Botstein vs Kleindienst

As a high school graduate, have you ever stopped to wonder what your life would’ve been like without high school at all? When you turned sixteen were you ready to go to college, find a job in the real world, or join the military? When you hit puberty, did you think that was all you were waiting for and you were ready to be an adult? It had never really crossed my mind until I read Leon Botstein’s “Let teenagers Try Adulthood,” where he expresses his intense feelings on abolishing high school all together.
Botstein proclaims, “High school students present and past have come forward with stories about cliques and the artificial intensity of a world defined by insiders and outsiders” (139). But Botstein needs to really look around. There are cliques in everyday life, not just high school. Yes, sometimes high school felt like a waste of time. And yes, sometimes we have all wished we could get out and move on with our life. But that is our immature behavior coming out because honestly, we would not be socially ready for the real world if we didn’t have these so-called “cliques.” If high school didn’t teach us anything else at all, it definitely at least taught us how to collectively act around one another. You remember all the drama, right? You remember the infamous girl on girl, he said, she said bit. How could you forget it? That’s high school in a nut shell. But that stupid, seemingly pointless at the time, no good drama is what taught us how to be social, civilized human beings around our peers. Sorry Botstein, but you can’t demonstrate that in books.
There are many young men and women in this country who mature physically early in life, but are obviously in the way they behave not matured emotionally or psychologically. Botstein differs, “Young people mature substantially earlier in the late 20th century than they did when the high school was invented. For example, the age of first menstruation has dropped at least two years since the beginning of this century” (140). He is actually using puberty as an argument in this situation. Well, there are many cases in which the body and mind do not grow at the same rate. Many of my friends from school began going through puberty long before I did, but were definitely not as mature as I at a younger age. Using the rate at which young men and women begin puberty as an argument in this situation is ludicrous. If Botstein wants to make a valid point in his beliefs, he should have better data to back it up.
Botstein makes another laughable comment in his text when he began writing about a certain age in which young Americans should be ready to open the door to reality. He declares, “At sixteen, young Americans are prepared to be taken seriously and to develop the motivations and interests that will serve them well in adult life. They need to enter a world where they are not in a lunchroom with only their peers” (141). While for the first time, I agree with Botstein in that some occasions by the age of sixteen young Americans should be taken more seriously to some degree. And I stress the “to some degree” statement. But he can’t put an age on to which all these young adults are ready to be set off into the real world. It’s just not realistic. I don’t see how he is to say that every young individual by a certain age should be prepared to do anything at all. How can Botstein put an age on any specific idea? We are individuals; therefore, we grow individually.
Although Botstein doesn’t have decent data and examples to back up his theory, I admire his notable efforts in interestingly stating his opinion. He makes his point loud and clear. He wants high school demolished, he believes by the time a young adult hits puberty they must be ready for the real world, and, finally, he assures his readers that sixteen is the proper respectable age for these kids to be let go. Summing up his ridiculous points in a short sentence, Botstein is obviously completely off-set. His theories are in no-way realistic today and possibly never in the future.