Leon Botstein's “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood”, says that high school is not anywhere near what the tradition used to be. The typical American high school in earlier times was for the transition of children, but it is now holding back young adults from what their full potential could possibly be. In fact, teenagers are maturing faster in modern days in such a rush to grow up, having sexual activities sooner than anticipated, and even puberty is occurring earlier in kids lives, especially girls. His argument throughout the paper is how teenagers should be put into college and the world at age sixteen rather than the normal American high school age of graduation, 18. I agree with this argument, because coming from a teenager, I would much rather be in college and have the freedoms I have heard of for the past couple years now, at my age of sixteen. I have the ability to work hard and live on my own because my parents have raised me up to be and independent person and take care of myself without mommy and daddy’s help all the time. If other people have raised their children to do things by themselves and make something of themselves at a young age, why not let them? All it takes would be motivation and proper training for all sixteen year olds to be put in the real world.
In addition, I agree with Botstein’s position on who runs the high schools. Jocks, attractive students, and the popular by association people are the ones who own the school. If the fact, if the outsider of the high school is usually the most successful one, why let them suffer for a couple more years instead of letting them bloom outside high school? Yes, there are exceptions, such as sports stars who go pro, singers, successful doctors who were popular in high school, but wouldn’t that just make everyone shine their greatness onto their community sooner? This situation goes right along with Thomas Paine’s argument in “The Rights of Man”. In his attack on Edmund Burke, who did not want to change the original style of government because it had worked previously, Paine believes that if a society and people change, show should the style of government to match the people of that time period. The same concept should go with the education style. No one can help that teenagers and kids are growing up and maturing faster than in the past, so instead of trying to change what American’s cannot control, why not change what we can to match the people of our society today? Botstein says that “Elementary school should begin at age four or five and end in the sixth grade. We should entirely abandon the concept of the middle school and junior high school.” High school should begin with the seventh grade, and then be four years of secondary education that we may call high school and end at the age of 16 instead of 18. This tradition should be put in place to match how much the teenagers could contribute to the community and meet the level of the high schooler’s maturity in modern times.
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