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diggThe myth of the ‘teenage brain’
Is it true that your offspring will not be capable of a mature decision until he or she is 25?
There are lots of enemies of chastity education today. They include media-driven hedonism that makes sex the centre of the universe; a phony ethic of tolerance that is completely non-judgmental about any kind of sexual behaviour but highly intolerant of politically incorrect beliefs and traditional sexual morality; and the philosophical subjectivism that denies the existence of objective moral truth.
Then there is the cultural relativism that began with Margaret Mead's now discredited Coming of Age in Samoa (see the devastating critique by Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman, reported in detail in W. Michael Jones's book, Degenerate Moderns) that seemed to reveal a sexual paradise where no kind of sex was taboo; the multiculturalism, dominant in our universities, that still promotes cultural relativism and inhibits moral judgment of others' values or behaviours; and the pragmatism that is always ready to compromise moral principles and lower the standards of what we expect from people.
When I was in high school, I didn't have sex with my girlfriend not because of my state of brain maturity but because of my values.
(We all know the pragmatic argument in sex education: "Teach abstinence as the best way, but be realistic and teach condom use as well." Our response to that should be: "When we teach abstinence from illegal drugs, do we also teach students how to practice 'safe drug use'? If we believe a behaviour is harmful to self and others, as sex outside marriage clearly is, do we teach students how to do it anyway, or do we teach what we believe is truly in their best interest and that of society?)
As if this panoply of opposition weren't enough, there is, I fear, a new enemy of chastity education loose in the world that threatens to do much to undermine not only educating for chaste behaviour, but even common sense. This new threat is the myth of "the teenage brain". I am currently reading a book titled, The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids. It quotes "brain experts" making statements such as, "Adolescents have bigger passions . . . but no brakes, and they may not get good brakes -- meaning the maturation of the prefrontal cortex needed to inhibit impulsive behaviour -- until they are twenty-five." A few months ago I spoke at an abstinence conference that included a workshop on the implications of ‚the new brain research. After my presentation, a physician who was on the board of the host group stood up and said, "All these logical arguments for abstinence are well and good, but how effective are they with a teenage brain that isn't going to be fully developed for another ten years?"
I responded that if we brought 100 randomly selected 15-year-olds into the room, we could line them up on a continuum -- from those who have never had sex or done anything reckless to those who are having sex several times a week and engaging in a lot of other high-risk behaviours. Their brains would all be 15 years old and roughly the same in their prefrontal cortical maturity. Why, then, the great variability in behaviours that call for the regulation of impulse? I added that when I was in high school, I didn't have sex with my girlfriend not because of my state of brain maturity but because of my values. Among other things, I believed it was a mortal sin, and I wasn't willing to gamble with my immortal soul.
In fact, statistics show that, compared to teens, American adults ages 35 to 54 are much more likely to engage in a wide range of risky behaviours. Middle-aged adults are much more likely to have fatal car accidents, commit suicide, engage in binge drinking, and require hospital treatment for overdosing on drugs. Scientific critiques of the brain-research claims are beginning to appear. This September, The New York Times carried an op-ed column by Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Centre on Juvenile Justice (and founder of Youthfacts.org). Males wrote:
A spate of news reports have breathlessly announced that science can explain why adults have such trouble dealing with teenagers: adolescents possess ‚"immature", "undeveloped" brains that drive them to risky, obnoxious, parent-vexing behaviours. But the handful of experts and officials making these claims are themselves guilty of reckless overstatement. More responsible brain researchers -- like Daniel Siegel of the University of California at Los Angeles and Kurt Fischer at Harvard's Mind, Brain and Education Program -- caution that scientists are just beginning to identify how systems in the brain work. "People naturally want to use brain science to inform policy and practice, but our limited knowledge of the brain places extreme limits on that effort," Dr. Siegel said. "There can be no 'brain-based education' or 'brain-based parenting' at this early point in the history of neuroscience."
Robert Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and a contributing editor for Scientific American, offered this rebuttal to the brain-research claims:
Teenagers are as competent as adults across a wide range of adult abilities. Research has shown that they are actually superior to adults on tests of memory, intelligence, and perception. The assertion that teenagers have an "immature brain" that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world. Anthropologists have identified more than 100 contemporary societies in which teenage turmoil is completely absent; most of these societies don't even have terms for adolescence.
Even more compelling, long-term anthropological studies at Harvard in the 1980s show that teenage turmoil begins to appear in societies within a few years after those societies adopt Western schooling practices and are exposed to Western media. Finally, a wealth of data show that when young people are given meaningful responsibility and contact with adults, they quickly rise to the challenge, and their "inner adult" appears.
The worst mistake we can make in education-certainly the worst mistake in character and chastity education-is to underestimate the capacities of our students. I have a friend who is now a leader in the abstinence education movement. She says that when she was a teenager, she was promiscuous. Her home life was so abusive it drove her to committing petty crimes so she could enjoy the relative safety of jail. There a counsellor visited her, and she told him of her reckless sexual life style. His response was to reach out in love and challenge her toward greater self-respect and discipline. Today she is a happily married wife, mother, and respected educational leader. She says, "What would have happened if that counsellor had handed me a condom instead of believing in me?"
Human beings, given the right support, tend to rise to meet high expectations. Chastity is difficult, but so is most of what is truly worthwhile in life. It is time for all of us, schools and parents, to raise the bar.
Thomas Lickona is a developmental psychologist and Professor of Education at the State University of New York at Cortland, where he directs the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs (Respect and Responsibility). The above article is part of a paper prepared for the Second International Congress on Education in Life, Sex and Love, held in Manila, the Philippines, last month. The full article, Educating For Character In the Sexual Domain, can be downloaded from http://www.cortland.edu/character ("Sex and Character" tab).
Aaaanndd SVN seems to be ... ???
Yes, I agree with the non-guarantee what the future will be even with our good intentions and actions to want to live our Christian values. The moral truths are for us to do our utmost best to uphold and being human beings we fail but does that mean it ends there. There are lessons to be learnt from our mistakes (i.e. if we sincerely want to) and to move on seeking help from others (when needed) as well as prayer. God’s mercy and forgiveness is abundant when we repent and continue to seek His Will for us.
You should also talk to my cousin, the strict, fundamentalist Christian, who has two daughters, bought of whom became pregnant as unmarried teens.
Having what you might consider a “moral” background with “Christian” values will guarantee absolutely nothing about what will children will do in later life.
Julie Soy,
I’ve just left my teens and am still a virgin. If the above article is nonsense, can you explain how at 20 I’ve managed to maintain my virginity? Afterall, teenagers can’t help but act on their impulses (roll eyes)
Clearly I was brought up by decent and responsbible parents who raised me with self respect. The same obviously cannot be said for parents of teenagers who’ve lost their virginity when barely into puberty....
And Patrick, you are correct. Living your life by virtue makes life more fulfilling. The same cannot be said for many of those who I went to school with who are now single teenage mothers and suffering depression from abortions they had after having sex and falling pregnant.
A teenager has the same ability as any other to say no to their inclinations, you will notice that most high school teachers needn’t worry about their pupils wetting themselves, however a primary school or infants school teacher may. Even young children however show this ability, though not to the same degree, (ever heard of Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test?) A teenager can feel the inclination to satisfy their sexual urges and say no to them in the same way as anyone else. To say otherwise is to say they are less free. I, as a teenager, feel I am in control of my actions, I still at times make decisions I feel to be wrong, but adults do the same.
I do admit that life becomes and is more fulfilling when one practices virtues with its on-going challenges.
I had grown up not being aware of the true meaning of my sexuality and am convinced of the need to advocate the right values.
I hope that my website (http://web.mac.com/gospa) will encourage others in their search and journey towards the truths.
To Julio Soy,
Science and data? The article stated enough, “science and data” in my opinion. But I don’t understand how you can maintain that a teenager is unable to control themselves. Everyone, teenager or adult has urges. I have urges all the time; I see a chocolate, I am inlinced to eat it, I am tired, I desire to sit and rest, I am hungry, I feel the inclination to eat, my bladder is full, I feel the inclination to empty it. However this desire does not mean I automatically respond to this urge. I might not eat the chocolate because I will be eating dinner soon, I might continue walking because I wish to get home in time even if I am tired, I might be hungry but I do not eat because I should wait till I am having a meal, I do not relieve my bladder as soon as it fills as I have the dignity to wait until I get to the bathroom. These are silly examples I know but they do the job.
A teenager has the same ability as any other to say no to their inclinations, you will notice that most high school teachers needn’t worry about ther pupils wetting themselves, however a primary school or infants school teacher may. Even young children however show this abilty, though not to the same degree, (ever heard of Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test?) A teenager can feel the inclination to satisfy their sexual urges and say no to them in the same way as anyone else. To say otherwise is to say they are less free. I, as a teenager, feel I am in control of my actions, I still at times make decisions I feel to be wrong, but adults do the same.
This is long so I’d better finish off, I’m a little indignant because I am a trifle annoyed at the mistrust adults have for teens.
-R.E
This is a classic nature vs nurture issue. The truth is somewhere in between. Obviously the state of one’s brain development, and self control, changes over one’s lifetime. But some people improve in these areas as they grow older, and other people get worse. Cultural influences are at least as influential as physiology.
One of the main influences in many western cultures, is the stratification and infantilization of young adults--for the convenience of manufacturers, pollsters, the government, etc., the population is divided into age ranges. Manufacturers target age ranges with ads for stupid toys, junk food, etc., which require a certain level of enforced immaturity in order to make them interested in that junk. Prior to this modern phenomenon, decades ago, there was a push to give kids “their child time”, by removing them from participation in many parts of the world of adults (maybe prompted by abuses of child labor in the factories), and keeping as many of them that way for as long as possible, only to thrust adulthood on them suddenly at whatever age is considered the age of adulthood at the time.
As stated by others here, a culture that knows how to foster responsibility from birth, and keeps it up throughout all ages, will have little of the pseudo-"inevitable teenage troubles” that some take for granted. But I wouldn’t want kids to be made into carbon copies of their parents and other adults--giving kids some leeway may be necessary to breathe life into any culture, even as we try to inform them of the tried and true principles that have been learned. It’s a balancing act.
You’re right. Disregard all of the science and the data. This is all about your version of morality. Geeze. You sound like a tired windbag. I hope you never teach my kid.
Who wants to bet that some drug company just so happens to have a drug intended to “treat” the brains of teens who act out? This article is a press release by a pharmaceutical company or the quack psychiatrists.
http://WWW.SSRISTORIES.COM
I get so tired of the media and other “educational experts” trying to pin immoral behavior on some kind of physiological reason. Then we no longer have to take any responsibility for our actions because it can’t be helped, right?
The problem with rampant teen sex has everything to do with rampant adult sex. Teen-agers just copy what they see...many of these young people are living with adults who are acting more like children than they are. I am not criticizing single parent households. Some of these parents do an amazing job of raising their children. I am speaking of those single parents who are looking for the next date which often includes sex in the teen’s home.
We must teach that love is sacrificial, requiring restraint and it’s not a bunch of biochemical urgings.
First, development can’t be separate from teleology. Otherwise, how would one know when development is complete. The current neuroscience places development in a bottle separate from expected goals.
Would the completion of brain development be the ability to engage in rational decision making, which according to Piaget, may happen as young as age 7 or 8 and culminate with the ability to engage in abstract reasoning which may begin at the age of 12. Experience and good moral desires seem to be the necessary ingredients for the rest of life, rather than only prefrontal connections.
Second, the current myth of teen behavior seems to be based on a new version of the natural fallacy. While some researchers won’t directly say that teens ought to be immature because their brains are immature, the researchers do seem to say that we ought to expect teens to be immature because their brains are immature.
THANK YOU! Some one puts a little bit of trust in the ability of a teenager to make rational, logical decisions. Being 16 I get sick of the insistence of the media that teenagers just don’t have the maturity to control themselves. Teenagers may be still developing but we are FREE. Free to decide how we may desire to live- but many teenagers are given very few reasons why to abstain, and what they do receive often comes long after they need it. Teach abstinence, other wise we just get confused messages and people will not see why to abstain, “if they don’t expect me to, why bother”
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