Alison Gopnik's "What's Wrong With The Teenage Mind? "presents science as a reason for youth to reach puppetry at a younger age and adulthood at an older one, thus creating "teenage weirdness." Gopnik agrees that "If you think of the teenage brain as a car, today's adolescents acquire an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake." The article states that there are two different neural and psychological systems that help turn teenagers into adults. The first system deals with emotion and motivation. "It is very closely linked to the biological and chemical changes of puberty..." This system is what makes young children become restless and emotional teens. The second system deals with control. It harnesses our energy. This system helps our decision-making and impulses. Gopnik hopes that by using this information "We can actually shape and change..." The adolescent brain.
Who is Gopnik to judge the mind of a teenager? Was she not once one of us? Gopnik asks “What happened to the gifted, imaginative child…” Well, that child has entered the world of a teenager. This world is harder than any other world that exists. That child has just entered a world full of heartbreak, hopelessness, and hate. The article states that children are reaching puberty faster and adulthood later. I disagree. Teenagers of this generation are having to grow up faster than ever. We are going through the hardest time of our lives, and having to go through situations adults can’t even handle. Gopnik states that the reason for teenage “weirdness” is two biological systems that have become unbalanced over time. She concludes that these unbalanced systems create reckless energetic teens. The teens I know are tired and very low on energy. What teens are Gopnik referring to? The teens today are nothing like the ones described in the article. Gopnik agrees that “... children have very little experience with the kinds of tasks that they’ll have to perform as grown-ups.” In the video “ A Vision of Students Today” we learned that most students are being prepared for jobs that don’t even exist yet. Why are we so overlooked? From the viewpoint of this article we are a reckless weird underprepared generation. Gopnik suggests that getting summer jobs would be a good opportunity for”real responsibilities.” We do have real responsibilities. Although we may be stereotyped as the lazy, irresponsible generation we still have many things to balance, like school homework jobs and homelife. Gopnik closes the article by saying “The good news, in short, is that we don’t have to just accept the developmental patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them.” Who are you to even suggest altering the mind of a human? Let alone a child growing into the person they will spend their life being. Particles in our body do not decide what type of person we will be. We decide that ourselves.
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