After the 19 th century, when children were treated so badly, there was an understandable impulse to give them a real childhood free from work. Less defensible, perhaps, is the belief that prolonging childhood is a good thing in itself. This institution adolescence is now in serious trouble. Some rethinking was visible April 30 when Theodore Sizer s colleagues and friends gathered at Brown University to commemorate his lifetime of work with young people. Adults have disappeared from the lives of adolescents, said Deborah Meier, founder of the Central Park East school in New York City.
Kids know no one but their peers.
And all this gets worse the closer kids get to adulthood. We have created a separate society for adolescents, said Sheldon White, professor of psychology at Harvard. Maybe this ought to be reappraised. Maybe we ought to re-invent child labor. Young people do work, as someone pointed out.