"Mapping a History of Adolescence and Literature for Adolescents," Greg Hamilton

I always like to read review articles whenever I can find them.  I'm definitely a big picture person, and review articles help me to see trends in a field much more easily.  Plus, review articles help me learn a lot in a relatively short amount of time, always a plus!  So, my first blog post then, is about an article I found from the ALAN Review, "Mapping a History of Adolescence and Literature for Adolescents," by Greg Hamilton, an assistant professor of English ed at Teachers College (at the time of publication).  Hamilton writes about "the historical terrains of both adolescence and the contempo­rary fictions adults have created for adolescents" (57).  Sounds intriguing, huh?  How have ideas about adolescence changed over time?  What kind of ideas do adults have about the period of adolescence now, and how does that shape how we teach and work with actual adolescents?

Hamilton's first point is that it is useful for teachers to reflect on their own experiences as adolescents in order to relate to their students.  Hamilton then summarizes some of the changes in conceptions of childhood and adolescence over history.  I'm often a bit skeptical of overarching historical narratives like this one because they tend to be pretty simplistic, but I agree with his general point that there have been cyclical changes in views of childhood (including adolescence).  Hamilton relies exclusively on Eastwood Atwater's (what a name!) 1992 textbook Adolescence to claim that ancient Greeks divided childhood into three periods, birth to age seven, seven to puberty, and puberty to age 21.  The society of the Middle Ages, in contrast, viewed children as "miniature adults" (58), who were apprenticed at an early age.  Rousseau's more romantic notions of childhood (18th century) were a turn toward childhood as a distinct period separate from adulthood, with a gradual development of reasoning capabilities during age 12-15.  In America, however, many children went to work on farms or later in factories as adolescence was beginning, usually after receiving some basic education.  In America, a period of "adolescence" couldn't really exist until public education had expanded, thanks to common schooling movements in the mid-19th century, and compulsory education and child labor laws in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Once secondary education was a reality for an ever-increasing number of children, the period of adolescence as we think of it today began to take shape.

Of course, there are a number of developmental theories of adolescence that have been popularized throughout the 20th century, relying on observational or biological data.  Very popular in teacher education programs, for example, are Piaget's stages of preoperational, concrete, and formal operations.  (Hamilton also cites G. Stanley Hall, Freud, Erikson, Kohlberg, and Bandura).  A commonality between many of these theories of development is that the adolescent gradually becomes more independent and more capable of abstract thought.  In the last forty years or so, there has been a great deal of attention to the socio-cultural factors involved in adolescent development, primarily race, class, and gender.

Hamilton then moves to a discussion of how literature written for adolescents has changed over time.  Here, he draws heavily on Bushman & Bushman's Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom (1997).  Whereas many scholars might identify the birth of young adult literature with The Outsiders (1967) or with The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Bushman & Bushman look at the didactic literature that dominated not just children's or adolescent literature, but practically all literature as having the purpose of "socializ[ing] children into the expected adult habits and behaviors of that time" (60).  The birth of the novel in the 1700s began to open a window for literature directed specifically toward children, but reading materials were still primarily intended to present moral lessons from an external, rather than a first person, perspective.  It was not until the 1960s that what we would recognize today as "young adult literature" began to be published, written in a realistic style, free from a moralizing tone, and often featuring characters involved in some kind of controversial topic.

Hamilton devotes the last part of his review article to reflecting on the controversies that are sometimes involved in teaching young adult literature, [perhaps obviously] coming out on the side advocating for teaching young adult lit.  For example, many young adult novels contain language, sex, drugs, etc. (vs. the "old chestnuts," as my adolescent lit professor at UVA used to say :o) ), so how should a teacher prepare for a parent challenge to a text?  Another potential criticism Hamilton mentions is the belief of many teachers that there just isn't time to teach even the "tried and true" - why should they waste time on something risky? 

A few concluding comments: first, Hamilton tries to summarize two huge bodies of literature here in writing about the development of the concept of adolescence and the development of adolescent literature.  (I find his narrative problematic, as I said, because he summarizes just a couple of secondary sources to tell the story of each body of literature, and presents a fairly simplistic story, which of course I have even further simplified in my own summary above...how very meta.)  What Hamilton doesn't address as much, however, are the connections between the two topics.  For example, is the growth of the modern YA lit genre directly related to the growth of the modern idea of adolescence?  I would imagine so, although Hamilton connects it to the growth of the "new realism" instead.  (This was a literary movement I had never heard of before.  I may write another blog post summarizing it, as the little I can find quickly says that it is realistic fiction, obviously, but that deals with controversial or taboo subjects.)

Lastly, regarding teaching controversial works of adolescent literature: I know that we devoted a good bit of time to writing rationales for potential challenges to adolescent literature when I was in my teacher preparation program - is this even relevant anymore?  Much of the first wave of adolescent lit is pretty canonical now - The Outsiders, for example, is probably considered more "classic" than YA lit at this point.  Then again, we went through the whole process of getting Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian approved at my old school, only to be told at the last minute that it was too controversial to use (after the district had already bought the books).  So I guess one of my questions is, how do you know when to take a stand, how to do so in a politically-savvy way, and when is it not worth it?  In addition, isn't there lots of YA lit "of literary merit" that does not meet this kind of "new realism" definition of dealing with a controversial topic? 

Hamilton, G. (Winter 2002).  "Mapping a History of Adolescence and Literature for Adolescents."  The ALAN Review.  Vol. 29, Issue 2.  p. 57-62.