ADOLESCENZA. – One of the most important among the ages of life (v.); an age of profound crisis affecting the individual as a whole, organically, psychologically, and morally. Adolescence follows childhood (v.), or pueritia, which ends at about 12 years of age and culminates in the pubertal crisis, manifested from the 15th to the 18th year in males and from the 13th to the 15th in females.
1. MEDICINE
Whereas childhood should be regarded as a period of physiological and psychological stasis and peace, in which the organism amasses its reserves for future spurts and developments (the turgor phase), in adolescence the individual undergoes a harsh, thankless process of profound transformation and physical, physiological, neuropsychological, and moral instability, one sign of which is the disharmony of forms, attitudes, and modes of thought; the individual prepares for the profound transformation of the pubertal crisis, which will turn the boy and the girl into man and woman, fully differentiated and now progressing toward complete biological maturity, understood not only from the sexual point of view but also from the intellectual, moral, and social points of view.The determinism of such important and radical changes is linked to the activity of the glands of internal secretion (v. : ENDOCRINE, GLANDS), especially to the full development of the efficiency of the thyroid, pituitary, and sex glands, particularly in their endocrine portion. In a special way under the impetus of the latter, those secondary sexual characteristics appear, at first indistinctly and then ever more clearly, which in the adolescent already outline, with increasingly definite traits, the man and the woman (different skeletal development; regional accumulation of fat; appearance, development, and distribution of hair; timbre of the voice; different tastes and orientations of temperament and character).
Adolescence is among the most delicate and the most dangerous of the climatic ages (v.), a bridge between the world of childhood and that of youth; an age in which cracks and collapses in the organic structure and in the neuropsychological and moral consciousness of the individual are liable to occur; a period on which the educator must focus his greatest attention and care, and in which he should not disdain frequently to seek the physician’s assistance, while the latter, conversely, should seek the help of the pedagogue and the teacher of morals. This period is marked by an entire awakening to and discovery of new sentimental, intellectual, moral, social, and religious horizons; consequently, amid the fascination of the new visions, deviations and disorientation on the part of the subject are easy, while misunderstandings between the adolescent and parents, teachers, and educators are extremely common. Left to itself, adolescence may therefore easily result in distortions of every kind, the mark impressed during this age of transformation potentially determining the direction and lasting orientation of the whole of life. «Adolescens iuxta viam suam, etiam cum senuerit, non recedet ab ea» (Prov. 22, 6).
It represents the second period of the educational age (Pende), which extends approximately from 7 to 17 years; and whereas it unfolds imitatively in the first part, up to about 12 years (childhood), in the second period (adolescence) it becomes intuitive, individualistic, anarchic, introverted, and romantic. From the neuropsychological and moral point of view, the materials accumulated in the preceding phases are now elaborated; this is the period in which the educator, while allowing a reasonable degree of latitude and granting independence and autonomy, must skilfully watch over and contain the course of so impetuous a torrent. Parents and educators, too, must exercise exceptionally great care, skill, and prudence during adolescence with regard to sexual formation (v. EDUCATION), which in this period undergoes the most dangerous deviations, receives the most lasting impressions, and takes the most decisive directions.
Even the pagans did not overlook the distinctive character, importance, and dangers connected with the development of this “precious,” thankless, unstable, rebellious “age,” which Horace skilfully describes (Ep. ad Pisones, vv. 161–65).
Giuseppe de Ninno
2. CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY
Pedagogy regards adolescence as the age in which the vigilance of educators (parents, teachers, directors of consciences) must become more attentive, more refined, and more perceptive than at any other time, and education must become, in the strictest sense, a mission and an apostolate. Adolescence is usually called the thankless age because of the very particular difficulties it presents; but the term is neither attractive nor encouraging and might awaken in the educator rather a sense of inertia or fear than the flame that burns more brightly the more adverse elements it encounters. Adolescence is instead the golden age of life and should be regarded as such, because it radiates the dearest hopes and sets one on the way to the full conquest of personality.In practice, these essential principles must be kept in mind: 1) If the child needs training, the adolescent, on the other hand, needs education (educare = to draw out from within); that is, he can no longer be directed, so to speak, from the outside as a child is; rather, he must be helped to draw from within himself the motives and impulses of his own actions and conduct. He readily bristles at authority, and yet he feels the imperious need for guidance, for a firm and experienced hand to direct and support him; then he is capable even of the highest heroism and of the boldest and most decisive transformations. 2) Precisely for this reason, the art of direction must take on certain particular qualities and nuances. First of all, it must appeal to the feeling of friendship and win his confidence. Now the adolescent confides only in one who knows how to understand him. Great understanding is therefore required, involving a calmness and composure that are neither astonished nor adopt tragic and scandalized attitudes when faced with childish, absurd, painful confidences or with deviations of mind, heart, or sensibility; a perpetual freshness of thought and feeling that carries the educator back to the years of his own a., to his own experiences, whether overcome or endured, to what he might have become but did not become; a participation, made up of serene sympathy, in the adolescent’s difficulties, which demonstrates esteem for him, gives importance to what he expresses, and avoids unnecessary reprimands and censures; a prudent flexibility for adapting to characters and circumstances (the adolescent disdains or mocks educators who are mummified and withered, anchored in the past, and therefore pedantic); a paternal constancy that has neither fear nor impatience about repeating itself. So imperious is the need to win and preserve confidence intact and complete «that one must not hesitate, in case of necessity, to sacrifice certain demands of discipline for its sake. I do not hesitate to say that it is much better for an educator occasionally to be deceived by a disloyal adolescent than, in order not to incur this inconvenience, to adopt an attitude of reserve and purely external authority» (Mons. P. Petit de Julleville, L’adolescent autour de l’âge ingrat, Paris 1934, p. 4). 3) One must then appeal to persuasion. Coercive motives are of no use except exceptionally; the soundest and most exact method consists in accustoming the adolescent to become increasingly inward in everything (piety, study, personal, family, and social relationships); to understand the reasons for what he must do and avoid. 4) Above all, the adolescent must be given a sense and a will for effort. He already tends of his own accord toward what is arduous; this tendency must therefore be sustained, idealized, and the feeling of love, chivalry, fidelity, and exactness developed. «The adolescent who refuses to fight is from the outset doomed to moral mediocrity or perhaps even to sad declines. Without overburdening him with excessive appeals to energy, one must awaken in him, whenever a favorable opportunity presents itself, the taste for it and the need for II. Energy in the physical sphere (games, sport), to make the body supple, docile, and strong; mastery of the senses, to react against instinct and remain entirely pure; effort in intellectual work, to become more attentive and observant, to acquire order, good sense, logic, and taste; to learn to think and judge personally. Effort in the field of conscience. How can he improve himself and overcome himself when necessary if he does not know himself, if he is unaware of his moral temperament, if he does not learn to react against his own defects or failings, if he does not introduce into his life the idea of a duty that imposes itself not only under the pressure of external discipline, but also in the name of what is most intimate in each of us, namely, God’s call to obey Him by fulfilling His will?» (ibid., 2-3). 5) Since not only the temperaments of the two sexes differ, but also those of each individual adolescent, the educator must possess an uncommon pliability, bending toward an education suited to each one in particular. No impersonal and uniform type of education can be proposed; rather, one must observe how each personality tends to assert itself, in order to guide it toward the ideal for which it is made. 6) The various symptomatic tendencies of the a. reviewed above must be directed toward the good (cf. n. 1). Therefore: 1) mental activity must be supervised, especially in the field of philosophy (the adolescent is inclined to criticize systems and ideas and to form personal judgments, which are often deviations) and of romantic reading (novels, with their fictitious world, easily disorient the sense of reality; they become more dangerous when truth and morality are mistreated); 2) amusements and friendships must be supervised, since they are often formed without even considering the painful consequences that might result; 3) the awakening of love must be supervised, and the warnings, advice, and admonitions required by the various circumstances must be provided. Above all, a great esteem for love must be instilled; a great respect for others; one might say, a sacred sense of the future life as a couple, elevated by Jesus Christ to the dignity of a sacrament; 4) the sexual awakening must be supervised, both to prevent the formation of bad habits and to strengthen the vigor of the struggle for a serene and strong purity, with full and clear knowledge of what must be known on each occasion; 5) consciousness of religion must be deepened, both through the rational and well-documented exposition of religious truths and through the resolution of the difficulties that arise in the adolescent’s mind; 6) piety must be introduced into all the actions of life; piety must not be an element foreign or parallel to the life being lived, but the vivifying element of everything that is done: study, amusements, work, etc.; 7) the practice of the sacraments must be intensified, especially that of the Eucharist, the sacrament of perpetual youth; while respecting freedom, suggesting and inculcating rather than imposing; 8) the adolescent’s social tendency must be directed and strengthened, turning it toward philanthropic and charitable activities; nothing is more formative than coming face to face with the physical and spiritual misery of others and devoting oneself to alleviating pain, suffering, and poverty.
Finally, the educator must never forget that «unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman keeps vigil in vain» (Ps. 126, 1-2). If action is therefore necessary, prayer is even more necessary; and to prayer must be joined example,
which opens the way and demonstrates that what one wishes to inculcate is possible.