age nine often cannot comprehend sarcasm at all.)[74] This also
permits the application of advanced reasoning and logical processes to social
and ideological matters such as interpersonal relationships, politics,
philosophy, religion, morality, friendship, faith, democracy, fairness, and
honesty.
Metacognition
A third gain in cognitive ability
involves thinking about thinking itself, a process referred to as metacognition. It often
involves monitoring one's own cognitive activity during the thinking process. Adolescents'
improvements in knowledge of their own thinking patterns lead to better
self-control and more effective studying. It is also relevant in social
cognition, resulting in increased introspection, self-consciousness,
and intellectualization (in the sense of thought about one's own thoughts,
rather than the Freudian definition as a defense mechanism). Adolescents are
much better able than children to understand that people do not have complete
control over their mental activity. Being able to introspect may lead to two
forms of adolescent egocentrism, which results in two distinct problems in
thinking: the imaginary audience
and the personal fable. These
likely peak at age fifteen, along with self-consciousness in general.[75]
Related to metacognition and abstract thought,
perspective-taking involves a more sophisticated theory of mind.[76] Adolescents
reach a stage of social perspective-taking in which they can understand how the
thoughts or actions of one person can influence those of another person, even
if they personally are not involved.[77]
Relativistic
thinking
Compared to children, adolescents are
more likely to question others' assertions, and less likely to accept facts as
absolute truths. Through experience outside the family circle, they learn that
rules they were taught as absolute are in fact relativistic. They begin to
differentiate between rules instituted out of common sense—not touching a hot
stove—and those that are based on culturally-relative standards (codes of
etiquette, not dating until a certain age), a delineation that younger children
do not make. This can lead to a period of questioning authority in all domains.[78]
Wisdom
Wisdom, or the
capacity for insight and judgment that is developed through experience,[79] increases
between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, then levels off. Thus, it is
during the adolescence-adulthood transition that individuals acquire the type
of wisdom that is associated with age. Wisdom is not the same as intelligence:
adolescents do not improve substantially on IQ
tests since their scores are relative to others in their same age group, and
relative standing usually does not change—everyone matures at approximately the
same rate in this way.
Risk-taking
In light of the fact that most
injuries sustained by adolescents are related to risky behavior (car crashes,
alcohol, unprotected sex), much research has been done on adolescent
risk-taking, particularly on whether and why adolescents are more likely to
take risks than adults. The behavioral decision-making theory proposes that
adolescents and adults both weigh the potential rewards and consequences of an
action. However, research has shown that adolescents seem to give more weight
to rewards, particularly social rewards, than do adults.[80]
During adolescence, there is an
extremely high emphasis on approval of peers as a reward due to adolescents'
increased self-consciousness. There may be evolutionary benefits to an
increased propensity for risk-taking in adolescence—without risk-taking,
teenagers would not have the motivation or confidence necessary to make the
change in society from childhood to adulthood. It may also have reproductive
advantages: adolescents have a newfound priority in sexual attraction and
dating, and risk-taking is required to impress potential mates. Research also
indicates that baseline sensation seeking may affect
risk-taking behavior throughout the lifespan.[81][82]
Given the potential consequences,
engaging in sexual behavior is considerably risky, particularly for
adolescents. Be that as it may, some teens do engage in sexual activity in a
variety of ways. Having unprotected sex, using poor birth control methods (e.g.
withdrawal), having multiple sexual partners, and poor communication are some
aspects of sexual behavior that make it risky. Some qualities of adolescents'
lives that are often correlated with risky sexual behavior include higher rates
of experienced abuse, lower rates of parental support and monitoring.[83] Adolescence
is also commonly a time of questioning
sexuality and gender. This may involve intimate experimentation with people
identifying as the same gender as well as with people of differing genders.
Psychological
development
The formal study of adolescent psychology
began with the publication of G. Stanley Hall's
"Adolescence in 1904." Hall, who was the first president of the American
Psychological Association, viewed adolescence primarily
as a time of internal turmoil and upheaval (sturm und drang). This
understanding of adolescence was based on two then new ways of understanding human behavior: Darwin's evolutionary theory
and Freud's psychodynamic theory. He
believed that adolescence was a representation of our human ancestors'
phylogenetic shift from being primitive to being civilized. Hall's assertions
stood relatively uncontested until the 1950s, when psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Anna Freud started to
formulate their own theories about adolescence. Freud believed that the
psychological disturbances associated with adolescence were biologically based
and culturally universal, while Erikson focused on the dichotomy between identity formation
and role fulfillment.[84] Even with
their different theories, these three psychologists agreed that adolescence was
inherently a time of disturbance and psychological confusion. The less
turbulent aspects of adolescence, such as peer relations and cultural
influence, were left largely ignored until the 1980s. From the '50s until the
'80s, the focus of the field was mainly on describing patterns of behavior as
opposed to explaining them.[84]
Jean Macfarlane
founded the University of
California, Berkeley's
In 1984, the Society for Research on
Adolescence (SRA) became the first official organization dedicated to the study
of adolescent psychology. Some of the issues first addressed by this group
include: the nature versus
nurture debate as it pertains to adolescence;
understanding the interactions between adolescents and their environment; and
considering culture, social groups, and historical context when interpreting
adolescent behavior.[84]
Evolutionary biologists like Jeremy Griffith have drawn
parallels between adolescent psychology and the developmental evolution of
modern humans from hominid ancestors as a manifestation of ontogeny
recapitulating phylogeny.[88]
Social
development
Identity
development
A common belief about adolescence is
that it is the time when teenagers form personal identities. Egocentrism in
adolescents forms a self-conscious desire to feel important in their peer
groups and enjoy social acceptance.[89] Empirical
studies suggest that this process might be more accurately described as identity development,
rather than formation, but confirms a normative process of change in both
content and structure of one's thoughts about the self.[90] Since choices made
during adolescent years can influence later life, high levels of self-awareness
and self-control during mid-adolescence will lead to better decisions during
the transition to adulthood.[citation
needed] Researchers
have used three general approaches to understanding identity development:
self-concept, sense of identity, and self-esteem. The years of adolescence
create a more conscientious group of young adults. Adolescents pay close
attention and give more time and effort to their appearance as their body goes
through changes. Unlike children, teens put forth an effort to look presentable
(1991).[4] The
environment in which an adolescent grows up also plays an important role in
their identity development. Studies done by the American
Psychological Association have shown that adolescents
with a less privileged upbringing have a more difficult time developing their
identity.[91]
Self-concept
See
also: Self-concept
Early in adolescence, cognitive
developments result in greater self-awareness,
greater awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to
think about abstract, future possibilities, and the ability to consider
multiple possibilities at once. As a result, adolescents experience a
significant shift from the simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions
typical of young children; as children, they defined themselves with physical
traits whereas as adolescents, they define themselves based on their values,
thoughts and opinions.[92]
Adolescents can conceptualize
multiple "possible selves" they could become[93] and
long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices.[94] Exploring
these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the
adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual
self toward the ideal
self (who the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (who the
adolescent does not want to be). For many, these distinctions are
uncomfortable, but they also appear to motivate achievement through behavior
consistent with the ideal and distinct from the feared possible selves.[93][95]
Further distinctions in self-concept,
called "differentiation," occur as the adolescent recognizes the
contextual influences on their own behavior and the perceptions of others, and
begin to qualify their traits when asked to describe themselves.[96]
Differentiation appears fully developed by mid-adolescence.[97] Peaking in
the 7th-9th grades, the personality traits
adolescents use to describe themselves refer to specific contexts, and
therefore may contradict one another. The recognition of inconsistent content
in the self-concept is a common source of distress in these years (see Cognitive
dissonance),[98] but this
distress may benefit adolescents by encouraging structural development.
Sense of
identity
Unlike the conflicting aspects of
self-concept, identity represents a coherent sense of self stable across
circumstances and including past experiences and future goals. Everyone has a
self-concept, whereas Erik Erikson argued that
not everyone fully achieves identity. Erikson's theory of stages of development includes the
identity crisis in which
adolescents must explore different possibilities and integrate different parts
of themselves before committing to their beliefs. He described the resolution
of this process as a stage of "identity achievement" but also
stressed that the identity challenge "is never fully resolved once and for
all at one point in time".[99] Adolescents
begin by defining themselves based on their crowd
membership. "Clothes help teens explore
new identities, separate from parents, and bond with peers." Fashion has
played a major role when it comes to teenagers "finding their
selves"; Fashion is always evolving, which corresponds with the evolution
of change in the personality of teenagers.[100] Just as
fashion is evolving to influence adolescents so is the media. "Modern life
takes place amidst a never-ending barrage of flesh on screens, pages, and
billboards."[101] This barrage
consciously or subconsciously registers into the mind causing issues with self-image
a factor that contributes to an adolescence sense of identity. Researcher James
Marcia developed the current method for testing an individual's progress along
these stages.[102][103] His
questions are divided into three categories: occupation, ideology, and interpersonal
relationships. Answers are scored based on extent
to which the individual has explored and the degree to which he has made
commitments. The result is classification of the individual into a) identity
diffusion in which all children begin, b) Identity Foreclosure in which
commitments are made without the exploration of alternatives, c) Moratorium, or
the process of exploration, or d) Identity Achievement in which Moratorium has
occurred and resulted in commitments.[104]
Research since reveals
self-examination beginning early in adolescence, but identity achievement
rarely occurring before age 18.[105] The freshman
year of college influences identity development significantly, but may actually
prolong psychosocial moratorium by encouraging reexamination of previous
commitments and further exploration of alternate possibilities without
encouraging resolution.[106] For the most
part, evidence has supported Erikson's stages: each correlates with the
personality traits he originally predicted.[104] Studies also
confirm the impermanence of the stages; there is no final endpoint in identity
development.[107]
Environment
and identity
An adolescent's environment plays a
huge role in their identity development.[91] While most
adolescent studies are conducted on white, middle class children, studies show
that the more privileged upbringing people have, the more successfully they
develop their identity.[91] The forming
of an adolescent's identity is a crucial time in their life. It has been
recently found that demographic patterns suggest that the transition to
adulthood is now occurring over a longer span of years than was the case during
the middle of the 20th century. Accordingly, youth, a period that spans late
adolescence and early adulthood, has become a more prominent stage of the life
course. This therefore has caused various factors to become important during
this development.[108] So many
factors contribute to the developing social identity of an adolescent from
commitment, to coping devices,[109] to social
media. All of these factors are affected by the environment an adolescent grows
up in. A child from a more privileged upbringing is exposed to more
opportunities and better situations in general. An adolescent from an inner
city or a crime-driven neighborhood is more likely to be exposed to an
environment that can be detrimental to their development. Adolescence is a
sensitive period in the development process, and exposure to the wrong things
at that time can have a major affect on future decisions. While children that
grow up in nice suburban communities are not exposed to bad environments they
are more likely to participate in activities that can benefit their identity
and contribute to a more successful identity development.[91]
Sexual
orientation and identity
Sexual orientation
has been defined as "an erotic inclination toward people of one or more
genders, most often described as sexual or erotic attractions".[110] In recent
years, psychologists have sought to understand how sexual orientation develops
during adolescence. Some theorists believe that there are many different
possible developmental paths one could take, and that the specific path an
individual follows may be determined by their sex, orientation, and when they
reached the onset of puberty.[110]
In 1989, Troiden proposed a
four-stage model for the development of homosexual sexual identity.[111] The first
stage, known as sensitization, usually starts in childhood, and is marked by
the child's becoming aware of same-sex attractions. The second stage, identity
confusion, tends to occur a few years later. In this stage, the youth is
overwhelmed by feelings of inner turmoil regarding their sexual orientation,
and begins to engage sexual experiences with same-sex partners. In the third
stage of identity assumption, which usually takes place a few years after the
adolescent has left home, adolescents begin to come out to their family and
close friends, and assumes a self-definition as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.[112] In the final
stage, known as commitment, the young adult adopts their sexual identity as a
lifestyle. Therefore, this model estimates that the process of coming out
begins in childhood, and continues through the early to mid 20s. This model has
been contested, and alternate ideas have been explored in recent years.
In terms of sexual identity, adolescence
is when most gay/lesbian and transgender adolescents
begin to recognize and make sense of their feelings. Many adolescents may
choose to come out during this
period of their life once an identity has been formed; many others may go
through a period of questioning
or denial, which can include experimentation with both homosexual and
heterosexual experiences.[113] A study of
194 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths under the age of 21 found that having an
awareness of one's sexual orientation occurred, on average, around age 10, but
the process of coming out to peers and adults occurred around age 16 and 17,
respectively.[114] Coming to
terms with and creating a positive LGBT identity can
be difficult for some youth for a variety of reasons. Peer pressure is a large
factor when youth who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity are
surrounded by heteronormative peers and
can cause great distress due to a feeling of being different from everyone
else. While coming out can also foster better psychological adjustment, the
risks associated are real. Indeed, coming out in the midst of a heteronormative
peer environment often comes with the risk of ostracism, hurtful jokes, and
even violence.[113] Because of
this, statistically the suicide rate amongst LGBT
adolescents is up to four times higher than that of their heterosexual peers
due to bullying and rejection from peers or family members.[115]
Self-esteem
The final major aspect of identity
formation is self-esteem, one's
thoughts and feelings about one's self-concept and identity. Contrary to
popular belief, there is no empirical evidence for a significant drop in
self-esteem over the course of adolescence.[116]
"Barometric self-esteem" fluctuates rapidly and can cause severe
distress and anxiety, but baseline self-esteem remains highly stable across
adolescence.[117] The validity
of global self-esteem scales has been questioned, and many suggest that more
specific scales might reveal more about the adolescent experience.[118] Girls are
most likely to enjoy high self-esteem when engaged in supportive relationships
with friends, the most important function of friendship to them is having
someone who can provide social and moral support. When they fail to win
friends' approval or couldn't find someone with whom to share common activities
and common interests, in these cases, girls suffer from low self-esteem. In
contrast, boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their
independence and defining their relation to authority.[119]As such, they
are more likely to derive high self-esteem from their ability to successfully
influence their friends; on the other hand, the lack of romantic competence,
for example, failure to win or maintain the affection of the opposite or
same-sex (depending on sexual orientation), is the major contributor to low
self-esteem in adolescent boys. Due to the fact that both men and women happen
to have a low self-esteem after ending a romantic relationship, they are prone
to other symptoms that is caused by this state. Depression and hopelessness are
only two of the various symptoms and it is said that women are twice as likely
to experience depression and men are three to four times more likely to commit
suicide (Mearns, 1991; Ustun & Sartorius, 1995).[120]
Relationships
In general
The relationships adolescents have
with their peers, family, and members of their social sphere play a vital role
in the social development of an adolescent. As an adolescent's social sphere
develops rapidly as they distinguish the differences between friends and
acquaintances, they often become heavily emotionally invested in friends.[121] This is not
harmful; however, if these friends expose an individual to potentially harmful
situations, this is an aspect of peer pressure. Adolescence
is a vital period in social development because adolescents can be easily
influenced by the people they develop close relationships with. This is the
first time individuals can truly make their own decisions, which also makes
this a sensitive period. Relationships are vital in the social development of
an adolescent due to the extreme influence peers can have over an individual. These
relationships become vital because they begin to help the adolescent understand
the concept of personalities, how they form and why a person has that specific
type of personality. "The use of psychological comparisons could serve
both as an index of the growth of an implicit personality theory and as a
component process accounting for its creation. In other words, by comparing one
person's personality characteristics to another's, we would be setting up the
framework for creating a general theory of personality (and, ... such a
theory would serve as a useful framework for coming to understand specific
persons)."[122] Research
shows that relationships have the largest affect over the social development of
an individual.
Family
Adolescence marks a rapid change in
one's role within a family. Young children tend to assert themselves
forcefully, but are unable to demonstrate much influence over family decisions
until early adolescence,[123] when they
are increasingly viewed by parents as equals. When children go through puberty,
there is often a significant increase in parent-child conflict and a less
cohesive familial bond. Arguments often concern minor issues of control, such
as curfew, acceptable clothing, and the adolescent's right to privacy,[124][125] which
adolescents may have previously viewed as issues over which their parents had
complete authority.[126]
Parent-adolescent disagreement also increases as friends demonstrate a greater
impact on one another, new influences on the adolescent that may be in
opposition to parents' values. Social media has also played an increasing role
in adolescent and parent disagreements.[127] While
parents never had to worry about the threats of social media in the past, it
has become a dangerous place for children. While adolescents strive for their
freedoms, the unknowns to parents of what their child is doing on social media
sites is a challenging subject, due to the increasing amount of predators on
social media sites. Many parents have very little knowledge of social
networking sites in the first place and this further increases their mistrust. Although
conflicts between children and parents increase during adolescence, these are
just relatively minor issues. Regarding their important life issues, most
adolescents still share the same attitudes and values as their parents.[128]
During childhood,
siblings are a source of conflict and frustration as well as a support system.[129] Adolescence
may affect this relationship differently, depending on sibling gender. In
same-sex sibling pairs, intimacy increases during early adolescence, then
remains stable. Mixed-sex siblings pairs act differently; siblings drift apart
during early adolescent years, but experience an increase in intimacy starting
at middle adolescence.[130] Sibling
interactions are children's first relational experiences, the ones that shape
their social and self-understanding for life.[131] Sustaining
positive sibling relations can assist adolescents in a number of ways. Siblings
are able to act as peers, and may increase one another's sociability and
feelings of self-worth. Older siblings can give guidance to younger siblings,
although the impact of this can be either positive or negative depending on the
activity of the older sibling.
A potential important influence on
adolescence is change of the family dynamic, specifically divorce. With the
divorce rate up to about 50%,[132] divorce is
common and adds to the already great amount of change in adolescence. Custody disputes
soon after a divorce often reflect a playing out of control battles and
ambivalence between parents. In extreme cases of instability and abuse in homes,
divorce can have a positive effect on families due to less conflict in the
home. However, most research suggests a negative effect on adolescence as well
as later development. A recent study found that, compared with peers who grow
up in stable post-divorce families, children of divorce who experience
additional family transitions during late adolescence, make less progress in
their math and social studies performance over time.[133] Another
recent study put forth a new theory entitled the adolescent epistemological
trauma theory,[134] which
posited that traumatic life events such as parental divorce during the
formative period of late adolescence portend lifelong effects on adult conflict
behavior that can be mitigated by effective behavioral assessment and training.[135] A parental
divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect
when a person is in his or her twenties and early thirties. These negative
effects include romantic relationships and conflict style, meaning as adults,
they are more likely to use the styles of avoidance and competing in conflict
management.[136]
Despite changing family roles during
adolescence, the home environment and parents are still important for the
behaviors and choices of adolescents.[137] Adolescents
who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to engage in
various risk behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, fighting, and/or unprotected
sexual intercourse.[137] In addition,
parents influence the education of adolescence. A study conducted by
Adalbjarnardottir and Blondal (2009) showed that adolescents at the age of 14
who identify their parents as authoritative figures are more likely to complete
secondary education by the age of 22—as support and encouragement from an
authoritative parent motivates the adolescence to complete schooling to avoid
disappointing that parent.[138]
Peers
Peer groups are essential to social
and general development. High quality friendships may enhance children's
development regardless of the characteristics of those friends. As children
begin to gain bonds with various people and create friendships with them, it
later helps them when they are adolescent. This sets up the framework for
adolescence and peer groups.[139] Peer groups
are especially important during adolescence, a period of development
characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers[140] and a
decrease in adult supervision.[141] Adolescents
also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood[142] and tend to
identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics.[143] It is also
common for adolescents to use friends as coping devices in different situations.[144] A three
factor structure of dealing with friends including avoidance, mastery, and
nonchalance has shown that adolescent's use friends as coping devices with
social stresses.
Peer groups offer members the
opportunity to develop social skills such as empathy, sharing, and leadership. Peer
groups can have positive influences on an individual, such as on academic
motivation and performance. But they can also have negative influences, like
encouraging experimentation with drugs, drinking, vandalism, and stealing
through peer pressure.[145]
Susceptibility to peer pressure increases during early adolescence, peaks
around age 14, and declines thereafter.[146]
During early adolescence, adolescents
often associate in cliques,
exclusive, single-sex groups of peers with whom they are particularly close. Despite
the common notion that cliques are an inherently negative influence, they may
help adolescents become socially acclimated and form a stronger sense of
identity. Within a clique of highly athletic male-peers, for example, the
clique may create a stronger sense of fidelity and competition. Cliques also
have become somewhat as a "collective parent," i.e. telling the
adolescents what to do and not to do.[147] Towards late
adolescence, cliques often merge into mixed-sex groups as teenagers begin
romantically engaging with one another.[148] These small
friend groups break down even further as socialization becomes more
couple-oriented.
While peers may facilitate social
development for one another, they may also hinder it. In Spanish teenagers,
emotional (rather than solution-based) reaction to problems and emotional
instability have been linked with physical aggression against peers.[149] Both physical and relational
aggression are linked to a vast number of enduring psychological difficulties,
especially depression, as is social rejection.[150] Because of this,
bullied adolescents often develop problems that lead to further victimization.[151] Bullied
adolescents are both more likely to continued to be bullied and more likely to
bully others in the future.[152] However,
this relationship is less stable in cases of cyberbullying,
a relatively new issue among adolescents.
On a larger scale, adolescents often
associate with crowds, groups of individuals who share a common interest
or activity. Often, crowd identities may be the basis for stereotyping young
people, such as jocks or nerds. In large, multi-ethnic high
schools, there are often ethnically-determined crowds as well.[153] While crowds
are very influential during early and middle adolescence, they lose salience
during high school as students identify more individually.[154]
Romance and
sexual activity
Main
article: Adolescent
sexuality
See
also: Adolescent sexuality in the United States
Romantic
relationships tend to increase in prevalence
throughout adolescence. By age 15, 53% of adolescents have had a romantic
relationship that lasted at least one month over the course of the previous 18
months.[155] In a 2008
study conducted by YouGov for Channel 4, 20% of
14−17-year-olds surveyed revealed that they had their first sexual
experience at 13 or under in the United Kingdom.[156] A 2002
American study found that those aged 15–44 reported that the average age of
first sexual intercourse was 17.0 for males and 17.3 for females.[157] The typical
duration of relationships increases throughout the teenage years as well. This
constant increase in the likelihood of a long-term relationship can be
explained by sexual maturation and the
development of cognitive skills necessary to maintain a romantic bond (e.g.
caregiving, appropriate attachment), although these skills are not strongly
developed until late adolescence.[158] Long-term
relationships allow adolescents to gain the skills necessary for high-quality
relationships later in life[159] and develop
feelings of self-worth. Overall, positive romantic relationships among
adolescents can result in long-term benefits. High-quality romantic
relationships are associated with higher commitment in early adulthood[160] and are positively
associated with self-esteem, self-confidence, and social competence.[161][162] Adolescents
often date within their demographic in regards to race, ethnicity, popularity,
and physical attractiveness.[163] However,
there are traits in which certain individuals, particularly adolescent girls,
seek diversity. While most adolescents date people approximately their own age,
boys typically date partners the same age or younger; girls typically date
partners the same age or older.[155]
Some researchers are now focusing on
learning about how adolescents view their own relationships and sexuality; they
want to move away from a research point of view that focuses on the problems
associated with adolescent sexuality. Lucia O'Sullivan and her colleagues found
that there weren't any significant gender differences in the relationship
events adolescent boys and girls from grades 7-12 reported.[164] Most teens
said they had kissed their partners, held hands with them, thought of
themselves as being a couple and told people they were in a relationship. This
means that private thoughts about the relationship as well as public
recognition of the relationship were both important to the adolescents in the
sample. Sexual events (such as sexual touching, sexual intercourse) were less
common than romantic events (holding hands) and social events (being with one's
partner in a group setting). The researchers state that these results mean that
researchers should focus more on the positive aspects of adolescents and their
social and romantic interactions rather than put most of their focus on sexual
behavior and its consequences.[164]
Adolescence marks a time of sexual
maturation, which manifests in social interactions as well. While adolescents
may engage in casual sexual encounters
(often referred to as hookups), most sexual experience during this period of
development takes place within romantic relationships.[165] Kissing,
hand holding, and hugging signify satisfaction and commitment. Among young
adolescents, "heavy" sexual activity, marked by genital stimulation,
is often associated with violence, depression, and poor relationship quality.[166][167] This effect
does not hold true for sexual activity in late adolescence that takes place within
a romantic relationship.[168] Some
research suggest that there are genetic causes of early sexual activity that
are also risk factors for delinquency, suggesting that there is a group who are
at risk for both early sexual activity and emotional distress. For old
adolescents, though, sexual activity the context of romantic relationships was
actually correlated with lower levels of deviant behavior after controlling for
genetic risks, as opposed to sex outside of a relationship (hook-ups)[169]
Dating violence is fairly
prevalent within adolescent relationships. When surveyed, 10-45% of adolescents
reported having experienced physical violence in the context of a relationship
while a quarter to a third of adolescents reported having experiencing
psychological aggression. This reported aggression includes hitting, throwing
things, or slaps, although most of this physical aggression does not result in
a medical visit. Physical aggression in relationships tends to decline from
high school through college and young adulthood.[148] In heterosexual couples,
there is no significant difference between the rates of male and female
aggressors, unlike in adult relationships.[170][171][172]
In contemporary society, adolescents
also face some risks as their sexuality begins to transform. While some of these,
such as emotional distress (fear of abuse or exploitation) and sexually
transmitted infections/diseases (STIs/STDs), including HIV/AIDS, are not
necessarily inherent to adolescence, others such as teenage pregnancy (through
non-use or failure of contraceptives) are seen as social problems in most
western societies. One in four sexually active teenagers will contract a STI.[173] Adolescents
in the United States often chose "anything but intercourse" for
sexual activity because they mistakenly believe it reduces the risk of STIs. Across
the country, clinicians report rising diagnoses of herpes and human
papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause genital
warts, and is now thought to affect 15 percent of the teen population. Girls 15
to 19 have higher rates of gonorrhea than any other age group. One-quarter of
all new HIV cases occur in those under the age of 21.[173] Multrine
also states in her article that according to a March survey by the Kaiser Family
Foundation, eighty-one percent of parents want
schools to discuss the use of condoms and contraception with their children. They
also believe students should be able to be tested for STIs. Furthermore,
teachers want to address such topics with their students. But, although
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