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Archives - July,
2008
What is Adult Behavior? – July 29, 2008
I’ve just begun to read a book entitled The Case Against Adolescence:
Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Dr. Robert Epstein (Quill Driver Books,
2007). I was initially skeptical of the book, given the media celebrity, pop
psychologist status of the guy (former editor of Psychology Today; former host
of Psyched! On Sirius Satellite Radio; regular guest “expert” on national
radio and television; writer of 14 books and of hundreds of popular magazine
articles; author of controversial research with B.F. Skinner about how pigeons
can apparently be taught to show self-awareness and insight….)
Then I read about his theories about maturity and his
conclusion that teens are far more competent than we assume and that most of
their problems stem from restrictions that artificially extend
childhood…mostly by our outdated thinking about the delivery of education and
their place in the workforce.
That, of course, is something I’ve been talking and writing about for decades,
although I extend my concerns about our lack of trust in competency to children
younger than teens.
Epstein told
Psychology Today last year: “Our current education system was created in the
late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modeled after the new factories of the
industrial revolution. Public schools, set up to supply the factories with a
skilled labor force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years.
We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or
25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still
reflects factory thinking – get your education now and get it efficiently, in
classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those
classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.”
So I picked up the book and, in the name of journalistic
research, I took an online test he and colleague Diane Dumas created called
The Epstein-Dumas Test of Adultness, which supposedly measures the variety of
competencies that define adult functioning. The test was the foundation of the
research that led to the book.
My Total “Adultness” Competency Score was 93
percent. Aside from the fact that the test should be renamed The
Epstein-Dumas Test of American Adultness (we Canadians can act like adults
too!), the area where I was marked down the most was education. Oh,
I have enough, apparently. It’s just that I answered some questions
incorrectly regarding compulsory education and the value of schooling. Here’s
what the result said: “Education: 78%: Adults are supposed to have obtained at
least a basic education, and they’re supposed to appreciate the value of
education. They’re also supposed to know basic education laws – for example,
that young people are required to attend school until at least age sixteen or so
(depending on one’s state of residency).” I’m pretty secure in my
“adultness competency” but I guess I’ll contact Dr. Epstein about this
lack of rigor in the quiz. There is clearly an error regarding either his
knowledge of the laws about school attendance or in semantics. But, worse, the
quiz seems to contradict Epstein’s comments to Psychology Today and, according
to the cover blurb, his book on the subject. And that’s not very adult.
Posted: 2008/07/29 11:28 AM
The Most Important Topic – July 19, 2008
There is a useful
article in the new edition of Columbia Journalism Review about how we in the
media must refine and expand our coverage of climate change. Aside from giving
journalists tips about how to sort out the political and economic interests
associated with their coverage of global warming, the piece highlights how the
topic is moving from being the sole purview of the science pages of newspapers
and magazines and into every section – everything from local and national
politics, to foreign affairs, business, technology, health, agriculture,
transportation, law, architecture, religion, gardening, travel and sports.
Um, they forgot education! Thoroughly educating ourselves
and our children about global warming is not a choice anymore. It is the most
important issue of our day – more important than terrorism (although they are
related in some ways), more important than the economy (although, again, there
are strong links). Our children are the ones who will pay for what the previous
few generations have done wrong. An awareness of the problem and what each of us
can do to try and fix it is crucial. So learning about the problem and seeking
solutions must be a part of the everyday life of each individual and each
family. We affect the world by the way we consume, travel, work and play.
Lessening our environmental impact is the central challenge to humankind today
– the most important topic we can think, write and talk about, no matter
whether we learn at home, at school or on the street corner.
Having said that, I do believe that young people who have
been given the freedom to be self-directed learners are the ones most able to
create solutions to the problem. And, as I wrote in my editorial for the
July/August issue of Natural Life, in order to create the circumstances that
will nurture a large enough number of these self-directed learners, we need to
examine our attitudes towards children and re-evaluate not only how we educate
them, but how we birth them. We need to nurture their ability to think creatively and
independently, to respect their rights, to shape their values, and to learn from their
instinctive kinship with the natural world and with each other. The need is
urgent and it is immediate.
Posted: 2008/07/19 3:48 PM
Why Are People So Angry? –
July 16, 2008
Is the world getting angrier or am I just getting more observant? Or thinned
skinned? Or angry? Politics are angry, highways are angry, emailers and chat
groupies and bloggers are angry, talk radio is angry, supermarket shoppers are
angry. Art is angry, music is angry. Even little kids are angry.
Oh, says I with my usual first reaction, maybe there’s a
book here! Um, no. There already is one or two. Plug “anger” into the search
line at amazon.com and you get 321,547 books and articles – everything from
Anger Management for Dummies to Harriet Lerner’s wonderful Dance of
Anger.
Yeah, I’ve read a few of them in my time, but not the Dummies series…now
there’s a book title that makes me angry, along with the Idiot’s Guides. Oh,
sorry, we’re trying not to be angry here. Anyway, as Peter Wood points out in
his book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now, automakers are even making
angrier-looking cars, with grills that seem to snarl at whatever gets in their
way.
Unfortunately, there are lots of anger books aimed at kids.
But managing their anger is not what they need; they feel invisible and ignored
by adults and are desperate to be seen and known, rather than taken to yet
another lesson, sports activity or anger management session.
But why are the rest of us so angry and impatient? Well,
we’re living in anxious times, when fear about the future is hard to shake:
What’s going to happen with the economy, terrorism, global warming, the energy
crisis, the food crisis, the wars? And maybe we feel angry and frustrated
because the problems seem too huge and we don’t know what we can do to fix
them. There are other reasons, I think, or at least mitigating factors. Many of
us are living life too fast, trying to cram too many things into a frantic day,
too tightly scheduled to allow time for anything to go wrong or to get in our way,
let alone to breathe. Plus, many of those books (that is, the ones that don’t
preach the opposite) tell us that by expressing our anger we are living
authentically and that swallowing it will make us sick. (As someone who lives
with the auto-immune disease lupus, I know that strong emotions like anger
negatively affect our health.)
Beyond that, these authors might have a point. Maybe we’re not being angry and
aggressive enough. Given all the crises out there, maybe we should be out in the streets
screaming for change. New York Times writer Bob Herbert has said that
our “anger quotient is much too low.” If, by that, he means that we should pressure our leaders to
make this a safer planet, I agree. But while directing our anger in a useful
direction, we should all take a
deep breath, smile and calm down.
Posted: 2008/07/16 4:56 PM
 What
I'm Working On Right Now – July 8, 2008
OK, OK, I know I haven’t
been blogging as much lately as both you and I think I should be! No excuses,
because it is simply a matter of making time (although an extra 12 hours per day
would help), but I am still managing the merger of our three magazines and
working on layout for Natural Life magazine’s September/October issue,
which goes to press in just a few weeks. I am also writing two new books,
negotiating with an author for another and editing a third. The one that is
taking most of my time right now is “Ask Natural Life: A Guide to Healthy,
Eco-Friendly Family Living,” which will be published this fall. It is a
collection of the best of my “Ask Natural Life” columns that have
been published in Natural Life magazine over the past decade or so. I am
putting the final touches on updating and editing the collection, and adding a
few new pieces to round it out. So I am having a busy summer...but,
then, I am not sure what I would do with a not-busy one!
Posted: 2008/07/08 10:56 AM
Sacrificing Kids to Corporate Profits – July 8, 2008
Scandalous new guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics are calling for
cholesterol screening for kids as young as two and more aggressive use of
cholesterol-lowering statin drugs for kids as young as eight. Sure, there has been an alarming increase in obesity among
children over the last decade. But that doesn’t mean there is a need for
medication. Of course, that would be the perfect corporate solution, wouldn’t
it? Allow the junk food industry to continue to stuff people’s faces with
empty, chemical-laden calories at an ever-earlier age, then bring in the
pharmaceutical industry to help mop up the damage with more chemicals. Oh, and
that doesn’t even include the results of some British research I’ve read,
which suggests higher incidences of aggressive behavior on the part of those
receiving cholesterol lowering treatment…there’s another opportunity for
profits for the drug industry. Can you say “Ritalin?”
Obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol are just
some of the very many health conditions that are lifestyle-based. Good lifestyle
habits begin in early childhood. Even kids with genetic disposition to such
problems can avoid them if they learn how to eat a healthy diet, get enough
exercise and deal with stress. When you hear about guidelines like this one, you
can bet at least some of the physicians involved are on the payroll of the
industry – either directly or indirectly.
Posted: 2008/07/08 10:33 AM
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