Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says young people need to shift more quickly from childhood to adulthood
He's right.
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He's wrong.
Side Score: 14
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I didn't read the article, but he's absolutely correct. We've created a sub-childhood through legislation which has bled into popular conscious. Or perhaps the other way around, it's a chicken/egg thing. 200 years ago, if you were 12, you were working your ass off. And (forgive my bluntness) if you were old enough to produce sperm or have fertile eggs, you were old enough to breed. We've subverted our youth to respect authoritarianism over individualism. Our laws right now prove exactly what I'm saying. On one had, we say you're culpable as an adult (trying juveniles as adults for crimes), yet we say you're not responsible enough to decide when and who you want to have sex with, and myriad other rights that are not granted to teenagers. We have total hypocrisy within our legal system, and a society where this is reinforced through fear and the idea that parents need to "control" their children, rather than raise them to be intelligent adults. Side: He's right.
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LMAO...It must be play on word night here or something...and that's an excellent one! In my opinion Newt Gingrich was rarely correct in the way he thought and the things he would state as fact when they were nothing more than the temper tantrums of a little boy who had been slighted. He was a deeply polarizing figure while Speaker of the House. He was the direct cause of the Federal government shut-down in 1995 when President Clinton refused to sign a bill which included major cuts to Medicare. Gingrich orchestrated a plan to NOT submit a revised budget allowing most of the bill to expire,thereby shutting down parts of the Federal government for lack of funding. Sadly and much to his detriment, he announced he had been slighted when President Clinton "rudely" made he and Bob Dole to sit at the rear of Air Force One after the funeral for Yizhak Rabin in Israel. Perhaps he'd like to end adolescence hoping he, himself, may be able to finally advance into adulthood. In any event, his is the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard on this subject. Side: He's wrong.
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Gingrich completely forgets about recent advancements in psychology starting with enlightenment thinkers and Freud. The reason adolescence exists is because children's minds aren't fully developed yet. Secondly he blames societies woes on adolescence, when this has very little to do with it. The U.S. does not have the highest drug rate, and a high teen pregnancy and STD rate because of adolescence. It has a lot more to do with the fact that in this country we have a higher rate of children born into poverty then any other first world nation, and we have religion. Side: He's wrong.
Freud was a cokehead, sex-obsessed moron whose ideas eventually lead to the suicide of one of his grandchildren (thanks to that moonbat Anna), and other shitty results for the rest of them. Yes, teenage brains aren't fully developed, but what does that mean, precisely? and why should that lead to treating them as second-class citizens? A 13 year old is completely aware of the way of the world (albeit not with all the nuances we learn as we experience said world). They're capable as reproductive and reasonable, sentient beings, and should be treated as such. He doesn't seem to be blaming society's woes on this problem, more just pointing out that this false dichotomy has lead to a division of not only society but our collective conscious of how we view ourselves and our children. Fixing children being born into poverty requires fixing poverty, not children. Side: He's right.
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One at a time - Yes Freud was a cokehead, but he was also one of the first people to study the mind from a scientific standpoint. This means that we can treat disorders, not just assume they're broken and send them to an asylum -I wasn't saying that we shouldn't treat children as more mature, I think that we definitely should do that. What I am saying is that getting rid of adolescence is a dumb idea in the same way throwing someone into the water to teach them to swim the first time is a bad idea. 36% of tenth graders, and 47% of twelfth graders say they have used illegal drugs, according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan. One of every four girls has a sexually transmitted disease, suggests a recent study for the Centers for Disease Control. A methamphetamine epidemic among the young is destroying lives, families, and communities. And American students are learning at a frighteningly slower rate than Chinese and Indian students. -In case you missed what he was saying in the very first paragraph he says that the only way to cure these problems is to get rid of adolescence and then he blames it for poverty - I never said children were the reason for poverty, I said that the reason we have so many problems in our society was because of poverty, not adolescence. If we address the issue of the wealth disparity in our nation then we would go a long way to solving the problems that Gingrich cites in this article The whole argument is simplistic. Thinking that adolescence is the root cause for all these problems is one part hilarious, three parts sad. Paying kids to go to school? I mean really... Side: He's wrong.
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