No More Teenagers!

I have a lot of happenings and news to post, but I keep getting bogged down writing about them. I have a few things on my heart, most of which cannot be posted in a public forum. But I think I can make generalities, without being hurtful or accusatory.

As a teenager, I remember being faced with a terrifying, all-important decision: What I Am Going To Be When I Grow Up. It’s not something that is real to most teens, until very late teens, even sometimes in the early twenties. And unfortunately, sometimes not even then. It’s the Oh, Shit! Moment. As in oh, shit, now what am I going to do? At least that’s how it was for me. This moment for me occurred in the second semester, while I was busily flunking out of the University of South Alabama, my folks were on my back (rightfully, ‘cause they were footing the bill!) and told me I have to work full time or go to school in order to remain at their residence, but they weren’t paying for it anymore. Very smart, my folks were!!

So I had a very short time to decide whatever in the world I was going to be when I grew up, how I was going to support myself in order to pay for training, schooling, or whatever. Things that I should have thought of long before. I remember mostly just wanting to appease my folks. So when I came home and told my Mom that I would go to Bishop State in order to be a nurse (ha!) she just about flipped out. I think anyone who knows me knows I’m probably not nurse material. I was grasping at straws.

In the end, I made a snap decision to be a paralegal, took out student loans, worked, went to community college and it ultimately wound up being a good thing for me. I liked the work, it challenged me on a daily basis and it’s something I can go back to, if I needed to work and make decent money. People will always be suing other people, and lawyers will always need someone to do all the work for them, so there will always be work for a paralegal, no matter how bad the economy tanks.

My point is that being a teenager--as in not a child, but not an adult--is in no way a preparation for adulthood. It’s a period of time where most teens (myself included) veg, hang out, and otherwise waste time.

Being a teen is a relatively new concept. Back in the day, new America and all that, there was no such thing as teenagers. You were a child, and then you were a member of society. Period. This in-between stage that we call teenage-hood didn’t exist. Fifteen year-olds were expected to work a full day doing whatever it was that they did. Farm, blacksmith, cowboy, house stuff, teach, whatever. And while I have no desire to revisit pioneer days themselves, that particular part of it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in my opinion. Even now, through the wonder of the internet, and/or the old concept of homeschooling, one can get a very good education and still be a productive member of society. Even at the tender age of fifteen!

Why do we have this brain-rotting in-between stage that people just have to muddle through in order to become a full-fledged adult? When I think of teenagers, the thing that comes to mind is mouthy, self-centered, entitled, sleep-all-day, lazy and complainers. Not a nice picture. This is perpetuated through tv, movies and most other media. Not only that, we put our teens into a huge building with other teens who are all focusing on hormonal urges, all confused, angry at ‘the man’ and everyone over thirty and think that they are entitled to whatever the world has to offer, whether or not they earn it. They are usually poor influences on one another and are seeking guidance and acceptance from their peers, who are struggling just as much as they are! Why do we do this to them? It’s like the blind leading the blind!

People often ask when they find out we home school if I would do it all the way through high school. After learning the things I have learned not only through my own experiences, but that of experiencing Morgan's difficulties, I say Absolutely! As a matter of fact, if I was somehow only allowed to choose one phase to home school through it would be the high school years. Yes, the subjects are more difficult, but there are creative ways to take physics, biology, etc. through co-ops, college-credit classes, tutors, or other avenues. The pluses I see totally outweigh the subject difficulties!

One of the pioneer-days ways of life I regret seeing fall by the wayside is apprenticeships. If you were inclined toward blacksmithing, you apprenticed with a blacksmith until you learned the trade. He got free help, and you learned a trade that would be valuable for the rest of your life. I think this concept would be very valuable toward turning our teens into productive members of society and foregoing much of the goofing off, time wasting, and trouble making.

I went to a community college to get this piece of paper that says I am qualified to be a paralegal. Having worked a number of years in the field, there was nothing I learned in the school that I couldn’t have learned on the job. Basically, it cost me several thousand dollars to be ‘qualified’ to get a job doing something I could’ve learned for free by doing it. Apprenticeships! And I could've been doing it through my teen years and actually making money in my late teens and early twenties instead of trying to figure out how I was going to go to school on a Taco Bell salary.

Home schooling gives one lots of options. I don’t know where or what we’ll be doing when Archie reaches the magical time of teenage-hood, but having him learn a trade during this time would probably put a stop to a lot of the nonsense I see happening. For example, welding. I could see taking classes to learn to weld at fifteen and sixteen as a valuable trade. No matter where his life may lead him, he would always be able to support himself (or even a family). He could work his way through school if he wanted to pursue higher education. If his career as a professional baseball player didn’t last as long as he would like it to, he would still be able to support himself. Something to fall back on when the stock market crashes, the economy goes south, or he doesn’t make partner in the law firm.

Being a teenager seems to suck the ambition right out of a person. Many of the ones I knew that went to college drank too much and party lots because they can! They don’t have any stinkin’ responsibility! Some of the ones that don’t pursue higher education (or a trade) work dead-end jobs until they realize that they should’ve taken life a bit more seriously in their late teens and early twenties. But now it’s too late because they’ve got a few kids and life is too hard to add something else like higher education now.

Let’s get rid of this idiotic concept of teenage-hood as a waiting room of sorts. Why are able-bodied, smart people just milling about, complaining, and being unproductive just because they are in the dreaded ‘teenage years’? And then they use that as an excuse for loafing off long afterward. It is a frustrating thing to experience, watch others experience and otherwise deal with it on a daily basis in your home. There's gotta be another way.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.