The teenag­er was invent­ed in the 1950s. Of course, the stages of phys­i­cal devel­op­ment that char­ac­ter­ize those years tak­ing us from child­hood to adult­hood haven’t fun­da­men­tal­ly changed as long as Homo sapi­ens has exist­ed. But even though there were “teenagers” in, say, ancient Rome, they weren’t teenagers as we’ve known them over the past three or four gen­er­a­tions. It hap­pened amid the eco­nom­ic growth of the years after World War II, first in the Unit­ed King­dom and even more so the Unit­ed States: ado­les­cents, espe­cial­ly high-school stu­dents, turned from mere imma­ture adults into a dis­tinct demo­graph­ic group with its own tastes, pol­i­tics, spaces, mobil­i­ty, and cul­ture.

Before teenagers invad­ed the rest of the world, they must have struck vis­i­tors to Amer­i­ca as by turns thrilling and trou­bling. So it was with the stu­dents in the video above, who came to the U.S. in 1955 — the year of Rebel With­out a Cause — as par­tic­i­pants in the New York Her­ald Tri­bune’s World Youth Forum.

This filmed dis­cus­sion on the curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of the Amer­i­can teenag­er fea­tures Min­ji Kari­bo of Nige­ria, Nas­reen Ahmad of Pak­istan, Paik Nak-chung of South Korea, and Ava Lei­t­e­nan of Fin­land, all of whom had just spent a few months vis­it­ing Amer­i­can schools. Lei­t­e­nan begins on a pos­i­tive note: “I did­n’t know there would be so much smile,” she says. “I can just feel the friend­li­ness flow against me.”

But as many a first-time trav­el­er in Amer­i­ca has dis­cov­ered, that char­ac­ter­is­tic (and some­times over­whelm­ing) friend­li­ness masks a more com­plex real­ty. Kari­bo crit­i­cizes Amer­i­can girls who “think it’s fash­ion­able to tell lies about going on dates dur­ing week­ends, when as a mat­ter of fact they sat at home all the time.” After remind­ing every­one that “you can­not judge the amount of free­dom the Amer­i­can chil­dren have by your stan­dard,” Paik admits that “I see such an infor­mal­i­ty between the ages and between the sex­es, I get rather shocked, but the fact that it is shock­ing does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean it is not good for them.”

None of these exchange-stu­dent pan­elists shows more skep­ti­cism about Amer­i­ca than Ahmad, whose glimpses of dat­ing and edu­ca­tion there have con­firmed her pref­er­ence for arranged mar­riage and sex-seg­re­gat­ed schools. Maybe it works for Amer­i­can teenagers, but “if we were giv­en sud­den­ly this amount of free­dom,” she says, “I’m afraid you would get fear­ful con­se­quences.” How­ev­er much the four dis­agree about the ben­e­fits and dan­gers of that free­dom, they all seem to believe that Amer­i­cans could stand to reflect on how to make bet­ter use of it than they do. “I think it is a lack of intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty to use their free­dom prop­er­ly,” says the young Paik, try­ing del­i­cate­ly to pin down the prob­lem with Amer­i­can life.

After the World Youth Forum, Paik trav­eled the world before fin­ish­ing high school in Korea. He would then return to the U.S. to study at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty before start­ing his career as a lit­er­ary crit­ic and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al in his home­land. In 2018 he gave a speech at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go on Kore­a’s “Can­dle­light Rev­o­lu­tion,” and this past sum­mer he pub­lished a new book on D.H. Lawrence, which Kore­an-speak­ers can hear him inter­viewed about here. He’s one of the suc­cess sto­ries among the many par­tic­i­pants in the World Youth Forum, more of whose 1950s dis­cus­sions — on race, on social rela­tions, the Mid­dle-East con­flict — you can watch on this Youtube playlist. 65 years lat­er, no mat­ter our age or nation­al­i­ty, we all have some­thing of the Amer­i­can teenag­er about us. Whether that’s good or bad remains a mat­ter for debate.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome: Get a Glimpse from a TED-ED Ani­ma­tion

1950 Super­man Poster Urged Kids to Defend All Amer­i­cans, Regard­less of Their Race, Reli­gion or Nation­al Ori­gin

How Fin­land Cre­at­ed One of the Best Edu­ca­tion­al Sys­tems in the World (by Doing the Oppo­site of U.S.)

Niger­ian Teenagers Are Mak­ing Slick Sci Fi Films With Their Smart­phones

In Japan­ese Schools, Lunch Is As Much About Learn­ing As It’s About Eat­ing

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

As all of us have noticed in recent months, liv­ing in a viral pan­dem­ic real­ly mess­es with your sense of time. A few months feels like a decade. Time slows to a crawl. If you’re a par­ent, how­ev­er, you have before you walk­ing, talk­ing, grow­ing, com­plain­ing reminders that no mat­ter what’s hap­pen­ing in the world, chil­dren still grow up just the same. They need new expe­ri­ences and new clothes just as before, and they need to keep their brains engaged and try, at least, to build on pri­or knowl­edge.

Maybe we’re learn­ing new things, too. (Adult brains also need exer­cise.) Or not. We have some con­trol over the sit­u­a­tion; kids don’t. “Learn­ing loss” over inac­tive months is real, and the gov­ern­ment still has the respon­si­bil­i­ty (for what the word is worth) to edu­cate them. Online learn­ing may feel like a bad com­pro­mise for many fam­i­lies, and its suc­cess seems large­ly dependent—as in reg­u­lar school—on par­ent involve­ment and access to resources. But it’s bet­ter than eight months of the more mind­less kind of screen time.

It may help to know that remote learn­ing isn’t new, even if we’re still adjust­ing to tech­nol­o­gy that lets teach­ers (and boss­es) into our homes with cam­eras and micro­phones. The chal­lenges “may seem unprece­dent­ed,” Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael Hines writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, but “edu­ca­tors may be sur­prised to learn that almost 100 years ago Chicago’s schools faced sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances” dur­ing the polio epi­dem­ic and met them in a sim­i­lar way. In 1937, an out­break forced the city to close schools, and prompt­ed “wide­spread alarm about lost instruc­tion­al time and stu­dents left to their own devices” (so to speak).

Admin­is­tra­tors were “deter­mined to con­tin­ue instruc­tions for the district’s near­ly 325,000 ele­men­tary age stu­dents” through the only remote tech­nol­o­gy avail­able, radio, “still fair­ly new and large­ly untest­ed in edu­ca­tion in the 1930s.” Accord­ing to Hines, a his­to­ri­an of edu­ca­tion in the U.S., the pro­gram was very well orga­nized, the lessons were engag­ing, and edu­ca­tors “active­ly sought to involve par­ents and com­mu­ni­ties” through tele­phone hot­lines they could call with ques­tions or com­ments. On the first day, they logged over 1,000 calls and added five addi­tion­al teach­ers.

You might be wondering—given dig­i­tal divide prob­lems of online learn­ing today—whether all the stu­dents served actu­al­ly owned a radio and tele­phone. Kather­ine Foss, a pro­fes­sor of Media Stud­ies at Mid­dle Ten­nessee State Uni­ver­si­ty, notes that in the late 1930s, “over 80% of U.S. house­holds owned at least one radio, though few­er were found in homes in the south­ern U.S., in rur­al areas and among peo­ple of col­or.” Those who did­n’t were left out, and school author­i­ties had no way to track atten­dance. “Access issues received lit­tle atten­tion” in the media. School Super­in­ten­dent William John­son had no idea how many stu­dents tuned in.

The local pro­gram last­ed less than three weeks before schools reopened. Some felt the instruc­tion moved too quick­ly and “stu­dents who need­ed more atten­tion or reme­di­a­tion strug­gled through one-size-fits-all radio lessons,” notes Hines. Edu­ca­tors today will sym­pa­thize with the over­all sense at the time that those who ben­e­fit­ted most from the radio lessons were stu­dents who need­ed them least.

Learn more about the exper­i­ment in Hines’ his­to­ry les­son (also see Foss’ recent arti­cle), and con­sid­er the lessons we can apply to the present. Remote edu­ca­tion still has flaws, and par­ents still strug­gle to find time for involve­ment, but the tech­nol­o­gy has made it a viable option for much longer than three weeks, and maybe, giv­en future uncer­tain­ties, far longer than that.

via The Con­ver­sa­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater Adapt­ed Great Nov­els to Radio & Gives Lis­ten­ers Col­lege Cred­it : Hear 110 Episodes from a 1940s eLearn­ing Exper­i­ment

The His­to­ry of the 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic, “The Dead­liest Epi­dem­ic of All Time”: Three Free Lec­tures from The Great Cours­es

Dyson Cre­ates 44 Free Engi­neer­ing & Sci­ence Chal­lenges for Kids Quar­an­tined Dur­ing COVID-19

Free Online Draw­ing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illus­tra­tors

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness