What Do Adults Think about Young People? by Joel Tolman

Perceptions of young people are remarkably negative

Most Americans look at today’s teenagers with misgivings and trepidation, viewing them as undisciplined, disrespectful and unfriendly...And people apply these criticisms to children across a broad economic spectrum, to children from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as to children from the middle and affluent classes.

These words, taken from a 1997 Public Agenda survey and confirmed by a 1999 follow-up study, are disheartening.1 But while we may experience shock and disappointment when reading the results of these studies, few of us are surprised. These results are part of a larger story about young people — how we view their roles and the expectations we have of them — and are indicative of a larger narrative that casts many young people as less than full citizens. In effect, we, as a society, are telling young people that they lack the capacity to play meaningful roles in our communities.

This story — this pattern of low expectations — is endemic rather than epidemic. It exists steadily and lastingly, rather than temporarily. This story is part of our folkways: we can find examples from Renaissance France, a newly independent United States, and last week’s newspaper. We can trace the story back to the psychological theories of Freud, Erickson and others that emphasize the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of adolescence, and to a shifting economy that has left older adolescents with few clear roles in their communities. Negative perceptions of young people are nothing new.

But the most recent iteration of this historical pattern is particularly troubling. A 2000 Gallup poll confirms our suspicions: yes, it really is worse than before. “Americans today are much more skeptical about young people than they were a half-century ago,” according to the press release that announced the poll.2 And the character of the perceptions marks this period of distrust as unique. Fueled by the national preoccupation with school shootings and youth-on-youth violence, perceptions have turned from skepticism to fear. All of this despite the fact that, in Jim Youniss’s words, “youth today are at least as healthy or healthier than their parents’ generation,” taking into account their civic engagement, academic success, contributions to the workplace and other factors.3

The consequences of low expectations

Negative perceptions and low expectations shape young people’s experiences in fundamental ways. At a basic level, expectations shape the roles that are available to young people.

Expectations and perceptions also transform young people themselves. In a five-year study involving seven countries, Connie Flanagan from the University of Pennsylvania underscores the importance of social messages given to young people by schools, families and government policies. One finding is clear: across all seven countries, the research revealed that “youth who hear of an ethic or social responsibility emphasized in their families are more likely than their compatriots to be engaged in some type of service to their communities.” Negative perceptions do just the opposite.

One of the consequences of negative perceptions is that young people often are treated as a set of problems to be fixed. No one is inspired when greeted with “We're here to fix you.” But that is exactly what we do — in part because the programs we create and the data we track about young people are largely problem-focused — related to teen pregnancy, dropouts, youth violence, etc. But there is little evidence that problem-focused strategies are the most effective way to help young people succeed (and plenty of evidence to suggest that young people overcome problems best when given opportunities to contribute and make decisions). Until they are presented with a meaningful challenge, there is no reason that any person, young or old, is going to be sufficiently engaged to change.

Finding solutions

What will it take to change adult perceptions of young people?

A lot...Research by Susan Bales and Franklin Gilliam of the Frameworks Institute indicates that when adults are confronted with positive facts and statistics about young people, they tend to dispute the facts rather than change their ways of thinking.4 This sad fact remains true whether they are looking at the positive stories of individual young people or data that show decreased violent crime rates. Gilliam, Bales and their colleagues at Frameworks have offered some strategies, though. They suggest we get rid of the language associated with the negative images (e.g., teenager), enlist knowledgeable adults and older Americans in dispelling myths, and spend time with young people. Spending time with young people is one good antidote to these perceptions.

...but expectations are not inevitable; there are alternatives...For instance, in contrast to the U.S. trend, conversations with practitioners and young people in Latin America revealed an almost exclusive focus on community and social change outcomes, and a relative neglect of individual youth development outcomes. Among these practitioners and young people, the expectation that youth will generate community change was clear and consistent, but there was less corresponding attention to the individual development of young people. In examining these alternatives — and the circumstances that shaped them — we can begin to shape new stories and new expectations for youth and community development.

...and parts of the solution exist around the country. Alongside the outstanding work of Susan Bales and her colleagues, a number of small and large efforts are successfully challenging popular perceptions of young people. For instance, a new organization and Web site, What Kids Can Do (WKCD), is offering alternatives to low expectations by showcasing “powerful learning with a public purpose.” The WKCD site, just a few months old, features stories of young people engaged in meaningful work in their communities. Youth video projects like the Educational Video Center and Listen Up! are allowing youth a venue for helping to express themselves and re-shape public opinions. These are just a few pieces of the puzzle – but certainly vibrant and important pieces.

1Kids These Days: What Americans Really Think About the Next Generation. (1997, 1999). Ann Duffett, Jean Johnson and Steve Farkas. Washington, DC: Public Agenda

2www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr001110b.asp

3Quoted in Reframing Youth Issues. (2000). Frameworks Institute. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Communications and Community.

4Reframing Youth Issues. (2000). Frameworks Institute. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Communications and Community.

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Resources

Center for Communications and Community, UCLA. www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/ccc/

Educational Video Center. www.evc.org

The Frameworks Institute. www.frameworksinstitute.org

Listen Up! www.pbs.org/merrow/trt/index.html

Public Agenda. www.publicagenda.org

What Kids Can Do. www.whatkidscando.org

Tolman, J. (2001, June). "What Do Adults Think about Young People?" Takoma Park, MD: The Forum for Youth Investment, International Youth Foundation.

Where Are Young People Really Learning?

Learning happens best when we are personally motivated and mentally challenged.

Research and theory dating back to John Dewey indicate that young people learn most when they are interested, engaged and self-directed. Studies by Reed Larson and colleagues (Dworkin, Larson, Hansen, Jones and Midle, 2001; Larson, 2000; Larson and Verma, 1999) suggest that American adolescents spend only a small part of their days fully psychologically engaged — in contexts where they consistently report high challenge, high concentration and high motivation. More often than not, the daily context for high engagement is not school but structured, voluntary youth activities.

Time use studies by Larson and others suggest that American adolescents spend an average of 3 to 4.5 hours per day on schoolwork, where they experience some challenge and report concentration, but their average motivation is low. They spend another 2 to 3 hours hanging out with friends, where they report being motivated but not challenged or engaged in activities requiring high concentration. They spend another 1.5 to 2.5 hours watching TV — down time during which they are neither motivated nor challenged. In comparison with school, friends and TV, adolescents spend relatively little time — only 40 to 80 minutes per day — in organized youth activities such as sports, theater groups, community service programs or youth centers.

Longitudinal studies by Eccles and Barber (1999) found that participation in structured youth activities in 10th grade predicted positive changes between 10th and 12th grade. Analyses of the national High School and Beyond study (Marsh, 1992), which tracked 10,000 youth, found significant relationships between participation in extracurricular and community activities and positive changes in educational and occupational aspirations, schoolwork and self-concept. A recent Child Trends analysis of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey (Zaff, Moore, Papillo and Williams, 2001, April), found that young people who reported being consistently engaged in extracurricular activities (school-based or community-based) between 8th and 12th grades were 2.5 times more likely to enroll in college, two times more likely to volunteer, and almost two times as likely to vote in their 20s, even after controlling for academic achievement, socioeconomic status and parental involvement.

These studies validate the need for increasing the availability of organized youth activities. But they do not get inside the black box to learn what makes these activities both motivating and cognitively challenging, nor do they completely identify the benefits of being fully engaged. And they leave us with the very troubling idea that the richest learning opportunities exist outside of school.

So what do youth learn in youth programs? Larson and colleagues recently conducted focus groups of adolescents in preparation for a larger study they hope to conduct. The teens (average age 16) were asked to talk about any youth activity in which they were involved. They grouped young people’s responses into seven growth areas:

• Experimentation and identity work: trying new things, gaining self-knowledge, learning their limits and figuring out where they belong.

• Initiative: learning to manage time, learning to set goals, learning the value of effort and perseverance and taking responsibility for oneself.

• Emotional self-control: learning to control anger, fear, anxiety and stress.

• Physical skills: mastering a skill (e.g., sports, music).

• Developing peer relationships and knowledge: learning ways to meet new peers and learning about peers from different backgrounds.

• Teamwork and social skills: learning to work together as a group or team, learning to take and give feedback, learning about leadership and responsibility and learning communication skills.

• Adult networks and social capital: learning from adults and having them learn from you, getting recognition and building networks.

Obviously, these are lessons we want all young people to learn. Larson’s work suggests that these lessons can be named and measured, just as we now do with subjects like algebra or American history. It also suggests that these lessons are not taught directly by adults — young people are the agents of their own learning.

What makes good youth programs work? Milbrey McLauglin, building on earlier work done by McLaughlin, Irby and Langman in Urban Sanctuaries (1994), describes the characteristics of effective community-based learning environments in Community Counts (2000, April). She suggests the following characteristics:

• Youth-centered. They respond to diverse talents, skills and interests, build on youth’s strengths, choose appropriate materials, provide personal attention, reach out into the community to recruit a range of young people, and make youth leadership and voice an integral part of how they operate.

• Knowledge-centered. They have a clear focus, provide high-quality content and instruction, embed multiple “hidden curricula” in their activities and ensure that young people have teachers — adults and peers — from the program and the community.

• Assessment-centered. They have cycles of planning, practice and performance that give young people a sense of structure and accomplishment. They offer feedback and recognition, and take stock of a broad range of competencies — from persistence to bookkeeping.

• Community-centered. They create caring communities — “family-like” environments — by building trusting relationships, establishing clear rules, giving youth responsibility for the organization, and providing constant access to adults and community social capital through links to leaders, jobs and other institutions.

Larson’s and McLaughlin’s work raises some important questions. Is it a given that reflective learning and content learning have to be separate? No. Is it a given that young people cannot be fully engaged in things they do not choose or learn content while increasing self-knowledge? No. Is it possible to gain self-knowledge, learn time management and bond with students from other backgrounds while studying algebra in a required course? Yes.

McLaughlin’s list echos a half dozen other recent efforts to define the characteristics of effective school and community-based learning environments (see “Students Continually Learning” Key Resources, page 5).

The bottom line: young people need safe, structured places to learn and links to basic services that if absent can prevent them from learning. They need high-quality instruction and training. But they also need personal attention, strong, respectful relationships with adults, a culture of peer support, clear rules, high expectations and real assessments, and challenging experiences and opportunities for self-direction, participation and contribution within the organization and the community.

High-quality, structured, voluntary activities can be and are provided by community-based programs. They also happen in youth employment programs, in apprenticeships, in families, in schools and even in residential treatment centers. Research is beginning to show that when provided, learning happens. It is not the where that is important, it is the how. Voluntary does not have to mean that young people chose to enroll. It should mean, however, that they would choose to stay if asked.

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REFERENCES

Dworkin, J., Larson, R., Hansen, D., Jones, J. and Midle, T. (2001, April) Adolescents’ accounts of their growth experiences in youth activities. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, MN.

Eccles, J. and Barber, B. (1999) Student council, volunteering, basketball, or marching band: What kind of extracurricular involvement matters? Journal of Adolescent Research, 14, 10–43.

Larson, R.W. (2000) Toward a psychology of positive youth development. American Psychologist, 55(1), 170–183.

Larson, R.W. and Verma, S. (1999) How children and adolescents spend time across the world: Work, play and developmental opportunities. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 701–736.

Marsh, H.W. (1992) Extracurricular activities: Beneficial extension of the traditional curriculum or subversion of academic goals? Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 553–562.

McLaughlin, M. (2000, April, second printing) Community Counts: How Youth Organizations Matter for Youth Development. Washington, DC: Public Education Network.

McLaughlin, M., Irby, M. and Langman, J. (1994) Urban Sanctuaries: Neighborhood Organizations in the Lives and Futures of Inner-City Youth. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Zaff, J.F., Moore, K.A., Papillo, A.R. and Williams, S. (2001, April) Implications of extracurricular activity participation during adolescence on positive outcomes. In R. Larson (Chair) Positive development in youth activities. Symposium conducted at the biennial conference of the Society for Research on Child Development, Minneapolis, MN.

The Forum for Youth Investment. (2001, August). "Where Are Young People Really Learning?" FYI Newsletter, 1(1). Retrieved from www.forumforyouthinvestment.org/fyiaug2001.pdf