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Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN13: 9780380728534
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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In the groundbreaking work, Thomas Hine examines the American teenager as a social invention shaped by the needs of the twentieth century. With intelligence, insight, imagination, and humorm he traces the culture of youth in America-from the spiritual trials of young Puritans and the vision quests of Native Americans to the media-blitzed consumerism of contempory thirteen-to-nineteen -year-olds. The resulting study is a glorious appreciation of youth that challenges us to confront our sterotypesm, rethink our expectations, and consider anew the lives of those individuals who are blessing, our bane, and our future.
Providing a historical perspective on a modern phenomenon is no easy task, but Thomas Hine has done an admirable job cataloging that ever-changing creature we know as the American teenager. Beginning with a look at colonial times and ending with the present-day burger-flipping menaces portrayed in the press, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager is a fascinating look at a culture that we take for granted in these times, yet is quite a recent development. Looking deeply at the economic and educational realities of people ages 10 through 20 over the last 300 years, Hine takes readers through a world where teens were expected to contribute greatly to their family's financial well-being; in fact, in the early years of the industrial revolution, employers would often refuse to hire the head of the household unless he had several sons to offer as part of a package deal. While the first few chapters cover 50 to 100 years in one shot, time moves less rapidly beginning with the 20th century, and each decade earns its own complete chapter. Using personal stories from revolutionary-era students, 19th-century millworkers and immigrants, and classic all-American cheerleaders from the 1950s, we're given an accurate picture of what life was really like for inexperienced kids. The evolution of modern education is closely examined and will provide a wealth of interesting insights for today's educators. What was once meant as a viable alternative to the college experience has now simply become a holding pen for teens, some who may go on to a university, some who are destined to join the ranks of the perpetually underemployed. The last chapter offers a few possible suggestions for bringing realistic change into the current system; the rest of the book is sure to provide plenty of inspiration for readers to invent their own set of educational possibilities. --Jill Lightner
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| Historical chronology of adolescence |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Hine has given readers the opprotunity to see into the development of one of the most interesting creatures in the known universe, the american teenager. Readers are taken on a journey from the days when young people (teens) were called young adults to today where adolescence has been prolonged into the middle 20's to early 30's, in some cases. Why? Hine ties it all to the development of and mandatory attendance at high school. Without it, young people would have a harder time developing their own since of culture seperate from the larger culture of society.
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| Death to Teenagers; Long live Young Adults! |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The American concept of teenagers is explored in a history spanning 400 years by Thomas Hine in his book: The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager. Hine quotes diaries, sermons, newspapers, histories, and other non-fiction to detail the evolution of "The Teenager" beginning with the first settlers and ending with goths lounging in Disneyland. Past eras treated "those aged 13-18" differently due to varying social and economic circumstances. The experience of a Lowell, Mass. Maiden during Industrialization is vastly different from the experience of 1920s newsie, and both are different from the the post-WWII, high-school-attending teen.
Hine gives very detailed accounts of young peoples' lives in different eras of US History to support his assertion that "the Teenager" is now an alienating, potentially damaging social construct. In colonial and pre-industrialized eras, youth labor was vital to household economies, individual psycho-social development, and the functioning of communities. For example, in the 18th and 19th centuries, youth were treated differently according to their abilities, sexual maturation, and experience. Large, sexually mature men were given men's work at a devalued wage. Young women, during Industrialization, were called upon to work in textile factories. Currently, teens can only work in supportive service jobs at minimum wage. The wage devaluation remains intact but the implicit trust in a teen's abilities to handle anything resembling adult work is gone.
Hine analyzes the philosophic underpinnings of socially delayed maturation, and the consequences of this approach. Teens are discouraged from experimenting with employment, sex and alcohol, meanwhile the time allotted for the being a teen lengthens. Marriage, sex, and pregnancy-- behaviors that were normal for teens in past eras-- are now considered failings of families and society. Drinking and smoking have evolved from a childish rite of passage to misdemeanor crimes. Instead of being "risky," teens are segregated in bureaucratic educational institutions and their adulthood is infinitely delayed. Currently, many Americans in their mid-20s are considered too young for full-time employment and marriage. These YAs' brash disregard for WWII-era morality concerning sex, marriage, drinking, and drugs is tolerated by their boomer parents (who didn't necessarily conform to their parents' ideals either), but "being adult" still creates friction between the generations. Hine argues that the concept of the teenager is a mythical concept that has been so distorted that it is now only harmful, and no longer useful, to our society. Teens today have no physical space to interact, and moreover, they are treated to unchecked adult suspicion. Teen unemployment and delayed employability have been steadily rising, and yet the age in which a teen can be treated as a criminal has dropped considerably. Steve Harmon, an imprisoned, 16-year-old ruefully and ironically acknowledges this dichotomy in the Walter Dean Myer's YA prison novel, Monster, when he says "They didn't allow kids in the visiting area, which was funny. It was funny because if I wasn't locked up, I wouldn't be allowed to come into the visiting room." Hine posits that teens lack a place in American society because "The Teenager" concept has grown vague, stifling, and unwieldy. The lack of clear youth roles in society feeds adult suspicion of teens. Both teens' status in the social matrix and adult suspicion, in turn, feed teens' anger at their interminably delayed adulthood and social disenfranchisement. Hine urges readers to consign "the teenager" to history and create more open, clearer social roles for young adults not based in anger, bureaucracy, and suspicion.
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| The rise and fall of the American Teenager |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager by Thomas Hine we are introduced to the old and modern teenager. Hine uses socialogical, psichological and anthropological data, we realize that it is not always crystal clear. It is a moving historical process, therefore there are many different elements that must be considered when attenting to understand today's dynamic teens. We must keep in mind that we cannot solely view teens through our modern lens, but must be aware of what has come before.
In today's job market a high school diploma, and even arguably a college degree, is essential for success.
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| Wow. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I could not put this book down once I began reading it.
It was entertaining, informative, and really made me question the way teenagers are classified today. The amount of both freedom and responsibility granted to younger adults in earlier generations is amazing in comparison to the idleness and lack of direction granted to them today. I'm fascinated by the evolution of the high school--beginning as an actual *useful* place for building work skills and as a replacement for college and how it has evolved into a glorified babysitting service that regurgitates information. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the varied places of youth in America across history.
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| How the Teen Culture Came to Dominate America |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Today, because of the massive American youth culture, we take the descriptive term "teenager" for granted. Young people enter their teenager years and seem to become part of another world, children no longer, but not full participants in the adult culture of work and responsibility. At one time, teenagers wanted to grow up rapidly, aspiring to take on the trappings of adulthood as quickly as possible, but today millions of young men and women seem dedicated to hanging on to their youth through their thirties and forties. Because of the pervasiveness of the youth culture, we have forgotten that the concept of a teenager is a social development and a relatively recent one. The idea of the teenager only occurred as America began to achieve relative affluence, when parents - whether farmers or shopkeepers - could afford to have their offspring attend school for a longer time. As these young people began to attend secondary school - and it was only in the 1920's when more than half of our children were educated through high school - and to have more leisure time, the term "teenager" was coined. It was this combination of time and affluence that made the teenager a young consumer to be marketed to. In "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" Thomas Hine shows the evolution of the concept of the teenager and the history of American youth culture. He is a professional journalist who writes with a strong narrative drive. He has an eye for detail and is particularly adept at choosing interesting subjects for his books and articles. By following young adults throughout American history, he has shown a light on a subject that has not been illuminated in the same way before.
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