WY lecture 1
The discovery of Youth and Adolescence
Paper onderwerp: burn-outs onder jongeren
Film fragment: teenage
The written sources are being lectured by young people themselves
Youth
Sociological: a group of people that share… (group characterizations)
o The same age (12-18/25)
o Same social position (left primary school; in secondary and higher education;
allowed to have paid work)
o Same legal status (child law; (not) allowed to drink or smoke, have sex, get
married, have a drivers license, may vote, etc.)
o Same culture: living conditions and life style (leisure time; going out; fashion;
courtship)
Adolescence
Adolescent psychology: individuals who are in a certain stage of individual
development
Beginning with physical changes (sexual maturation) and ends with the point when an
individual is completely independent.
o Fysical (maturity)
o Social
o Cognitive
o Moral
o In general: period of Storm and Stress
Youth and adolescence
Sociological and psychological approach come together:
o Share the same subject
o Share general ideas of youth
But: they are also totally different:
o Group < > individual person
o Cultural and historical (social environment is an important background
element) < > universal (fixed element of the mankind, of the species)
o This makes it different to have an interdisciplinairy focus
History – the discovery of adolescence
, WY lecture 1
Tabula rasa: you are born as a empty box (there is nothing in it, developed from
social environment)
Importance of education (not because they are born as such just because you are
born poor, does not have to mean you will stay poor)
o What children become in their life, is not nature, it is nurture. It is (the lack of)
education, which is defined by your social environment
Second birth
o This period when education is usually finished is just the time to begin; but to
explain this new plan properly, let us take up our story where we left it.
19th century
Importance of education (people became convinced by the importance of education)
o Towards compulsory education
o Age based classical organization
o Growth secondary education (public schools / boarding schools)
They were grouped by age (more or less the same capacities) in stead
of by level (5 and 12 years old in one class, learning how to read)
Juvenile delinquency
o Code pénal – age of distinction
It was focused on the reasons why young people behave this way
o Separate juvenile justice and prisons
Re-education: prevention (for children who came from risk-families,
supervision of the churche etc.)
Neglected youth
o Penal colonies & workhouses
Youth organisations and youth services
o YMCA; Kolping Vereine; Community Centres
19th century: why this?
Enlightenment ideas
Social, economic and political drives
o Industrializing society
o Need for skilled employees
o Moral and religious order (fear of the poor)
o Administration (classification based on age regulations;)
Threshold 20th century
Regulations and institutions (laws for children from unhealthy families)
o Compulsory education/primary schools
o Secondary schools for the well-to-do
o Labor age regulations
o Juvenile delinquency system
o Children and youth laws
o ‘Archipelago’ of youth institutions
o Youth work
Formal and institutionalized distinction between childhood and youth
Institutionalized youth phase for the bourgeois youth
Threshold 20th century
Knowledge, through experience
o Secondary school teachers (Arnold (1850); Mendousse (1909); Spranger
(1925); Gunning (1918)
The discovery of Youth and Adolescence
Paper onderwerp: burn-outs onder jongeren
Film fragment: teenage
The written sources are being lectured by young people themselves
Youth
Sociological: a group of people that share… (group characterizations)
o The same age (12-18/25)
o Same social position (left primary school; in secondary and higher education;
allowed to have paid work)
o Same legal status (child law; (not) allowed to drink or smoke, have sex, get
married, have a drivers license, may vote, etc.)
o Same culture: living conditions and life style (leisure time; going out; fashion;
courtship)
Adolescence
Adolescent psychology: individuals who are in a certain stage of individual
development
Beginning with physical changes (sexual maturation) and ends with the point when an
individual is completely independent.
o Fysical (maturity)
o Social
o Cognitive
o Moral
o In general: period of Storm and Stress
Youth and adolescence
Sociological and psychological approach come together:
o Share the same subject
o Share general ideas of youth
But: they are also totally different:
o Group < > individual person
o Cultural and historical (social environment is an important background
element) < > universal (fixed element of the mankind, of the species)
o This makes it different to have an interdisciplinairy focus
History – the discovery of adolescence
, WY lecture 1
Tabula rasa: you are born as a empty box (there is nothing in it, developed from
social environment)
Importance of education (not because they are born as such just because you are
born poor, does not have to mean you will stay poor)
o What children become in their life, is not nature, it is nurture. It is (the lack of)
education, which is defined by your social environment
Second birth
o This period when education is usually finished is just the time to begin; but to
explain this new plan properly, let us take up our story where we left it.
19th century
Importance of education (people became convinced by the importance of education)
o Towards compulsory education
o Age based classical organization
o Growth secondary education (public schools / boarding schools)
They were grouped by age (more or less the same capacities) in stead
of by level (5 and 12 years old in one class, learning how to read)
Juvenile delinquency
o Code pénal – age of distinction
It was focused on the reasons why young people behave this way
o Separate juvenile justice and prisons
Re-education: prevention (for children who came from risk-families,
supervision of the churche etc.)
Neglected youth
o Penal colonies & workhouses
Youth organisations and youth services
o YMCA; Kolping Vereine; Community Centres
19th century: why this?
Enlightenment ideas
Social, economic and political drives
o Industrializing society
o Need for skilled employees
o Moral and religious order (fear of the poor)
o Administration (classification based on age regulations;)
Threshold 20th century
Regulations and institutions (laws for children from unhealthy families)
o Compulsory education/primary schools
o Secondary schools for the well-to-do
o Labor age regulations
o Juvenile delinquency system
o Children and youth laws
o ‘Archipelago’ of youth institutions
o Youth work
Formal and institutionalized distinction between childhood and youth
Institutionalized youth phase for the bourgeois youth
Threshold 20th century
Knowledge, through experience
o Secondary school teachers (Arnold (1850); Mendousse (1909); Spranger
(1925); Gunning (1918)
