The general argument made by Newt Gingrich in the article “Let’s End Adolescence” is that we, as a society, need to get rid of the period we refer to adolescence because it is causing us to fall behind other nations and our teenagers to become lazy. According to Gingrich, “once we decide to engage young people in real life, doing real work, earning real money and thereby acquiring real responsibility, we can transform being young in America. And our nation will become more competitive in the process.” Here, Gingrich is basically saying that by putting adult responsibilities on the shoulders of teenagers, we will transform the experience of being ‘young’ in America, and our nation will be more competitive because our young, therefore our adults,
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Nevertheless, early adulthood, early responsibility, and early achievement were the norm before the institution of adolescence emerged as a system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives. – Gingrich, 1 The purpose of this statement was to deflect an argument in order to protect the credibility of the article. The easiest and most obvious dispute was the social standards and conditions of the time period the author was referring to as evidence for the success of his ideas. In this statement, the author uses aphorism (early, early, early) to for emphasis on what he believes needs to happen.
Word count: 68 “It's time to change this—to shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30. In other words, replace adolescence with young adulthood.” – Gingrich, 2 This quote makes the piece more interesting to read because of Gingrich’s creative use of the phrase “13 going on 30”. It is a phrase that may not be particularly common, but most of us have heard of it. Curiously, the movie is about a girl who is ambitious to be an adult, but realizes in the end that adolescence should be enjoyed while she still has a chance. Anyway, the other half of this quote shows how important diction is because of the connotations words can have: adolescence is essentially young adulthood, but more responsibility seems to be associated with ‘adulthood’.
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Nevertheless, early adulthood, early responsibility, and early achievement were the norm before the institution of adolescence emerged as a system for delaying adulthood and trapping young people into wasting years of their lives. – Gingrich, 1 The purpose of this statement was to deflect an argument in order to protect the credibility of the article. The easiest and most obvious dispute was the social standards and conditions of the time period the author was referring to as evidence for the success of his ideas. In this statement, the author uses aphorism (early, early, early) to for emphasis on what he believes needs to happen.
Word count: 68 “It's time to change this—to shift to serious work, learning, and responsibility at age 13 instead of age 30. In other words, replace adolescence with young adulthood.” – Gingrich, 2 This quote makes the piece more interesting to read because of Gingrich’s creative use of the phrase “13 going on 30”. It is a phrase that may not be particularly common, but most of us have heard of it. Curiously, the movie is about a girl who is ambitious to be an adult, but realizes in the end that adolescence should be enjoyed while she still has a chance. Anyway, the other half of this quote shows how important diction is because of the connotations words can have: adolescence is essentially young adulthood, but more responsibility seems to be associated with ‘adulthood’.
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