Mean Kids

Watched the movie Mean Girls the other night at our camp. This was the drama guys' chill-out movie, and very enjoyable it was too. Clearly they could relate to the relations between the characters in the film. But what was so striking for me was how obviously not-mean teenagers here are in contrast to their peers in the U.S. and U.K.

Evidence of this came to me abundantly last Friday, Teachers' Day, as it does annually for all teachers here. There's a generosity of spirit from students involved that's very touching. I'm sure their counterparts in the western world are capable of the same, but it can be sadly uncool for them to show any of this by a certain age, usually the third year of secondary school. In this part of the world no one has yet made the discovery that at this point adults and teenagers should be occupying opposite ends of an unbridgeable divide.

I once suggested at a rather silly workshop some years ago that the myth of adolescence is just that - a myth - and a pernicious one that, sadly, all too many youngsters in other places find it necessary to live up to.