"Una etapa siempre dificil": Concepts of Adolescence and Secondary Education in Mexico

Abstract

The concept of adolescence as a unique and difficult stage in the human life-course has itself followed a turbulent historical path. Although the term occasionally appeared in European texts from the medieval period,' it was the U.S. psychologist G. Stanley Hall who in the late 1800s advanced the first "scientific" account of puberty's specific psychological entailments, which contributed to the more common and modern usage of "adolescence" we know today. Joseph Kett documents the influence of Hall's work at the turn of this century, and provides an intimate social history of the various groups in U.S. society that attempted to create institutions specifically attending to adolescent needs (i.e., Boy Scouts, the high school, etc.). In the United States and Europe, the concept of adolescence has since become thoroughly enmeshed in both popular and expert discourses on the behavior of youth, prompting Ari's to call this the "century" of adolescence.3 Academic journals and institutes, based primarily in departments of education and psychology, devote themselves entirely to the study of adolescence, while talk shows, books, and magazines communicate proverbial gem of wisdom to parents and teachers in search of advice about their charges. The prevailing thought characterizes adolescence as a universal psychological experience that, in evolutionary terms, we have only recently begun to understand and therefore socially and educationally accommodate. Meanwhile, a number of scholars have begun to question the value and relevance of such a concept. Like Aries had previously done for the concept of childhood, these authors interrogate the analytical value of adolescence, wondering whether it represents, among other things, an ideological conflation of biological and sociocultural life stages central to the social control modalities of modern capitalist societies.