Why teenagers are rebellious and why its good.
ngm.nationalgeographic.com
ngm.nationalgeographic.com
I think the whole ordeal is, more or less, the result of various views on how humans (children especially) should be educated:
* The whole hyper-freedom-worshiping culture (even one's freedom will result in destruction of the society and one's future) removes any restriction on behaviors of teenagers, and prevent any effective discipline/self-control training for a young child
* The uniquely-me-esteem-inflation movement destroys any incentive to obey (or even pay attention to) advices/authority of adults, who are clearly wiser and more mature. After all, if everyone is completely unique, why listen?
* The no-child-left-behind-but-no-pressure (in conjunction with the inflation above) ideology results in an education system that is so easy and low-pressure that teenagers have way too much time and energy left in their hands. Oh, and if you fail, that's fine, you are unique either way, it's just you ain't fit to the current system (and we will lower the expectation so you will pass).
All in all, American teenagers receive insufficient training (in discipline/self-control), have absolutely no incentive to listen to anyone, are under no pressure and challenging expectation, but possess obscene amount of free time.
And you blame THEM for screwing up.
On the issue of "authority of adults", her culture takes it to ridiculous heights, though. In any argument, the person that is older wins. That means your sister who is 2 years older than you wins, no matter what, because of that 2 yr margin.
When I look at the difference in the bonds between children and parents, in her culture the bond is primarily held together by guilt.
Rather than talk of the extremes, the US on one side and some Asian cultures on the other, I think I'd prefer the middle-of-the-road of some European cultures. The Dutch, for example, seem to have a happy medium.
> These studies show that reproductive maturation and pubertal timing are both contextually and socially mediated and accelerated by intrafamilial stress. Therefore, the literature demonstrates that pubertal maturation both provokes and follows from increased parent-child conflict. In sum, this new research has demonstrated that pubertal timing can no longer be viewed as only a physiological and hormonal process but must be examined in association with social and psychobiological processes.
http://education.ucsb.edu/jimerson/adolescenceissues/ADmomre...
Human beings live in societies with codes, fears and prohibitions.
What kind of environment are you thinking about?
I hear some of them eventually learn to speak, and not defecate indoors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_children#Documented.2Fall...
As for the rest I think whatever you Americans like to bomb is out of topic.
It's an interesting thought. And perhaps slightly depressing.
> Yet these explanations don't hold up. As Laurence Steinberg, a developmental psychologist specializing in adolescence at Temple University, points out, even 14- to 17-year-olds—the biggest risk takers—use the same basic cognitive strategies that adults do, and they usually reason their way through problems just as well as adults. Contrary to popular belief, they also fully recognize they're mortal. And, like adults, says Steinberg, "teens actually overestimate risk." > > So if teens think as well as adults do and recognize risk just as well, why do they take more chances? Here, as elsewhere, the problem lies less in what teens lack compared with adults than in what they have more of. Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.
Opportunity cost is never higher than when you are young.