Yet Another Way to Fail Our Youth

      We see kids and the things they do and shake our heads.  We are constantly asking the question, "My god, what were you thinking.  The truth of the matter is they aren't.  Modern society doesn't make them think.  In fact it doesn't let them think, and anyone who will make them think is branded as cruel, and robbing them of the bliss of their youth.  Sure, we make them memorize facts for school, so they can regurgitate them out on paper for a test, but make them think about serious, life matters, and it's not gonna happen.
      Kids today are lacking in a concept of responsibility.  Many of them shirk the responsibilities they have, and don't take responsibility for their actions.  Why?  We, or rather our modern society made them that way.  They are shielded from responsibility and consequences.  I know a teacher who was let go (let's say it like it really is - he was fired) for breaking up a fight between two 6th grade students.  It wasn't because he broke up the fight - he was commended for that, but apparently he told the kid who did the attacking that he would probably be suspended for his actions.  The boy's parents and the administrative staff told this teacher that a "child" this age should not have to be made to worry or be upset over consequences.  Good bye teacher - hello future criminal.
      Modern society deliberately defers adulthood and its responsibilities.  So, when I say "kids today" I'm not talking like the old geezers who said things like this, in comparing their generation with the one they were complaining about.  It's not like The Who singing about "My, my, my, my, my generation."  By "kids today" I mean the last 130 years or so compared with the previous thousands of years of human civilization.  
      According to social scientists and social historians such as Dr. John Springhall, Dr. Harry Blatterer, Dr. L. Steinberg, and others, Adolescence was a late Victorian era invention.  It arose, they cite, as a response to the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution and its social affects.
      Two main ideas went into its creation.  One wast that certain people of the rising upper-middle classes (who were also becoming conscious of the existence and plights of people other than themselves), felt that the millennia long status quo for turning people into adults just wasn't working.  The second was suspicious and jealous women worried that the men they knew would find some young girl while working in the factories of the big city.  A third contributing factor related to the second (the invention of adolescence for females) was the high number of widows and the burden it was to care for them all.  The majority of women became widows in their latter forties to their mid fifties.
      Let's take a peek at what it was like before all that social re-engineering.  As a blacksmith, who demonstrates the craft to the public at educational, historical events I have studied in depth the apprenticeship program for blacksmiths.  A boy would usually begin his apprenticeship when he was about eight years old.  Yes, you read that right.  Eight years old.  Imagine for a moment any eight year old kid, or imagine yourself when you were eight years old and remember what you were like (oh oh, I just did that and a whole host of images of some of the absolutely stupid and dorky things I did then totally flooded my mind - maybe imagining that wasn't such a good idea).
      Like I said in previous posts, people then were truly made of something different.  This eight year old boy with his two front teeth still missing would pack up some clothes with his father and they would travel up to about two weeks travel away.  They would go to a man's house who had an adjoining blacksmith shop.  The boy would be left in a different room while his father and the blacksmith would talk.  The boy would want to get up and listen in on their conversation, but wouldn't do it, because he knew that doing so was forbidden, and children respected authority (what a novel concept!).  His father then would sign a piece of paper, and the two men would share a glass of whiskey or rum.  Then the father would come in and say good bye to his son, and leave.  At eight years old the boy had left home to go live with a stranger and learn a trade.  And he was just far enough away that he could not go wander home if he got homesick.  He would just cry, get it out of his system, and get over it. 
      During his apprenticeship the boy would have many responsibilities (another novel concept).  His primary responsibility was keeping the fire going in the forge.  He had to clean the ash out in the morning, and prepare it and have it going and hot enough to work with it by the time the master blacksmith showed up to run the shop.  In larger shops there would also be journeymen and probably other apprentices.  Depending on the situation, the apprentice  might also have the responsibilities  of keeping the fire in the home hearth as well, and might also have the duties of cooking and cleaning.  He would also have to go pick up raw steel and iron and coal for supplies and make deliveries of finished product.  He would have a place to sleep, but it might be out in the barn, or in the smithy itself.  Larger shops had a bunk house for everyone. 
      A wise apprentice would also take the time to "learn his letters and numbers" (this is what they called reading, writing. and arithmetic).  Without knowing this a blacksmith could never become a master smith and own his own shop.  Learning to read and write and do math, was not mandatory.  People didn't waste their time.  It was only taught to those who wanted to learn it.  Legally a master blacksmith had to be able to keep accurate records.  Speaking of which, in the list of possessions the blacksmith owned, he had to list all of his apprentices.  Yes, an apprentice was legal property.  If an apprentice ran away it was considered stealing, and when caught would be prosecuted and punished as a criminal. 
      Up to the first five years of a boy's seven year long apprenticeship could be spent doing these menial chores.  However, standing right there, pumping the bellows, the boy was in a prime spot to watch the blacksmith practice his craft.  The final two years, according to the contract, would be spent actually pounding the metal.  In his final couple of months he would start building a bunch of tools.  When it was all over, and the boy was fifteen years old, the master would give the boy a bucket for the tools he made, and a pack sack with a couple changes of clothing, some travel food, and travel money.  He would then be sent away to go on a journey to find another shop (hence the name "journeyman").
      He had to go someplace to learn how to make other things.  If he apprenticed with a country blacksmith he would have made farm type implements and would have had to learn the job of wheelwright as well.  His school was a real working shop with real customers with real needs, and could therefore only learn to make what the local clientele needed.  Therefore he might go to a big city and maybe a coastal city, and learn how to make the things needed by city dwellers, and things like ship's tackle.  Apprenticeships were basically the same for all the trades. 
      Nevertheless, at about fifteen years old he was on his own in the world.  He had to rent his own room and figure out where his next meal was coming from on his own.  How many fifteen year olds do you know that could pull that off with any measure of success?  Think of yourself at fifteen (oh no, I did it again, but now it's a whole other set of images of a dorky kid).  Many of these kids (who were called young men) on their own got into trouble.  Maybe they discovered alcohol (the "Nancy Whiskey"), or gambling, or prostitution, or some combination of them all.  Due to their choices they could end up in prison or even dead.  Whatever choices they made though, bad or good, they had to deal with the consequences for those choices, and these consequences were never held back. 
      Of the adult responsibilities they now had to deal with, at fifteen marriage was not one of them.  Very few fathers would allow their daughter to be wed to someone just starting out as a journeyman.  The father wanted his daughter to marry someone who had proved to be successful and maybe even owned his own home.
      "Did girls ever become blacksmiths?", I am often asked.  Yes, but it was not at all common.  A girl was expected to get married.  However, by the time a girl was eleven or twelve her parents knew if she would be too cantankerous, contentious, mouthy, or just plain cranky to be married.  Then the father would try to find her a trade, because she couldn't live at home much longer than fourteen or fifteen.  One woman in the 18th century became a very successful master blacksmith and owned several shops along the east coast of the American Colonies.
      So girls entered adulthood at about fourteen or fifteen at that time too, via marriage (and in frontier regions they could be married by as young as twelve years old - Mary, the mother of Jesus was probably about twelve or thirteen when she gave birth to Jesus).  And their marriages were usually to someone about ten to fifteen years older than she was.  After the creation of adolescence, and some subsequent laws surrounding it there was a whole generation of men who had no one to marry, as the wide age differences were no longer culturally acceptable, and girls were then married to boys closer to their own age.  That was the era of the bachelors.
      Because of the mistakes these young adults made, and the consequences of these mistakes, many people in power decided that some sort of program for apprenticeship into adulthood had to be created.  That was adolescence.  Instead of letting them go off and make mistakes that could be harmful or fatal, they were held back in a quasi childhood a few years longer, so that they could learn how to be successful adults first.  Then they could be given their full rights and responsibilities as adults. 
      What this has done over the last 130 plus years is create a whole new set of problems without ever getting rid of the old problems.  Since they are held legally to still be children, they fall to the occasion, and continue to act like children.  All we have done is delay those harmful and sometimes fatal mistakes.  Until they have to face the consequences for their own decisions they aren't going to grow up.  They can be told what decisions they need to make till the teller is blue in the face, but they need to make decisions for themselves - even if they're wrong - if the are to learn from them.  That's why some of them are shocked and angry when they have to deal with a consequence or four for the first time in their lives when they are already in their early twenties.  Parents try to shield their kids from consequences.  After they have long moved out of the house there are reports that angry mothers have gone to the place of work of their children to tell off their boss.  Some young adults are so dismayed by what the real world is, that they go into a movie theater and randomly shoot people. 
      Our youth need the privilege to experience responsibilities, and consequences.  The question is, how do you re-institute them now after so long?