The many difficulties associated with adolescence have made disconcerting reading in the pages of Education and Living and elsewhere in recent years. The litany of problems includes drug abuse, precocious sexualisation and the unrelenting pressure from the media and society to consume, conform and compete. To this list one must also add the shrinkage of adolescence as a development phase.
Today, Ireland enjoys great prosperity, albeit a wealth unevenly distributed among its citizens. The booming economy has drawn into its labour market large and growing numbers of young people whose commitment to their jobs would merit commendation, but for the resulting juxtapostion of study and paid labour in their schedules and priorities.
The reasons for this are self-evident. Young people experience a great surge of independence when they have access to private funds. This often significant disposable income is frequently used to fund improvements in their lifestyles. Thus, as a result of part-time jobs, young people enjoy greater levels of autonomy with regard to purchasing decisions and lifestyle choices.
Parents are often ambivalent about such paid labour. Large mortgages and increasing financial pressures place great demands on families. The voracious monetary requirements of adolescents are lessened when they are in paid employment. Thus, parents, possibly burdened with some unexamined assumptions, unconsciously collude in this glacial movement towards a paid youth labour force.
Teachers, perhaps, are better placed to observe the effects of such a trend. The problems associated with adolescent paid labour are readily evident in the classroom. There, assumed benefits such as improved interpersonal skills, valuable work experience and greater maturity are seen against the toll on the student in terms of her often erratic attendance and diminished concentration and motivation. Concerns about the loss of focus in personal development and study patterns are also expressed by teachers.
While the above trends are neither inevitable nor unavoidable, the likelihood of such problems arising should not be discounted if early entry into the labour market is not controlled and limited to holiday periods and a few hours over the weekend for students in non-exam classes. However, an even greater issue must be addressed in relation to adolescent paid labour.
Young people with significant disposable income, targeted by the crass commercialism of modern society, can easily be lured into acquisitive consumption patterns. "He who dies with the most wins." "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping." In this environment, the ethic of conspicuous consumption thrives.
Perhaps the greatest worry here is an existential one. Are our students comfortable with the concept of "enough"? Are we, as adults? Has our collective myopia discredited the view that, on occasion, "more is less"? The danger exists that adults, role models to the next generation, have generated a view among teenagers that materialism can solve existential problems.
With the collapse of communism, the retreat of radical socialism, the waning influence of Christianity, who now warns of the dangers of materialism? Whither altruism? In the future, will our young people point the finger at us and claim, in the words of Patrick Kavanagh: "You burgled my bank of youth"?
Dr Nora Ni Mhurchu, teacher of English and Irish, St Joseph of Cluny Secondary School, Killiney, Co Dublin
