Issues: Human Development

“If we cannot communicate well from our gut when our bodies or hearts pay the consequences, it is of no value that we communicate well intellectually.” —Charis Denison

The underlying philosophy in all of Prajna’s Human Development curricula, presentations, and workshops deals with personal power, avoiding regret, and the idea of assertiveness. While dealing with the facts and consequences of important issues like Alcohol & Drug use and Sexual Violence, we ask students to begin the active process of discovering how they arrive in uncomfortable situations that involve a loss of power. Pointedly, we follow up by asking how young people can define and develop the skills necessary to avoid those situations. In addition, maneuvering through the maze of Social Dynamics, Sexual Expression, and Body Image make the journey toward defining and acting on one’s values seem more than a challenge; these issues make the journey seem impossible. Through our work with teens, we validate the enormous stress and confusion they are living in and, at the same time, show them concrete ways to make that journey seem both possible and successful.

More and more we see kids who are geared to succeed academically try to succeed socially using the same strategies. They look for someone to tell them what to say or do, they try to please others, or they simply “plow ahead.” The problem with this plan is that in social settings, the rules and definitions around “conflict” and “success” are different from those in the intellectual world. In other words, the intellectual models with which they are most comfortable do not carry over. New rules and definitions are needed. The consequences of social conflict (i.e. an awkward half-naked, drunken moment between two kids) can be awful and the definition of “success” could mean stopping, saying no, displeasing someone you care about, or giving up. If we do not help young people develop and apply these life skills, we will continue to graduate students with 3.8 GPAs who lack the ability to truly take care of themselves and others in the real world.

Another underlying theme of adolescent behavior is the role that regret or shame can play. The danger of raising a teenager is that many of the things they want to do outside of school are things adults do not want them to do. Life briefly consists of disagreement after disagreement over what teens are and are not allowed to do. However, what we can agree on is the power that regret or shame has on our lives. How do we make choices we are proud of? Can we remove all the buzzwords like “alcohol” and “sex” and just talk about matching one’s personal hopes and values to one’s actions?

Most importantly, we, as a culture, need to stop talking about getting drunk or being raped as isolated incidents. Good self-defense programs do not start with how to poke out someone’s eye. They start fifteen-to-twenty steps before that is necessary. Effective drug and alcohol education doesn’t start with the chemical effects and dire consequences of use and abuse. While that is obviously important, the real conversation starts with why and how you ended up on someone’s bathroom floor on Friday night. How did you feel about yourself and how you see yourself in your future? And, how do you avoid feeling like that again?

In addressing specific teen behavior as part of a larger conversation, we weave the idea of personal assertiveness throughout all aspects of our work around Human Development. How do we teach young people to stop allowing events to happen to them and, instead, to play an active and assertive role in how they approach their lives? We talk about defining one’s own boundaries, why those boundaries get crossed, and how to fight social expectations that conflict with one’s own well-being.

Young people can know all the best facts about drugs and all the best self-defense moves, but until they begin to make the journey toward becoming the agents of their own social change, we aren’t truly serving their needs for the real world.