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Essential For Survival On The Troubled Journey

By Dorothy L. Williams
(from April 1991, Source newsletter)

Educational Commitment
Positive Values
Social Competence
Making A Difference

The December, 1990 issue of SOURCE described a recent Search Institute study summarizing extensive data on more than 46,000 public and private school students in grades 6 through 12. That article listed a set of 16 external assets .

When children are growing up, the kind of help they most need is usually supplied by a combination of the family and the surrounding community. The family provides rules, discipline, encouragement, and caring. The community provides such things as educational experiences, community rules and expectations, friends, recreational experiences, and spiritual nurture (from churches, synagogues, and other such institutions). These are the external assets.

These external assets, taken together, form a kind of temporary scaffold around a child in order to support and encourage while the growing child is developing an internal sytstem of supports that will see him or her safely into adulthood. Their function is much like that of the scaffolds built around buildings during erection or repair to provide a temporary stability until the building is ready to stand on its own. They are there to do what needs to be done while young people are developing their own internal supportsÐuntil they develop some backbone.

Backbone. It's an old-fashioned word. It was usually applied to a young person who, having thought things through, refused to go along with some unwise or potentially harmful action being taken by others. "Strength of character," says the OED. "Stability of purpose; resoluteness, sturdiness, firmness."

Backbone was a quality urged by mothers onto sons, as in, "I hope to goodness you'll have backbone enough not to go driving around the contryside on back roads with those crazy Belton boys. I hear one of them knocked down the Webster's mailbox last Saturday." It was a word that crept into gossip, as in, "That girl doesn't have backbone enough to say no to a baby chick, let alone the Smith boy. I'm not surprised to hear she's in trouble." Absence of backbone was "spinelessness."

Backbone provides that central, internal support that makes positive growth possible for teenagers. It is composed largely of what youth will say no to as well as what they will say yes to.

"Just say no" as a slogan has received a good deal of publicity in recent years and has no doubt done considerable good on its own. However, it is a negative message: it defines what to reject, but, by itself, fails to reflect the positive attitudes essential to growing adolescents.

Given below are the 14 "vertebrae" of backbone, the components of the essential internal supports, only one of which ("values sexual restraint") implies a "just say no" message. The remaining thirteen are all positive, a listing of things that caring adults hope young people develop during their secondary school years.

These 14 backbone components are divided into three categories: commitment to education, positive values, and social competence.

Educational Commitment

One essential component of backbone is enthusiasm for the educational process, not only now but well into the future.

School Performance: For a rough measure of achievement, the survey asked students whether their school performance put them at about average, above average, or below average. Forty--six percent say their performance is above average.
Achievement Motivation: Students report caring about their school performance, wanting to do well. Almost three-fourths say that achievement is important to them.
Homework: Only about a quarter of students say they take their school work seriously enough to be spending six or more hours of work each week on homework. Somewhat surprisingly, the figure doesn't change much throughout the secondary school years. Except among sixth graders (only 19 percent of whom report six hours or more of homework) the percentage of six-hours-a-week homeworkers hovers around one-quarter from 7th through 12th grade.
Educational Aspiration: A very high percentage of students hope to go on after high school either to college or trade school. In all grades, 6th through 12th, the average of those with high hopes holds steady at around 85 percent.

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Positive Values

Part of the maturity of a person (or of a community) centers around whether that person takes into account as a goal the well-being of oneself as well as of others. Perhaps it is one indicator of maturity if the self-other balance is slightly overbalanced on the "other" side. There are four measures indicating positive values.

Values Sexual Restraint: This, alone among the fourteen "backbone" attributes relates to one of the "just say no" values--just say no to sexual activity as a teenager. Sadly, only 35 percent of students appear to value postponing sexual activity as a personal goal.
Values Helping People: There is among teenagers a fund of good will that is sometimes obscured by their energy, restlessness, and capacity for play, but it is there, nevertheless. Almost half (48%) of these over 46,000 youth show an interest in being of help to others. Sometimes all that is missing is a clear opportunity for doing so, with an assurance that they are, indeed, old enough and capable enough to supply whatever is needed.
Is Concerned About World Hunger: A desire to do things to help protect others who are hungry is present in just under half of these students.
Cares About Other People's Feelings: In people of any age, the contrast between those who are sensitized to the feelings of others and those who are not is quite evident. Some children acquire at home the habit of attention to the well-being of others beside themselves. For those who haven't, practical experience in helping others helps it develop. Almost 90 percent of student give evidence of willingness to learn, if the skill is not currently present.

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Social Competence

During the secondary school years, young people begin to separate themselves from childhood's near-total reliance on home influence and become increasingly involved with groups of other people, both peers and adults. Success in interacting with others demands a certain grasp of basic social skills. One must learn how to work in groups, how to "hold your own" against opposition, and how to anticipate what is coming.

Self Esteem: In learning to "hold your own" it is necessary to have a reasonable sense of one's own value. What masquerades as respect for self is often an unhealthy behavior pattern, demonstrated sometimes in a visible effort to hold the spotlight and sometimes in trying to shrink from it. Only about 45 percent of students show evidence of healthy self esteem.
Assertiveness Skills: The other attribute essential for "holding your own" is knowing how to explain your understandings and needs clearly and firmly, without being angry or abrasive in doing so. Most students (82%) report that they are able to "stand up for what I believe," though undoubtedly there is variety in the strength of the force against which they are are called to stand.
Decision-Making Skills: Maturing adolescents must deal with increasingly complex decisions. Throughout life a continual improvement in decision-making skill is called for. Among other things, decision-making skill is involved in selecting the things the young person is going to "just say no" to. Adult who want to help young people avoid the most hazardous pitfalls of adolescenceÐalcohol, drugs, tobacco, premature sexual activityÐknow that decision-making skill is a prime goal.
Friend-Making Skills: The ability to make friends is a skill that many people seem to acquire without effort. Others find that learning it is a challenge. Friend-making skill is one of the major essentials of life; without it, no matter how much else one knows, the journeyer finds more potholes and curves in the road than smooth, straight stretches.
Planning Skills: Being able to map out one's future, even as far as tomorrow or next Friday, is a signal advantage. Some adolescents move blithely from one thing to another without planning. They may be heavily represented among those who are not doing a great deal of homework. It is a mark of maturity to be able to delay the thing that seems most attractive right now in order to complete the less-desirable but necessary task. Only a little over half of students think they're very good at planning ahead.
Positive View Of Personal Future: One of the most valuable things in life is hope. As many of their elders know, hope for oneself and one's future is one of life's greatest assets. People have survived great ordeals principally on the hope that the future would be better. Happily, 68 percent of these 46,000 youth feel positive about their own future.

The fourteen characteristics just described, together with the sixteen described (in the December 1990 issue of SOURCE) as external assets, make up a network of interior and exterior strengths that has remarkable power to shield adolescents against at-risk behaviors. The more assets a young person has, the fewer the at risk behaviors.

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Making A Difference

How do we foster the positive? Backbone develops quietly and out of sight. It is fostered mostly by indirect means. The presence of the sixteen external assets are important, of course. As many as possible of them should be in place. Beyond that, fostering backbone depends on adults' providing two things: models and opportunities. Having adults around them who are enthusiastic, concerned about others, interested in education, and socially skilled provides the models. Here are some examples of the kinds of opportunities teenagers need to help them develop compassion for others and a stronger sense of their own capabilities.

Projects that help adolescents help others is one of the most hopeful signs on the horizon just lately. More and more frequently church groups and community groups are setting aside a week or more to do something for othersÐbuild a house, roof a porch, clean up stream beds, river banks, and roadsides. So far as we have been able to determine, almost no one returns from such an experience (unless either poor leadership or some unanticipated accident has occurred) without exuding a combination of positive values and greater self esteem. Structured, well-planned events such as theseÐplanned, it should be said, with adolescents being involved in every step of the planningÐare of tremendous influence in helping youngsters grow toward self-assurance, positive values and attitudes, and hope.
Help youngsters to shorter-term projects in helping people. Arrange for them to work at a soup kitchen. Schedule them for regular tutoring with younger students. Arrange for regular visits or errand-running tasks with elderly persons. Have them help prepare and serve a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner to people who are hungry. The National Youth Leadership Council, (1910 W. Co. Rd. B., Roseville, MN 55113) can help you identify curricula and other resources to promote youth service in schools and community organizations.
Peer Counseling training can help youth develop social competencies while being of service to others. (For information write National Peer Helpers Association, P.O. Box 335, Mountain View, CA 94042)

There is nothing that can compare with the increase in sensitivity to others, sense of personal value, and compassion that adolescents can develop if adults will provide concrete structures to channel their energy and then help them reflect on those experiences to bring them to new insights and a far more positive view of themselves, their world, and their future.

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