So, if you’ve read the program, you’ll see that over this week and last we have been focusing on the following points. As you read them, check with yourself how confident you feel about each point and whether or not you need to do some more work on understanding these key ideas. I have added in blue bits to show the nature of the discussions and some of the tangents we have gone off on during these past five days. The blue bots also offer alternative ways to unpack each point.
This is the type of stuff we have done this week:
Understand the importance of secondary reading and how it works to deepen and evidence understanding of primary texts. You have been given a range of feature and research articles to read over the last two weeks. Of some concern is that students are struggling to read and then use the information from these secondary readings. In this regard, we spoke in class about the need to use the ideas from these secondary readings as a (macro) way to add depth and breadth to the ideas your already have. On the other hand, we spoke too about the need to use (micro) ideas – in the form of actual quotes, pieces of research, specific ideas – from the articles to substantiate your ideas. This second bit is in need of much work given the responses we are seeing to blog posts, which often lack evidence or reference to supporting texts completely.
ADVICE: As you read every article, use a note taking system (like the Cornell System) to:
- record key quotes; key ideas
- write an explanation of what the quote means, and what information or meaning it ads to the idea you’re focussing on (e.g. teenage identity; teenage hood and context)
- write a summary at the end of the notes that captures the thesis, investigation and conclusions put forward by the article and those to which you have arrived.
EVIDENCE is everything – no evidence from multiple sources, no argument worth listening to.
Define the concept of identity; debating whether identity is static or malleable; discussing whether there is such a thing as a true identity and whether someone can ‘find’ their identity; whether there is a sense of developmental identity – an identity commonly shared that arises from a particular developmental stage. Explore identity as something that is developed, shaped, created and nurtured. Consider the factors that may influence this development.
It is really important not to equate the physical appearance or activities of teenagers over time with the idea that teenagers have a different identity today than they did in yesteryear. different clothes, hairstyles, music, drugs, tastes are all related to context and, very often, to the ways in which fashion, consumerism and culture influence outward expression. The trick here is to ask what are these outward expressions giving voice to? What values? What attitudes? What beliefs? What stage of development? What relationship to authority, to parents, to burgeoning adulthood?
Ask yourself too, if we can ‘categorise’ someone as teenage and, moreover, if we can do this over time, then there must be shared aspects of a teenage identity that make such a categorisation possible. This does not mean that the category remains static alone. In fact, it means that this category holds some common elements regardless of time AS WELL AS elements that shift according to context. elements that are added to, taken away, multiplied dependant on contextual need and influence.
ADVICE – look for common threads in the texts you study. How are teenagers similarly represented as teenage? In what ways do these representations change as context (cultural, historical, situational) changes? Ask yourself how identity is shaped, by whom it is shaped, for who it is shaped? What are the controlling influences here? Do NOT think that somehow your experience of teenage hood is unique to you – teenagers existed a long time before your were born!
Read “The Invention of Teenagers: LIFE and the Triumph of Youth Culture” and excerpts from Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture: 1875-1945. Discuss the notion of a universal teenage identity.
The article is a good place to start because it raises the idea that teenagers are an invention usually attributed to post-war america. While later articles, particularly those by Wolf discredit this, it is important to note that there was a time when teenagers did not exist as a concept or a recognised life stage. Linked to idea that teenage identity is a fluid notion, the article says:
“In its December 1944 feature, LIFE breathlessly discussed the “teen-age” phenomenon in language that, in 2013, somehow feels naive, chauvinistic, celebratory and insightful, all at once. That so many of the article’s impossibly broad, sweeping claims (“Some 6,000,000 U.S. teen-age girls live in a world all their own: a lovely, gay, enthusiastic, funny and blissful society. . . .”) clearly apply to a specific type of teenager — i.e., white, middle-class — tends to blunt some of the more incisive observations. But taken as a whole, the LIFE article and Leen’s photographs constitute a fascinating, early look at a segment of the American populace that, over the ensuing decades, for better and for worse, has assumed an increasingly central role in the shaping of Western culture.”
ADVICE: Interrogate this quote carefully in light of the question: what is the teenage identity”? possible things to note might be:
- 1944 – context, WW2, America. LIFE Magazine (Life magazine was the first publication, with a focus on photographs, that enabled the American public, ‘To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things, to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.’)
- “Phenomenon” – what does this word mean? What does it mean when applied to the arrival of the teenager”?
- “Language that, in 2013, somehow feels naive, chauvinistic, celebratory and insightful, all at once.” – why does it feel this way now? does the added grittiness of today’s language take away from the underlying justification for such a category? Are teenagers today different in terms of their underlying motivations?
- “impossibly broad, sweeping claims . . .clearly apply to a specific type of teenager” – so a universal description of teenagers is not possible fi we factor in the idea that such a definition is and will always be subject to the particular lenses through which we look?
- How have teenagers played “an increasingly central role in the shaping of Western culture”? What is Western culture and, if we include consumerism and materialism as forefront to a definition, how have they contributed to and been shaped by this culture?
Evaluate and discuss the Teenage Bill of Rights (January 7 1945) – does this apply to today’s youth? How does contemporary cultural context influence the answer to this question? How would students change the Teenage Bill of Rights to ‘fit’ todays cultural context in Australia?
Most students agreed with the Bill of Rights and some even said it was surprisingly relevant for today’s youth. There were some arguments for adjustment, but in the majority, it was warmly received. My concern is that no on questioned the actual notion of having a Bill of Rights in the first place.
What is a bill of rights? Who is in charge oif writing it. If certain groups are, by consequence of their social or cultural status, positioned to write, enact and enforce the bill of rights, how do we ensure that all ‘teenagers’ are taken care of, respected, acknowledged? Why should we need a Bill of Rights to enshrine the rights of a teenage population – does this imply that their rights are not respected within other aspects of our constitution and law? Are rights lessened for some people of colour, gender, sexuality, religion? It seems that people agreed with having it when it suited their purposes. What about the purposes of others?
Was the advice above useful – which bit did you find most advantageous and why?
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