Kids Get a Double Message

For 20 years, Bernie Schein has seen children walk into his writing class. They are children like Alice and Matt and Celia, struggling with who they are and what they're about. He doesn't mess around with interpreting the earrings or the outfits.

He moves right on to the matters of the heart.

"What I've found out is that these kids aren't basically rational, they're primarily emotional," he said. "We ask, 'What do they need to know?' What we should ask is 'Who are they?'"

But who are they, really, is a personal matter. And you can see it in the stories they write for Mr. Schein at Atlanta's private Paideia School. There are stories about fathers who weren't fathers, and parents who die, and divorce, and sibling rivalry that brings out the ugliest of adolescent behavior. And getting kids to tell these stories is the way Mr. Schein teaches them to understand themselves.

"Identity is everything," he said. "They're scared of it, because it's harder. If you say to a kid, 'Tell me the truth,' he's not going to want to do that. But they're always grateful afterward because it makes them happier to know who they are."

But to take this step goes against what so much of American society is telling kids to be — cool.

"What is being cool? Being cool means being in control. What is being in control but being rational? Being cool is nothing but an adolescent derivative of what adults are supposed to be. You do things and make them look effortless, feelings don't bother you, you never get upset. It's a total destructive lie, and it's very harmful to the kids."

But, he said, it's what they're pressured to do.

"We're giving them double messages," he said. "We're saying we want them to tell the truth, but we really don't. So, they're not."

—Atlanta Journal-Constitution