Do Teens Have to be Taught to Care?

In this science article entitled, "Why Teens Don't Care", a study suggests teens can't care. They simply don't seem to be developed enough to have that capacity.

My question after reading the piece is, Should we be teaching them about how to care? What do you think?

Study: Why Teens Don't Care by Sara Goudarzi, LiveScience Staff Writer

"Thinking strategies change with age," said Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. "As you get older you use more or less the same brain network to make decisions about your actions as you did when you were a teenager, but the crucial difference is that the distribution of that brain activity shifts from the back of the brain (when you are a teenager) to the front (when you are an adult)."

Teen thinking

In the study, teens and adults were asked how they would react to certain situations. As they responded, researchers imaged their brains.

Although both adults and teens responded similarly to the questions, their brain activity differed. The medial prefrontal cortex was much more active in the adults than in the teens. However, the teenagers had much more activity in the superior temporal sulcus, the brain area involved in predicting future actions based on previous ones.

Adults were also much faster at figuring out how their actions would affect themselves and other people.

"We think that a teenager's judgment of what they would do in a given situation is driven by the simple question: 'What would I do?'" Blakemore said. "Adults, on the other hand, ask: 'What would I do, given how I would feel and given how the people around me would feel as a result of my actions?'"

Developing sensitivity

Children start taking into account other people's feelings around the age of five. But the ability develops well beyond this age, the new research suggests.

And while some of this sensitivity could be the result of undeveloped regions in the brain, the experience that adults acquire from social interactions also plays an important role.

"Whatever the reasons, it is clear that teenagers are dealing with, not only massive hormonal shifts, but also substantial neural changes," Blakemore said. "These changes do not happen gradually and steadily between the ages of 0–18. They come on in great spurts and puberty is one of the most dramatic developmental stages."

Here's a Radical Idea

Keith Olberman interviewed Bill Clinton recently. You won't believe what Clinton said! The bold lettering is my emphasis.

From Clinton: We must get back to thinking, former President Bill Clinton sits down with 'Countdown's' Keith Olbermann

Getting back to thinking
OLBERMANN: So that’s involvement on a global scale on life and death issues, on the essential quality of life issues.

Here in this country, at the moment, there seem to be a lot of us who think that there are—we are having trouble getting people involved in defending essential ingredients of our country and our heritage. We’ve heard a lot about anyone who disagrees with the current administration’s policy in Iraq or on the war on terror, or even disputes their facts or questions them, would be suffering from moral or intellectual confusion.

The president talked about how in the world you could disagree with him. It’s unacceptable to think that we could ever be doing anything in any interrogation process that might be similar to what the terrorists do. When those of us worry about the future of the country and the past of the country, worry about our heritage, what we stand for, are we overreacting? Are we nuts? Are we exaggerating? Would you feel this is a threat?

CLINTON: No, let me say, first of all, you know, on a lot of these issues I’m more close to where you are. I think what’s the great disservice, though, that’s been done here in the last few years is not that let’s say the administration disagrees with you or me on whether there should be an Abu Ghraib or a Guantanamo or what the economic or social policies of America should be.

The great disservice is the creation of the idea that if you disagree with the people that are in, you’re somehow, you don’t love your country and you can’t be trusted to defend it. What we have to do is to get back to a point, to thinking in America and to promoting honest debate and honest diffences, so that like, if you asked, and I would urge you to do this, if you interview somebody in the administration, no matter how much you disagree with them, don’t be snide. Give them a straight up chance to say how they disagree with you.

I think that one of the things I’ve tried to do with this Global Initiative is not only to find common ground for disparate people, but also to have people calm down enough to actually air their differences of opinion. Like you take this interrogation dealing. We might all say the same thing if, let’s say Osama bin Laden’s number three guy were captured and we knew a big bomb was going off in America in three days.

It turns out right now there’s an exception for those kind of circumstance in an immediate emergency that’s proven in the military ranks. But that’s not the same thing as saying we want to abolish the Geneva Convention and practice torture as a matter of course. All it does is make our soldiers vulnerable to torture. It makes us more likely to get bad, not good information.

OLBERMANN: Right.

CLINTON: And every time we get some minor victory out of it, we’ll make a hundred more enemies, so I think these things, I really think we need to think through all of this and debate more. So, no I think it’s wrong for you to be portrayed as not patriotic. I think that’s wrong, but I think that those of us who are on the, kind of the progressive side of the ledger, we ought to find a way to say what our differences are in a way that even our adversaries can hear.

I’ve gotten a lot of big crowds this year of people who are unusually quiet. Because they just want to think. They’re tired of this labelling and name calling and we’re not patriotic and all that. They know that’s a whole bunch of bull and they just want to think it through. That’s why I think the CGI was phenomenally successful this year. People said, OK, here’s something I can do that is profoundly good and positive. No one’s going to question my motives and I’ll either succeed or fail based on the results.

Wow! With all the negative publicity schools get who would have thought thinking would become a political talking point?