Let Teenagers Try Adulthood

"Let Teenagers Try Adulthood"

Leon Botstein explains in his essay "Let Teenagers Try Adulthood", about how high school is run by the jocks, and how the community only supports the high school when the "varsity team" succeeds. Botstien talks about how the "...rules of high school turn out not to be the rules of life." He also talks about the whole "puberty" issue and how it effects today's teens, in school and in life. He explains how elementary school should start earlier, and you should graduate at the age of 16 instead of the age 18, because your body had matured faster then a century ago. Botstein also mocks the education system, stating that certain classes are to be taught only by the people who know the most about the class. Many students choose to go to a junior college or even stay home, because of the lack of pressure to attend a university. Finally Botstein states that 16 year olds should be focused on developing their "adult life" and that this country needs to realize the fact that the American education system has failed because of the out-to-date techniques that are being used.

Botstein is trying to convince the reader to give up on the old system of elementary school, junior high, and then high school, but instead a "new way" of schooling. He wants that reader to believe that because teenagers develop much faster than they did a century ago there is no need to hold up the students in classes that just waist their time. Instead just do the things that are needed, to get the gist of things and be off on their ways. Off into the "real world."

Botstein tries to apply a universal solution to the problem that high school is obsolete and that it only exists in a limited number of places, his solution which is in paragraph eight states that schools should give up junior high and jump right into high school. This way they will graduate sooner, so teenagers can get a jump start on "real life." One could argue that the American system may be out of date but it shouldn't be abolished, instead fixed to fix the problems that are occurring. High schools could even hire suitable faculty who are trained to deal with the problems at hand.

Botstein also argues that "adults should face the fact that they don't like adolescents and that they have used high school to isolate the pubescent and hormonally active adolescent away form both the picture-book idealized innocents of childhood and the more accountable world of adulthood." One could argue that children keep their innocents until they hit the puberty stage and then choose to experiment with what all the other children are doing that have already reached that