Adolescence Adolescence In the article, the emphasizes on ethnographic studies as a means of understanding teenagers’ development in high-risk neighborhoods. This view is principal in defining the fundamentals of cultures that define teenagers’ behavior. It is essential to recognize that teenagers’ behavior divide according to ethnic and cultural hegemony. Ethnography, in a broad sense, tackles the socio-economic and political lives of individuals that occur according to given ethnic and racial identities.
This view is essential since it examines behavior and development as resulting out of given cultural contexts rather than as arising from complex psychological dispositions of individuals. Burton highlights key arguments that are principal in heralding ethnography as the best tool of understanding teenagers’ behavior in high-risk neighborhoods. This thrives on the valid belief that teenagers growing in high-risk areas may attach a different meaning to adolescence than teenagers from safer areas.
Adolescence, thus, occurs differently to teenagers as depending on one’s context. She highlighted the concept of accelerated life force. This suggests that teenagers in high-risk areas are highly likely to perceive their lifespan as relatively short (Burton, 1997). Such a perception may give way towards liberal handling of mortality and incarceration. In turn, a teenager is highly likely to engage in high-risk activities believing that one has no future. It emerges that these teenagers view teenage hood as a non-existent stage as they grow up to fend for themselves.
This cultural perspective is consistent with the concept of diffused age hierarchies. In high-risk areas, there is a tendency towards condensed age structures. This means that it is not easy to distinguish individuals as based on their age. In turn, teenagers may behave as adults while adults may possess similar behavior as teenagers. It is arguable that such behavior emanate from the economic situations of such livelihoods. In families broken down by poverty, a teenager begins fending for one’s family early in life.
In cases of absentee fathers, teenagers take a huge economic responsibility over one’s family as such family strives to pull resources from every possible source. Such responsibilities may make teenagers live an unconventional teenage life. This causes a rift with school institutions. This is because in schools, the system treats teenagers according to their age, while they are treated as adults at home. Such a teenager has to develop a dual personality in approaching both the school system and the home system.
Premature transition into adulthood is a likely cause for aggression among such teenagers who feel that the society does not understand them adequately. I will considerably inculcate this understanding into my physical education career. Since my work will involve direct interaction with teenagers, it will be essential to understand adolescents from their cultural backgrounds. Before designing a particular physical education plan, I will make it a practice to understand all my students in order to have comprehensive and inclusive programs.
In the field, students are highly likely to react differently to instructions. This happens as some students are distracted by thoughts of uncertain future in their families. More essentially, I will make it a practice to converse with each of my students during physical education programs in order to enable them communicate their unique needs. ReferenceBurton, L. (1997). Ethnography and the meaning of adolescence in high-risk neighborhoods. American Anthropological Association, 25(2), 208-217.
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