Student Responses to "Facing the Problems of Youth"
by Eleanor Roosevelt
Created by the students in Joseph M. Gardewin's Social Studies classes, Sacred Hearts Academy, Honolulu, Hawaii.
For other teaching ideas, visit the Lesson Plans section to the Dear Mrs. Roosevelt Feature.
... So when the young one decides to be "open" to his/her parents, they forget how to be understanding and end up over-reacting to the situation because they are looking at their child as a little child and not as a growing and young adult. So, it's confusing for teenagers because parents are constantly nagging them about not talking or not having a relationship with one another, but how can they when the parents seem so quick to criticize rather than understand.
... It is also so true that we want adults who understand. We won't learn anything if we don't talk and understand each other. Like at ________ practice. ... My coach is yelling at me and telling me I'm doing terrible. He doesn't know it's because I was having problems at school with my friends and with my boy friend. He also won't care to even ask, so why should I care to do better? ... He also won't know my leg hurts because why should I tell him? He'll think I'm being a wimp just to get out of practice....
It is still true today that parents seem to always lay down the law without letting the kids take part in the law making. ... They (adults) always want to be the decision-maker....
. . . You could say my grades faced the "Great Depression." I did not care anymore. My mother did not listen to me, so I did not listen to her. Just recently my mother received the semester report card. It was still low. I guess she realized her degrading remarks, constant scoldings and groundings did not affect me. ... She took a different approach called understanding. She told me she tried her best to teach me, but now it is all up to me. In other words she gave me the gift of independence. Now, I know we are seeing eye to eye. That is why, this quarter, I am granting my mother's wish and pulling out those A's. Our relationship has grown stronger.
Many parents and adults today fell that just because they are the older person, they are the superior being. My mom, for instance, listens to me, but doesn't relate to me. Everything is wrong or not perfect (as she wishes) in her eyes. This is my life, not hers. Some decisions, she needs to learn, are my own ... to be chosen (and answered to) by me, the one who will live with the (results) of her actions.
"Wow!" was my reaction first reaction after reading this essay written by Eleanor Roosevelt. For the first time, I've heard of someone, an adult, who understands what the youth of our society think and feel. I think it is ironic that someone from such a long time ago is able to relate to the thoughts of adolescents sixty-four years later. I agree that it (the essay) is incredible and believe that if only every adult took time to think and reflect on Mrs. Roosevelt's points, there would be a better understanding and closer communication between parents and children, teachers and students and the elderly and the young.
Education today is not purely a question of the education of youth; it is a question of the education of parents, because so many parents, I find, have lost their hold on their children. One reason for this is that they insist on laying down the law without allowing a free intellectual interchange of ideas between themselves and the younger generation. I believe that as we grow older we gain some wisdom, but I do not believe that we can take it for granted that our wisdom will be accepted by the younger generation. We have to be prepared to put our thinking across to them. We cannot simply expect them to say, "Our older people have had experience and they have proved to themselves certain things, therefore they are right." That isn't the way the best kind of young people think. They want to experience for themselves. I find they are perfectly willing to talk to older people, but they don't want to talk to older people who are shocked by their ideas, nor do they want to talk to older people who are not realistic.
We might just as well accept things which are facts as facts and not try to imagine that the world is different, more like what we idealized in the past. I have a letter just the other day from a mother who told me that she had brought up several daughters, and that they never did certain things which are very common today among young people. She was sure that if we never countenanced or spoke of certain things in our homes our children would never do those things. Well, it just so happens that I have a number of boys and they happen to know the mother's girls. I have, therefore, seen a good deal of them, and they did every single thing that their mother told me they never did. I think it would have been far better if she had established a type of genuine relationship with her children which would have allowed them to be honest with her. Then she would have had an opportunity to put across her own ideas with some kind of hope that they would at least be considered.
But if the relationship is such that youth has no desire to talk to older people, then, I think, it is entirely impossible to help the youth of today—and they need help badly. I think they are very glad to have it, too, when it is given in a spirit of helpfulness, not self-righteousness. We don't need to idealize things that are past; they look glamorous, but perhaps they were not so glamorous when we really lived through them.
My own feeling would be that the most important education is the education which will enable us, both in our homes and in our schools, to understand the real problems that our children have to meet today. It is easy enough to impart book knowledge, but it is not so easy to build up the relationship between youth and older people which is essential to the working out of their problems—very difficult problems on which young people need our leadership and our understanding.
We cannot pass over the fact that the world is a hard world for youth and that so far we have not really given their problems as much attention as we should. We smile—I smiled myself the other day when one young boy said that he hoped to go in and clean up politics. Politics need to be cleaned up, of course. Everything that is human needs that particular kind of enthusiasm. But we older people know that we don't always succeed as easily as these young ones think they can. Yet I doubt if we should smile. I think that we should welcome their help, and find places where this tremendous energy that is in youth—if it cannot be used immediately in making a living—may at least be used where it is so greatly needed today.
I should like to leave with you this one idea which I have been thinking about a great deal of late: the necessity for us as parents, as teachers, as older people, to put our minds on the problems of youth, to face realities, to face the world as it is and the lives that they have to live—not as we wish they were, but as they are—and, having done that, to give our sympathetic help in every way that we can.
Parents also idealize our society.... I know this because I hear stories about "Back in the day when I was ...." at least once a week. Parents expect their kids to act the way they did when they were their age. Idealizing one society into that of another is a normal (parental) activity. Yet, parents should not expect their children to be exactly like them, to dress like them, or to have the same job.... No two societies are exactly alike.
... I feel like I can't express my feelings towards my parents. ...I am close to my mother, but I am not comfortable talking to her about my problems. I also have a hard time expressing my feelings towards how I feel about my relationship with my parents. I think that every person that I know who is the same age as me is probably going through the same (thing) as me.
We might not show it, but we do need help. It's sometimes hard to tell the older people what we feel and that we need help with our problems. (The author) stressed very difficult problems on which young people need leadership and our understanding. She's right, we need help as much as adults do.
I believe that parents are a major part of the "teenage rebel" problem. It is true that we need the knowledge of the elders (and that) it can teach us, but we need to teach the elders that we are capable of setting our own goals. ... They need to understand that we too want what is best for us and only we can decide and act upon what we truly want to make of ourselves.
...I feel that ... the problems which we face today are much more complex and scary than those faced 20 years ago. I think it is a waste of time when adults tell us, "OK, when I was young the problems we faced were so ...." Now days we are faced with drugs, AIDS and so much more that are not comparable to days before. But, with all I just said, I do still realize that — one way or another — older people just do those things to try and protect us because they love us.
... Over protection is a problem also. Parents are too strict or too close minded to learn that they can't always be there for their kids. Letting kids go on their own (allows them to) learn from their mistakes and prepare for independence. If kids are always under the "care" of their parents, they'll be more vulnerable later on in the "world" because the "world" is not "home."
I believe parents "insist on laying down the law without allowing a free intellectual interchange of ideas between themselves and the younger generation." I agree with this because I can relate to it. I feel I never get to express what I feel because my thoughts won't be (taken) into consideration. I'm sometimes afraid or don't even ask or talk about things because of the reaction that may occur or I don't want to hear the same old lecture again. So I don't make an attempt. I want more freedom.