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Teens Desperately Seeking Self
April 11, 2004
Amy Jenniges of Seattle's alternative weekly, The Stranger, surveyed blogs of students at Newport High School in suburban Bellevue for clues about a 16-year-old classmate who put a gun to his head at school late last month. He was disarmed by an alert teacher and expelled. But Jenniges says peers claim the troubled youth was feeling persecuted because he had pink highlights in his hair; always wore black trenchcoats; and sported cat ears and a fake tail. Some students claim the student was believed to be gay because he "went to homecoming with a guy;" and was harrassed for perceived gay-ness. As Jenniges properly notes, who knows about any of this stuff for sure, the teenage rumor mill being what it is. Yet it's a mistake to sweep what she found under the rug. For the sake of discussion, we need to consider, at least momentarily, that there's some basis in fact for what Jenniges reports. That said, here's where I diverge. Jenniges' piece implicitly assumes it's right and good that a 16-year-old high-school student does things such as highlighting their hair with pink, wearing cat ears, fake tails and black trench coats to school. Freedom of expression being the tantamount right for youth today. Myself, I think the whole "personal style" thing has reached the point of absurdity in many public high schools today, and society at large - not just because I can't picture a fake tail over, or under, a trench coat. And no, I don't propose fashion police. But walk down Broadway, or University Ave. in Seattle. I've never seen so many pierced, Mohawked(!), fluorescent-haired young self-doubters, all so clearly intimidated by their God-given skin. I was talking about the Bellevue incident with a mom from nearby Issaquah, at an Easter egg hunt in Tacoma today. She said - and I agree wholeheartedly - that kind of acting out is a cry for attention; attention not given by parents. What kids need to be taught by their parents, among many other things, is that real individuality comes from within. Parents have to ensure they develop character and individuality through academics, hobbies, the arts and perhaps a few other carefully chosen extra-curricular pursuits. And whether the kid was really gay or not, there's another point to be made. The emphasis in junior high schools and high schools on exploring and declaring one's sexual orientation is absurd. Parents, teachers and administrators need to counter, not acquiesce to, today's hyper-sexualized youth culture. To assume that can't or shouldn't be done is utter liberal claptrap. If our public schools remain sprawling warehouses of mean-spirited, materialistic teenage Nazis fixated with fashion, status and sex, then we need even more more small schools AND charter schools than imagined. And mind you, Bellevue public schools really ARE among the best in metro Puget Sound; with Newport High considered quite strong academically. Yet even there, youth culture's poison seeps through. Here's my across-the-board prescription. Put 'em all in uniforms; drop athletics; and let the parents teach sex ed, tolerance and diversity. End of rant. Posted by Matt Rosenberg at April 11, 2004 06:55 PM Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Teens Desperately Seeking Self:
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Great post, Matt! It reminds me of something my high school philosophy teacher told us one day in a discussion about individuality. It was along the lines of "If you do something just to be different from others, you are still letting them dictate your behavior." I promptly forgot her advice on reaching college, where I got an earring, grew long hair and took to wearing bandanas and goofy hippie outfits. It was great fun, but it was less about "being different" than it was with trying to be cool with a certain crowd. Which in a way brings up the fact that such things are simply manifestations of a thriving market for lifestyles. In the end, it's kind of cool that you can see people with nose rings, or tattoos, or golf shirts, or three-piece banker's suits, all in the same society. It bespeaks of a wonderful degree of freedom that we should hesitate to deride. And it's great that the same Broadway crowd that professes hatred of free market forces in general owes its existence to those same forces! Posted by: Scott at April 11, 2004 11:30 PMMatt, I totally agree with you ! I pass by an alternative high school several times a week and one day a young man was trying to cut himself with a piece of glass. I went looking inside the school for a teacher, who expressed not the slightest concern about this. Just last Thursday I saw another teenager, bare from the waist up, with several inches of underwear showing above his half-mast pants. Almost all the kids I've seen around this school are dressed totally in black, and smoking cigarettes. Surreal !! Posted by: Lorna at April 12, 2004 05:56 AMYet another reason why the public school system should be ditched, period (private schools = dress code). That also means that each (private) school can determine its own curriculum, prayer, pledge of allegiance and so forth. Hey, that solves a lot of legal problems! The parents, as clients, will have the ultimate say in all of those matter, of course. What a thought! Posted by: James Na at April 12, 2004 06:17 AMMatt, It's one thing to say that this kid has problems - that seems obvious - but it's another to condemn him for being different from the crowd. How will putting him in a uniform resolve those problems? Also, is it really accurate to say that schools "emphasize" exploring sexuality and sexual orientation? I'm skeptical of such a broad generalization regarding schools. Perhaps "tolerate" or "permit" would be more apt. Posted by: Vanessa at April 13, 2004 09:50 AMPost a comment
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