I still haven’t finished my article on the high school brain, but I’m determined to post something this week, so here’s a great quote about misbehaving teenagers:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Really gets at the struggles that parents and teachers face, huh? Well, it might surprise you to learn that this quote comes from Aristophanes’s play The Clouds which was first performed in 423BC. Those wild Athenian kids, huh? Turns out we’re not the first generation to struggle with how to raise kids respectfully in an increasingly disrespectful world. Teens continue to be viewed as self-serving consumers brainwashed by the popular culture, and yet, they keep growing up into adults who turn out alright. Obviously, we still need to discipline our youth, but I’m writing this so that you can have a little hope when a teen mouths off to you or turns a cold shoulder: we’ve been dealing with this kind of thing for at least 2,500 years, and it seems to have worked out alright so far. More than likely, it will continue to.
Grace and Peace,
Tom