The Privileged Adolescent (PDF)

ADOLESCENCE is an artificial state, created by the demands of complex modem society for further education. Youth is prolonged by the requirements of training, apprenticeship, school, college and university, and those who are better intellectually endowed than others face a time of further education that may last from at least three to six years after leaving school. As such they are privileged by the opportunities they can enjoy-and the student who belongs to the educational elite of today can belong to the social elite of tomorrow's world. These privileged adolescents, however, have much need of un­ derstanding, sympathy, and help through the crises of develop­ ment, be they social, psychological or environmental in cause-because the student of today is the most precious investment for the community' sfuture. Whether it be problems of academic wastage, stress, depression, adjustment to personal relationships or the demands of just simply growing up, the privileged adolescent has a difficult time in contemporary society. If we, as parents, doctors, teachers, taxpayers and adults are responsible for making it any more difficult than it ought to be, by prejudice, lack of understanding or through not offering the right help at the right time, then we bear a terrible responsibility. Society will suffer for the harm it causes its adolescents and there are many who feel, perhaps justifiably, that addiction, promiscuity, suicide, depression and neurosis are symptoms of 'social illness' marked out by individual tragedy.