Or, "Why you should go out and run the world while you still know everything!"
This is a response to a post made by a younger member of the forum, who accused me of stereotyping and being prejudicial. I thought it would be interesting to recount a small bit of a talk that I used to have annually with my Boy Scouts back when I was Scoutmaster. A group of 20 or 30 teenage boys contains pretty much the sum of human knowledge within them. Just ask them, they'll tell you!
All kidding aside, I have always felt that it's just as important for adults to realize why the young tend to spout nonsense with such assurance as it is for the young to realize that they actually know far less than they think they do. My experience from working with youth for 20 years was that it is a direct result of puberty. As teenagers grow from their early teens to their early twenties, they are attempting to transition from children controlled by their parents, to independent thinking adults. This is a difficult process that results in much emotion, a lot of it negative, in order to create separation and independence from their parents. They also are learning to think for themselves and assert their own ideas and views on the world. Unfortunately, they rarely have enough actual experience in life to know whether their ideas and views are reasonable. The fact that their ideas and concerns have been created by themselves rather than being dictated by those over them lends them more credence in their mind. They have part of themselves invested in these ideas and views, so they tend to defend them vigorously, even when it seems obviously wrong to others.
This being the case, I would always stress to the youth under me that it would serve them far better to listen to others and attempt to see their point of view rather than to attempt to defend their own. Other's point of view may be incorrect in the end, but the act of seeing it would stretch their own understanding of the world and enable them to make better decisions in the future. Understanding of others (and so themselves) is always the hardest thing for the young to grasp, in my opinion, and many people today never learn how. Therefore I always stressed that pushing for this understanding would expand their own knowledge of the world exponentially, and enable them to form views and opinions that are both valid and reasonable.
So in response the original post that started me on this tirade, I am neither stereotyping nor prejudiced, just experienced. This should have been obvious from that fact that I could tell the poster was relatively young without knowing a thing about him other than reading a few of his posts.
This is a response to a post made by a younger member of the forum, who accused me of stereotyping and being prejudicial. I thought it would be interesting to recount a small bit of a talk that I used to have annually with my Boy Scouts back when I was Scoutmaster. A group of 20 or 30 teenage boys contains pretty much the sum of human knowledge within them. Just ask them, they'll tell you!
All kidding aside, I have always felt that it's just as important for adults to realize why the young tend to spout nonsense with such assurance as it is for the young to realize that they actually know far less than they think they do. My experience from working with youth for 20 years was that it is a direct result of puberty. As teenagers grow from their early teens to their early twenties, they are attempting to transition from children controlled by their parents, to independent thinking adults. This is a difficult process that results in much emotion, a lot of it negative, in order to create separation and independence from their parents. They also are learning to think for themselves and assert their own ideas and views on the world. Unfortunately, they rarely have enough actual experience in life to know whether their ideas and views are reasonable. The fact that their ideas and concerns have been created by themselves rather than being dictated by those over them lends them more credence in their mind. They have part of themselves invested in these ideas and views, so they tend to defend them vigorously, even when it seems obviously wrong to others.
This being the case, I would always stress to the youth under me that it would serve them far better to listen to others and attempt to see their point of view rather than to attempt to defend their own. Other's point of view may be incorrect in the end, but the act of seeing it would stretch their own understanding of the world and enable them to make better decisions in the future. Understanding of others (and so themselves) is always the hardest thing for the young to grasp, in my opinion, and many people today never learn how. Therefore I always stressed that pushing for this understanding would expand their own knowledge of the world exponentially, and enable them to form views and opinions that are both valid and reasonable.
So in response the original post that started me on this tirade, I am neither stereotyping nor prejudiced, just experienced. This should have been obvious from that fact that I could tell the poster was relatively young without knowing a thing about him other than reading a few of his posts.
