Confession: I have this weird thing for Newt Gingrich.
A couple of months ago, I saw him on George Stephanopoulos, and he was surprisingly interesting and cuddly. Since then, against all of my better judgment, I've started to like him. First of all, his name is Newt, which is objectively awesome, but did you know he also has a PhD in history, and that he writes geeky historical fiction (none of which I have read, because it looks horrible)? I know, he isn't perfect: he was instrumental in get Bill Clinton impeached, and he was generally crappy at being Speaker of the House, and he's a Republican, but none of this seems to have stopped me from liking him.
And if we had lunch today, my buddy Newt and I would definitely have talked about his attempt to destroy adolescence. Here is how I imagine our conversation would go:
Me: "WTF, Newt? I like your ideas about responsibility and achievement, but this is not the 18th Century, and none of us are John Quincy Adams."
Newty G: "Julia, you have clearly been coddled all your life. Your parents should have shipped you to Rwanda to work as a peace keeper when you were 13. You have no idea what responsibility means."
Me: "You know, Mr. Newt, there is this great show on MTV these days called Exiled. You should watch it. The whole premise is that they send spoiled children (previously featured on another superb MTV show, My Super Sweet Sixteen) to go live in "horrible" places, like Panama or Africa, where they live with tribes and stuff. The kids cry and whine, but in the end they are transformed! Do you think all 13 year olds should be shipped to Burma?
Newty G: "Actually, I think MTV should be terminated. It is just another example of the pernicious influence of the culture of adolescence. I mean, have you seen The Real World recently? In fact, I think high schoolers should be paid minimum wage not to watch TV."
Me: "But wouldn't that just lead to a culture of bribery? Do you really believe that payment can induce someone to become responsible? And is it civically healthy to equate responsibility with monetary gain? Wouldn't that be like paying people to vote, or rewarding them for not committing a crime? Also: do we really have to 'end adolescence' in order to be good at science? Oh, and one more question: you refer to adolescence as a failed 'social experiment' and indicate that we should 'move on.' It seems to me that you think someone is running this 'experiment,' and that they can simply shut it off. If so, who exactly is in charge?"
Newty G: "You voted for Obama, didn't you?"
2 comments:
Actually, I agree with him, although not in his advocacy of the paying for schoolwork experiment. What good has adolescence done for America? It has resulted in the fetishization of youth and the deranged belief that what the young think and do is important and "cool"--a concept that is itself adolescent--even though they are objectively total morons. The consumer economy has grown as a result of this attitude, which some might argue has been good, but I'm not convinced, and advertising has become more sophisticated. What else has adolescence done for us?
I think his point is that schoolwork is work, and it's only bribery to pay for it insofar as all wages and salaries are bribes for adults to work, which is probably not true, or not wholly true. Ideally though, the responsible young adult grasps this idea of "delayed gratification" and does his homework voluntarily, whereas paying him for it would seem to undermine the understanding of delayed gratification, and by extension, the development of responsibility. This could be a problem in adults as well (re: our discussion of thrift), but at some point, we have to assume that people are "grown up" enough to be held accountable for their bad money management. But at least when they're young, it's still possible for them to learn how to be more temperate.
I don't wholly disagree with you or Newt (and I certainly didn't enjoy adolescence) but I don't think that adolescence should, or can, be eliminated. We're lucky enough to live in a country where most 13 year olds aren't forced to work to support their families; if that has made some of them irresponsible, then so be it.
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