Comment 38502

By Meredith (registered) - website | Posted February 28, 2010 at 03:56:23

I'm sure I could add a ton of intelligent stuff to this discussion, but now you've got MGMT crowding out all those other thoughts.

So I'll just add in a few thoughts.

I dig Robert Epstein, the Myth of the Teenage Brain, and the End of Adolescence.

Mike Males is a bit vitriolic sometimes, but Framing Youth and the Scapegoat Generation are also good reads for American stats and myths.

And post one link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opin...

I like this question: Are teens today inherently less capable than they were in previous generations, or have we just lowered expectations to the point where they're incapable of demonstrating this kind of competence?

However - I do not think the job of churches and community organizations is mostly to provide recreational activities. I speak that as a youth pastor. Mentoring and teaching, certainly, but recreation alone accomplishes relatively little and can even be dis-empowering.

These organizations used to have youth activities and programs run BY the youth themselves. It was only in the past several decades that it became adult-run, and only in the past three to five decades a lot of it has been professionalized. In these arenas, further empowerment or disempowerment can happen - which will it be? I am pretty sure empowerment and entrusting with responsibility is more productive.

Then again, we live in a society where people (literally) gasp and remark rudely upon learning that I am 24 and I have been married for 4 years, or that I left home at 18 in spite of having perfectly lovely parents, or that I always paid my own way with school and other expenses. All perfectly normal and adult activities... but our norm has become rather warped, at least in my experience.

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose... being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." - G.B. Shaw

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