Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Blog 10: The Debate
The debate that is framing around my paper addresses the function college plays in the passage to adulthood. Some, such as Michael Moffatt argue that college role in determining one’s actions such as defining the autonomy of a student. Also, he shows that college students have a different attitude when there is a lack of influence from parents, and there is an increase of influence from peers. This lack of influence may be a negative effect on college students. The Columbia University article supports facts that substance abuse and drinking alcohol is a society rite of passage. In college, it is acceptable to drink and smoke everyday, however many college undergraduates support the saying "its only alcoholism after graduation." This example of undergraduate cynical ism supports the prolonging of growing up. Is college infact a rite of passage created by society, or is it a time when college students embrace the change? Theses issues frame the question whether or not college is a beneficial rite of passage into adulthood, and how the actions of college undergraduates helps them grow up.
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OK -- you are in the right ball park, as they say. But I think you have to put into question whether or not college is a rite of passage, as defined by traditional anthropologists. Then find a text that can help you decide that question one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteI suggested that "the dude" is the symbol of the new generation of graduates who have difficulty finding a job -- and therefore achieving the full entry into adulthood that the "rite of passage" of college was supposed to promise. I found confirmation for that view in the article "How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America" (posted about at our blog). The author, Don Peck, writes:
ReplyDelete"Over the past two generations, particularly among many college grads, the 20s have become a sort of netherworld between adolescence and adulthood. Job-switching is common, and with it, periods of voluntary, transitional unemployment. And as marriage and parenthood have receded farther into the future, the first years after college have become, arguably, more carefree. In this recession, the term *funemployment* has gained some currency among single 20-somethings, prompting a small raft of youth-culture stories in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Weekly, on Gawker, and in other venues.
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According to a recent Pew survey, 10 percent of adults younger than 35 have moved back in with their parents as a result of the recession. But that’s merely an acceleration of a trend that has been under way for a generation or more. By the middle of the aughts, for instance, the percentage of 26-year-olds living with their parents reached 20 percent, nearly double what it was in 1970. Well before the recession began, this generation of young adults was less likely to work, or at least work steadily, than other recent generations. Since 2000, the percentage of people age 16 to 24 participating in the labor force has been declining (from 66 percent to 56 percent across the decade). Increased college attendance explains only part of the shift; the rest is a puzzle. Lingering weakness in the job market since 2001 may be one cause. Twenge believes the propensity of this generation to pursue “dream” careers that are, for most people, unlikely to work out may also be partly responsible. (In 2004, a national survey found that about one out of 18 college freshmen expected to make a living as an actor, musician, or artist.)
Whatever the reason, the fact that so many young adults weren’t firmly rooted in the workforce even before the crash is deeply worrying. It means that a very large number of young adults entered the recession already vulnerable to all the ills that joblessness produces over time. It means that for a sizeable proportion of 20- and 30-somethings, the next few years will likely be toxic. "
Does that sound like a generation ready to grow up -- let alone being welcomed into adulthood after their rite of passage?