By Selwyn Duke

It was a long time ago that George Bernard Shaw said that youth was wasted on the young, but truths never get old.  This occurred to me today when I came across one of the stupidest columns imaginable.

It’s a new feature on the site "OC Moms" called "Straight Talk for Teens by Teens," moderated by someone named Lauren Forcella.  The question posed was, get the Digitalis, whether you should let your teenage kids attend coed sleepovers.  Yes, that’s a tough one for modernists.  It’s right up there with "Should you allow your kids to play ‘chicken’ on the road?" and "Should you allow your 12-year-old to watch pornography?" 

Now, I’m going to print a couple of excerpts from the teens’ responses, but my goal isn’t to demean them.  Kids are kids, they only know what they’ve been taught, and it’s nothing new for them to be very ignorant and naive about a great many things (this is why they’re wild about Obama).  Having said that, here we go.

Fourteen-year-old Jennifer wrote, "This is a very flirtatious generation that most adults don’t
understand.  If you see your teen flirting with someone don’t
automatically assume something is going on."

No doubt about it.  We never heard of flirtation.  In fact, I had to look the word up.

Seventeen-year-old Sawyer opined, "Yes, sex happens sometimes, but at least when it does, we’re educated.
We didn’t do what your generation did! There was so much sex in the
’60s and ’70s, most of it unprotected. All our STDs come from you guys!
When it comes down to it, the sex education we’ve been given brings in
a huge amount of safety.

Here is the food for thought I would present to young Sawyer.  First, if your generation is so educated and protection is so effective, how is it that you contracted "our" STDs?  How is it that the out-of-wedlock birthrate is now far higher than it used to be, 27 percent among whites and 70 percent among blacks?  Second, where did you get the idea that most people in the ’60s and ’70s didn’t use protection?

I know, it’s the kind of thing that makes older people who actually experienced maturation beyond the physical just shake their heads.  There was a pattern to the teens’ responses, too.  Most were from girls, and, as is par for the course, the young lasses thought it was ridiculous that anyone would think there would have to be a sexual element in such a situation.  Why, they were just there to talk.  And, no doubt, the guys felt exactly the same way.

The only one who expressed some common sense was 16-year-old Michael, who wrote that it ". . . can be hard to completely stay away from having something sexual creep in."

This brings me to something that not only runs contrary to conventional wisdom but also won’t be well-received by all:

Generally speaking, young girls are some of the stupidest creatures on the face of the planet, and they really need to be saved from themselves.

This is why I’ve long believed that the idea girls achieve maturity sooner than boys is a ridiculous myth.  Of course, I don’t speak of physical maturity — or even emotional or intellectual — but the attainment of wisdom. 

This is the relevant factor.  The problem is that people often don’t really understand what constitutes maturity and, consequently, cannot identify it.  They thus often confuse boys’ tendency to clown around — which can be (not always) a function of a sense of whimsy — with immaturity.  In point of fact, a proper sense of humor is a sign of maturity, not callowness.  Of course, it’s true that an improper one is a sign of immaturity, but, then again, so is the fault of having no sense of humor.

What’s truly tragic about the advice column, however, is that it’s part and parcel of a larger problem: Some adults’ tendency to listen to kids as if they are fonts of wisdom.  The individual who asked the question about coed sleepovers was not actually a teen but, in fact, an adult female.  And it’s sad that a grown person would be so confused about a simple moral question that she would seek the guidance of minors.

I would say that this elevation of childish minds is a function of our equality-on-the-brain, a disdain for hierarchies that has caused many of us to believe that all groups should be viewed as equal in every respect, but it goes beyond that.  In reality, the world has been turned on its head, and we often behave as if the less credible should actually be viewed as more so. 

A good example of this was the Duke lacrosse rape frame-up, wherein a stripper was viewed as more credible than university students.  This isn’t to say the college kids were pillars of morality, mind you, but when you have a woman who is one baby step above a prostitute and who tells conflicting stories, you have to see a red flag.  But she was black and pitiable and the accused were white and "privileged," and that was all that mattered.

Likewise, we are so disconnected from Truth and, consequently, so much slaves to the spirit of the age, that the children of the age are often exalted.  Today’s young are the only ones who are truly "with it" and know what’s going on, you see.  At least, that’s the way it will be until the next age.

This is reflected in a proposition we sometimes hear: "We have to learn from our children." 

Wrong, we have to teach our children. 

And, yes, I know Ralph Waldo Emerson’s saying, "Every man I meet is my superior in some way.  In that, I learn of him."  But a sane society understands that the relationship between the older and younger generations is that of teacher to student and that the curriculum is tradition.  Without this paradigm in place, all is lost.

Yet, with the character and maturity of many adults today, is it really surprising that the young may not respect them?  As to this, here is part of Lauren Forcella’s (who is a mother of four) concluding words: "This generation has platonic male-female relationships unlike anything
our generation could, or can, imagine. Assumptions about sexual
behavior are harder to make . . . ."

Really?  This generation has platonic relationships we just couldn’t imagine?  Wow, I guess man’s nature has finally, just now, changed after tens of thousands of years.

In all fairness, though, something may be eluding me.  After all, Forcella’s bio indicates that she holds a masters degree in "consciousness studies," a qualification requiring a genius I.Q., I’m sure.

Shaw was absolutely correct.  But Forcella’s column makes me realize that, at least sometimes, it’s also true that middle age is wasted on the middle-aged.

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