I recently took my students on a trip and was amazed by the reaction and obvious misgivings that people had for teenagers. These misgivings were not only apparent through body language but general rudeness! Why are our teenagers so maligned?
When we got on public transport, there were a good number of adults who moved away from us—we were not noisy--I can only assume it was because they thought the teenagers were trouble. Later in the day, we walked into a shop where the students were to buy their lunch. Students were only allowed to go in on their own and were followed around the shop by a security guard while they bought their lunch. Assuming that they were going to steal from the shop angered me.
Being a teenager isn’t all that easy. Some of course do steal from shops and this is wrong, but let’s ask why this happens. I suspect that the fact that they are being told about the latest must-haves being the source of happiness cannot help. I got one of my students to record an average school day for me:
Up at 6.45am; leave at 7am for school; basketball training at 7.15am; lessons at 8.40am; out again at 3.30pm, football practise until 5pm, home 5.45pm, couple of hours of homework, say, takes you to nearly 8pm. This leaves about an hour to eat the 5-a-day, relax, wash, catch up with friends/family and do chores if they are to get the recommended 9 hours’ sleep a night!
Then we give them grief when they want to chill out at weekends or holidays. Further, we have created such a horrible world, who can blame them for wanting to stay home and watch TV all day? As a result they get castigated for being layabouts and label-mad consumerists. As if the messages we are giving our teenagers through the media aren’t confusing enough, the struggle for maturity is no picnic.
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