The book As Iron Sharpens Iron is a book about the development of ethical behavior. It pits two opposite characters in terms of morality against each other in some instances and for each other in other instances. Typically, later adolescence is characterized by the start of the extremely egocentric phase in a person's life. The college years are the center of the phase. But, in high school the youth in his or her late teens begins seeing that life is not merely lived by all human beings the way that mom and dad has said that life should be lived.
Jack and Damon are polar opposites in their views about sexuality. They are also competitive. They also believe in partaking of what life has to offer a teenager. Prom, basketball, dating, writing notes in class, making comments about teachers and coaches are all a part of the typical landscape surrounding the high school experience.
Another part of the experience of high school is the way Jack and Damon try to maintain their relationship. It's a back and forth style, an up and down experience, a hot and cold way of reacting to the other. Late adolescence is also characterized by that type of relationship maintenance. Due to lack of experience in social interaction, later-year teens experiment with selfishness and caring, giving and withholding, controling and succumbing. It's a roller-coaster approach even though teenagers are too close to their experimentation to see that they are experimenting with relationships.
In the book, switching dates and trying to relate to great number of young ladies are activities that represent this very typical stage in life. Fortunately, youth mature past this stage. As obnoxious a stage as this might be to adults, missing it seems to retard a young adult when relating to people in the workplace in the mid-twenties.
7 comments:
i dont know if this is "blogging" so i will just leave you a comment. you can help me on this later... first of all, i am very argumentative and like to debate, but as i read this entry, there was nothing i could really argue about. while i do think some habits or characteristics of a teenager are "evovling", like the difference from your school days and ours; those are the main flaws or characteristcs or a teen. me being one, and having to defend it, i would like to know where you get this knowlege. from books and teaching seminars, or from the actual source?
This knowledge comes from observing life, having children of my own (who are grown now), and from formal training in psychology, literature, and anthropology. I don't know if your "actual source" meant teenagers themselves or what I have termed "observing life" above, but experience (with teens)is the best teacher.
Also, you are implying that teenagers have evolved from my school years to your school years. I am really meaning that the teen experience is the same. Teens in 3000 BCE more than likely exhibited the same behavioral characteristics as teens in 2007 ACE. That's speculation, of course. But, from literature, we know that the teen set of characteristics was about the same in the 1700s ACE as it is today.
I also noticed that you used the word "flaws" for teen behavioral characteristics? Does that not bother you that humans go through a flawed process in order to mature? I would hate to think of myself as flawed as I was trying to transition into adulthood which requires great alertness in order to get ahead in the world.
i dont think its so much a "flawed process" as much as it is just flawed actions or thought as to how to do something. an as im sure you know, the human race does go through trials and tribulation getting to adult hood. its just a part of life. however, for others, like in your book, some make it harder on themselves. i consider them "flaws" because not everyone has them, and some more then others.
"evolving". i think that things and characteristics of the teenage life are greatly over exagerated in shows movies and seminars probably to make a point. fashion, teen pregnancy, partying, i think have all grown dramaicly in the minds of teenagers now days. things like sports, relationships (besides the sex part), and groups or "clicks" may be the only thing you can truly say stays constant.
i agree the best teacher is observing the actual teen life, and involving yourself to make known what you want to learn from them. books and studies, while they may help, usually (me being a teen and living this "kind of life") are just point of views from one source or from certain studied individuals in one certain area. most of it i look at and say "where the heck did they get this stuff"
Scholars observe behavior and quantify it. Those who aren't scholars live life, observe enough to have notions about it, and draw conclusions. Those who are coming out of high school seem to have little regard for quantification of observable data. Perhaps, that is a flaw of the school system. Nonetheless, you voice a very common response. Psychologists would say that egocentrists are nearly always in the business of defending their comfort zones in the same way an involuntary muscle contracts. And teenagers are the great egocentrists.
This is totally accurate about teens. Teens do go through rollercoaster in their lives. thata a definite! I think what causes the rollercoaster at times is indeed that lifestyle mom and dad said should be lived. Yet we see the way others live that is nothing close to out parent's discription which causes confusion.
Damon and Jack definitely show real life teens in high school. Guys are competative at everything. And maybe they do think differently about sexuality but its hard for a girl to know which one is which. Its hard to beleive the guys who say they are not obssesed with sex because a girl automatically thinks he's lying.
I sgree with everything so afar just because i have experienced it. But the whole rollercoaster ending i'm still waiting. I do hope your right about it just being a stage though. I hope to see alot of teens (along with myself) mature out of this stage.
I think you were right on target when you described high school as being a "rollercoaster." It's definitely an eye opening experience and any sheltering that your parents tried is automatically out the window. I've learned ALOT in high school. However all of it was lessons on life, none really academic. I mean yes, I did go to class, pay ateention, and study a few times but none of that is instilled into my brain like the lessons that I've learned on life, love and frienships. We do all go through phases, and yes teens can be obnoxious and immature, however,I see it as all part of evolving into an adult. We laugh, we cry, we freak out about grades, we lose friends, gain friends, and we make mistakes, but that's how we learn about ourselves and how we find out what kind of people we want to be. I guess this just proves your quote true. Experience is the only teacher.
As Mariela pointed out, there are some differences between guys and girls. In th 1970s and 1980s, experiments in psychology tried to show that changing the socialization of girls and boys would change them to be just alike. Nearly all of the experiments failed. The socialization process is a result of too big a network to change a few things (like telling girls that blue is a great color and dressing them in blue and the same with boys with the color pink) and expect that boys and girls would act just alike. So the socialization of boys and girls today is still different even in language use. That indeed makes late adolescence really hard to deal with.
And Esmeralda brings up a good point as well. It seems that lessons in life are the lessons that are learned at school rather than the academic lessons. Since the lens through which teens look is "all about me," then relational matters appear to amount to more than matters of interest/disinterest from books. I hope you live into your 20s. After about 25, when a person knows herself (himself) and has a direction in life, then the suppressed learning from the adolescent years is brought more to the conscious level because part of one's survival in society depends on it. One can imagine the difference between bringing both college learning and high school learning to the conscious level instead of just high school learning (for those who choose to limit their education to high school).
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