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Leaving
Traditional High School:
A Shelter From Contemporary Adolescent Culture?
“No
school is values-free. Public as well as private
education
has a view of the human being which is reflected in
everything that is done.” ~ Betty Staley,
Between Form and Freedom: A Practical Guide to the
Teenage Years
By Wendy Simpson,
Pathways
Bonners Ferry, Idaho
800-215-6840
One of the
things we often hear parents grieve over, as they make
the decision to send their son or daughter to a program,
is the loss of the traditional high school experience.
For better or for worse, high school dances, football
games, and prom night have become our commonly accepted
cultural rites of passage. Most of us are conditioned to
accept that our experiences in high school are an
integral part of growing up in American culture.
Yet few would disagree that our teenagers are crying out
for far more meaning in their lives than we have
invested in their current model of education. In some
ways, high school has arrested the development of our
young people, shielding them from the larger questions
we face as individuals and society, keeping them in a
suspended state of childhood. We have kept adolescents
passive, rather than active, in a time of their lives of
great vitality and potential.
In answering parent’s concerns about pulling their
student out of a traditional high school to attend an
emotional growth program, we must remind ourselves of
one of the primary developmental tasks in the adolescent
transition. That task, of course, is for adolescents to
assess the experiences they have accumulated in life so
far and forge an individual identity that is genuine;
free from cultural and peer influences. This can be an
overwhelming task as the adolescent learns to stand on
his own two feet as a moral human being, and yet this
work is the very foundation upon which we enter
adulthood. It is for precisely this work, that
earlier cultures separated their adolescents for a time,
away from the distractions and expectations of the
community, in order for them to experience rebirth as a
new adult.
Because we live in such an affluent country, our
children have not been required to work or participate
in any of the more serious tasks of adulthood. Our
adolescents often exist in a world of their own, outside
of the moral, economic, spiritual, political and
sometimes day-to-day concerns of the larger society.
Teenagers have become their own sub-culture, reinforced
by advertising, music and movies. Their separate world
has its own rules and hierarchy, which has no authentic
meaning or value outside of high school. At a time when
most young people are intelligent enough, sophisticated
enough, and technologically experienced enough to expand
in many new directions, we have kept them in an
environment of conformity and competition. Most
teenagers have very little interaction, especially in
personal relationships, with the adults around them.
High schools are not necessarily to blame for this. Our
culture and its values have changed tremendously in the
last fifty years, but our methods for educating young
people have not.
In a recent issue of the “Atlantic Monthly”,
Ron Powers wrote a story about escalating teen violence
in the state of Vermont. Powers concludes his
article by urging us to make changes in the way we
regard adolescents:
The
national task of recentering ourselves and our children
will be enormous, and will require painful shifts in our
expectations of expediency, personal gratification, and
the unfettered accumulation of wealth. Children crave a
sense of self-worth. The craving is answered most
readily through a reintegration of our young into the
immediate circles of family and community life. We must
face the fact that having ceased to exploit children as
laborers, we now exploit them as consumers. We must
offer them useful functions, tailored to their evolving
capacities. Closely allied to this goal is an expanded
definition of “education” - one that ranges far beyond
debates over public and private schools and how much to
spend on them to embrace an ethic of sustained mentoring
that extends from community to personal relationships.
When we
look at the small window of opportunity through which we
can assist adolescents in this transition, it is easy to
see why high schools are failing and why leaving a
traditional setting is not as risky as it seems: “The
underlying concepts of education today are
materialistic” writes Betty Staley in her book,
Between Form and Freedom. “Messages in the
environment call upon youngsters to get stoned, make
lots of money, have a fancy car, attain power, feel
good, and “make it” in the world. There are fewer voices
in the environment telling them how to build
relationships, how to care about other people, how to
take responsibility.” If we are to assist students in
finding out who they are, then an integral part of our
job must be helping them to separate from the messages
of their culture.
Finding Sanctuary: Two perspectives
Bonners
Ferry Idaho, thirty miles from the Canadian
border, is certainly off the beaten track, but for a
small town we have a surprisingly diverse population.
Nowhere is that diversity more apparent than in the
education of the region’s children.
Along with a strong home schooling network, we are home
to several programs (both small and large) for at risk
adolescents, and a growing community of Mennonite
families. Mennonite families only educate their
children until the 8th grade; after that, both boys and
girls are integrated into the daily routine of adults.
Mennonite teenagers work in the community alongside
adults in a variety of ways; on weekdays, one often sees
students learning trades, and applying what they’ve
learned in school to the tasks of daily life. By placing
an adolescent alongside working adults, the adolescent
reaches up into the adult world, rather than across, or
perhaps down to the level of his peers. Whatever your
beliefs are, it is a joy to see young men and women
making a step towards, rather than away from, the
world of adults.
The Mennonite way of life is meant as a sanctuary
from the larger culture, and is some ways, so is an
emotional growth boarding school. It is surprising to
compare the similarities of the work we do in schools
for at-risk youth with the Mennonite schools and way of
life: both have created a strong culture independent of
outside influences. Both have a strong adult presence
with clearly defined expectations and roles. Both the
Mennonite community and the schools for at-risk teens
are based on the idea that hard work breeds character,
and that meaning is formed in the quiet hours, away from
the noisy world and one’s peers. Both shelter young
people from the crass materialism, consumerism, and
image conscious culture we live in. Both require young
people to dress in simple, practical clothes free of
commercial images. Another important aspect they have in
common is the emphasis on self development and self
awareness, rather than the strong identification with
peers so often seen at this age.
Both also believe that hard work and responsibility
solves many of the insecurities, moods, and questions
that plague adolescents. This is almost like saying that
adolescent angst is the luxury of an affluent society.
They also feel that hard work brings true self
esteem and a way to earn one’s place in the world. While
adolescence certainly brings its own particular trials
and tribulations, we have watched depressed and angry
teens snap out of it when confronted with the “real
work” of a wilderness trip: a hiking destination to be
reached by sundown, firewood to cut and gather, food to
be cooked over a fire. They “snap out of it” because
they are needed, the task is real, and how well it is
done has real and immediate results. These concepts are
contrary to the tendencies of the larger society, where
young people strive to embrace all of the supposed
“perks” of adulthood, such as drinking, driving, and
sex, with none of the responsibility.
In our experience, most adolescents are healthier
emotionally, socially, and morally outside of school
culture. When working or learning in situations outside
of school culture, teenagers often ask questions or
express enthusiasm about subjects they might not have
been willing to show in the classroom. They were willing
to look smart, rather than cool. Many
small programs use in house academics of one kind or
another to give their students haven from the negative
aspects of peer culture. Their “breather” away from high
school has almost miraculous healing qualities. Having
this time away from their peers helps students renew or
expand their interests and abilities and gives them a
new foothold in the world; they relax into their true
selves again. This is not possible in a classroom of
thirty highly competitive, and anxious students,
wondering where they fit on the popularity scale.
“The alienation we are experiencing stems from a lack of
meaning in our culture . . . a society can only go for
so long serving its young people stones instead of bread
before they strike out in defiance or anger or withdraw
into passivity” implores Betty Staley. Changing this
situation is indeed enormous work for our entire
culture. But in the meantime, more meaningful rites of
passage are available every day to students fortunate
enough to be attending emotional growth schools all over
the country. It is a tribute to the courage of their
parents, that they support their children’s departure
from the mainstream of culture to find out who they
truly are.
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