Exuberance, risk-taking, experimentation, breaking away, testing limits. Anxiety, peer pressure, competition, parental pressure, work and school, drugs and alcohol. These are some of the challenges that make adolescence one of the most intriguing and disturbing stages of life. But adolescence is only one stage on a continuum of human development that begins in infancy and extends into old age. At each stage, we have hurdles to climb over, tasks to complete, experiences to absorb, lessons to learn.
This honors class on human development takes a close look at one of the most confusing, exciting, and critical phases of development, the pre-teen and teen years. Working individually and collaboratively, students will learn theoretical frameworks for interpreting their own experience and that of their peers. They will view media representations of adolescence and draw conclusions about how the media influence adolescents. Students will conduct original research on teen phenomenon and draw their own conclusions about whether identity is innate or a product of our environments. (This is an Honors course.) Note: This course fulfills the Human Behavior (GB) requirement for students under GenEd and the Individual & Society (IN) requirement for students under Core.
Students cannot receive credit for this course if they have successfully completed Education 0819.