The New York Times published this “Teen-Age Bill of Rights” in 1945
Have you ever considered that you are an invention? Or, at least, do you remember ever feeling like you couldn’t wait to be a teenager or turn 18? What is it to be a teenager?
The “Teenage Bill of Rights” in 1945 in the New York Times is often identified as the first important use of this term [teenage] that defined this new type of people as a social class entitled to specific rights and responsibilities. The accepted history of the “teenager” begins with things like “Rebel Without a Cause” [1955] and the rockers in the 1950s, and it continued through the hippies and beatniks and punks.
Read this TIME Magazine article to gain a deeper understudying:
In this article, Ben Cosgrove suggests that “the modern notion of the teen years as a recognised, quantifiable life stage, complete with its own fashions, behaviour, vernacular and arcane rituals, simply did not exist until the post-Depression era”. In what way is this period in one’s life quantifiable, ritualistic, idiosyncratic?
However, Matt Wolf points out, the idea of the teenager was percolating before the 1940s.
Follow the link below and read the article “Who were the First Teenagers”. In this article, Oatman-Stanford says, in reference to Matt Wolf’s work, Teenage, that: ““Teenage” examines the various movements that paved the way for today’s teen angst, helping audiences empathise with the excitement, fear, and indignation felt by restless youth more than 100 years ago.” Why is the purpose to have audiences “empathise” important? Which audiences need to empathise, why? Adult audiences? Teenage/adolescent audiences?
In the same article, Wolf, quoted by Oatman-Stanford, says: “We identified the publication of the “Teenage Bill of Rights” in 1945 in the New York Times as the first important use of this term that defined this new type of people as a social class entitled to specific rights and responsibilities.” Below is a copy of the Teenage Bill of Rights from 1945. Read it carefully (match up the columns carefully). Do you agree with it? How does it fit the time in which it was produced? How do you know? If you had to write a Bill of Rights for teenagers in Australia in 2018, what would you write?
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