C H A P T E R 3 :
WHAT ARE TEENS UP TO AND DO THEIR PARENTS
AND TEACHERS KNOW?
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Overview
In order to better understand students' prospects for the future, we decided to explore
students' lives today:
·
Do they have a lot of friends and get along with their parents?
·
Are they often bored and do they get into trouble a lot?
·
Are they stressed out?
·
Do they feel connected to or alienated from their lives at home and at school?
One possible hint of things to come is that students with a lower quality of life and
those who are alienated from home and school are less confident about achieving
their goals for the future.
Quality of Life
How well are junior and senior high school students doing in their lives today? On
several measures, teens report a good quality of life (Exhibit 3.1). Most teens report
that they have a lot of friends (91%), feel safe (89%), get along well with their par-
ents (88%) and are happy at school this year (78%). Yet at the same time, many stu-
dents are also experiencing difficulties. Nearly half (48%) say that they are always
bored, one-third (33%) often feel sad and unhappy and almost two in ten (17%) get
into trouble a lot.
How do the parents of junior and senior high school students view their chil-
dren's lives? For most of these measures, parents' assessments concur with those of
students themselves (Exhibit 3.1). However, parents are more likely to report that
their teen gets along well with his/her parents (93% vs. 88%) and are less likely to say
that their teen often feels sad and unhappy (21% vs. 33%). Yet, for the other charac-
teristics discussed there is remarkable agreement.
Competing Voices
"Well I think a lot of kids have trouble because their families are apart or
don't communicate with their children and that's why most join gangs, or
have unprotected sex and also get involved with drugs and that's why teens
are like that `cause sometimes we think that nobody cares about us, and this
is why some teens kill themselves that's what I think." (11th grade girl)
~
". . .My generation of teens just don't give a damn. . . My generation of
teens is under a lot of stress now-a-days, we have dreams but how can we
reach those dreams when we are under so much stress! School being the
biggest stressor of them all!" (10th grade boy)
~
"I roller skate, ice skate, and roller blade. I'd like for them [my parents] to
experience this with me. But a simple meal together would suffice."
(10th grade boy)
