Rapid Maturity
Vi Le
Seminar 126G/01
Prof. Teddy Chocos
April 4th, 2012
Paper #1
Different from animals, human beings have minds that are able to rationalize, prioritize
and analyze. Human’s abilities are infinite of what they can achieve. This explains for the
significance of human resource in the society. While adults play the most important role in the
resource of manpower and adolescence is a preparation before adulthood, rapid maturity has
negative impacts on this stage of development. Young people are fragile and they don’t have
their own choices and measures to stay away from many influences from the community which
make them grow up faster but not thoroughly. Therefore, responsible people such as parents and
senior should provide proper concern to youngsters who will grow up to be the most influential
people among the rest in other stages of life.
In the world, nowadays, activities in areas such as industry, technology, science and
education are operated mostly by computers and engines. People are less involved in those
activities than in the past due to the technology. Nevertheless, we can’t deny the fact that humans
are those who invent, conduct machines and even take advantage of them. For instance, coal
can’t be automatically mined without miners. A computer can’t complete a work without man’s
setting up a command. A plane can’t carry passengers to another place unless it is operated by a
pilot. Therefore, humans should be considered a resource and moreover, the most valuable
resource.
In an article named “The Developmental Stages of Erik Erikson” by Arlene F. Harder,
according to Erik Erikson, a psychologist, there are eight stages of development. They are
Infancy, Early Childhood, Play Age, School Age, Adolescence (12 to 18 Years), Young
adulthood (18 to 35), Middle Adulthood and Late Adulthood. As it can be seen, adolescence
comes before adulthood. People at this age are not children anymore but also is not yet an adult.
They tend to suffer from both physical and mental changes, together with troubles from the
living environment such as school and family, adolescence’s development seems to be the most
complicated among all stages. Not to mention, this stage is a preparation for youngsters to
become adults who will play an important role in society’s labor force. This is why these people
deserve proper concern and attention in most of activities in their daily life by grown up people
who are in charge such as parents or teachers.
However, what does rapid maturity mean? According to David Wechsler in “Intellectual
Development and Psychological Maturity”, a general definition of maturity is shown: “As
regards intellectual abilities, one can define maturity operationally as the attained level of
psychological functioning beyond which measures of performance no longer increase
significantly with age.” This can be interpret as that maturity is a stage when people have
reached a primarily complete mental capacity reflecting in their responses to situations and can’t
be improved extensively when becoming old by age, chronologically. Human beings have their
unique and extinct process and level of maturity. The process has its own timing and stages too.
Shortening time and skip stages to get to the purpose is considered rapid maturity. Rapid
maturity is the process happening in an age around teenage which prevents teenagers from
developing thoroughly their emotions. This factor can contribute to many serious social
problems as well. Some of them stand out by their significant consequences such as adolescence
sexuality, drug abuse, alcohol addiction and crimes.
David Elkind is a professor of psychology and chair of the Department of Child Study at
Tuffs University. Having graduated from UCLA, he is a member of the American Psychological
Association, Society for the Scientist Study of Religion and other professional organizations.
“Childhood’s end” is an excerpt from his book published in 1989 named “The Hurried Child”.
His analysis poses a problem in American society that children, nowadays, tend to grow up
faster. They get to be mature in many parts of development, however, not all of the part that
needs. And some of the most important component such as emotional development is missed.
This is not only an issue in America but also in many countries around the world, as a result,
humans’ capacity at maturity level can’t reach the peak as it possibly can.
Primarily, human beings is developing, the society they have created is also changing day
by day. Children from a very young age have to compete in academic studying, lifestyle and
social status. These invisible competitions gradually transform into pressure, they are stressful
and burden our kids heavily, who are supposed to live a carefree and joyful life. Equally
important, these mental weights may also lead adolescence to a wrong direction starting from
teenager, extending to adulthood and even after that.
Moreover, parents who can’t resist the trend of community, majority of whom put their
children under pressure of becoming as good as everybody else, or even better. Elkind brings out
a statement of currently researchers: “If you did not start teaching children when they were
young, parents were told, a golden opportunity for learning would be lost.” Parents these days
are informed by professional and semi-professional the importance of providing early age
education for their kids. Because, it is a period in which children haven’t formed any specific
type of knowledge, therefore, educating them is easier. Similar to writing in a paper, you can
write or paint anything you want to on a blank page. Whereas, on the page which has already
written, if it is written by pencil, you can erase and rewrite although it takes more time and
effort; but if it is written by pen, it can’t be erased and the only job can be done is writing an
overlapping layer and undoubtedly, it’s hard to see. They think that children educating is likely
the same. The sooner it takes, the easier and the better it can be. Parents too depend on general
knowledge and desire of having prodigy son or daughter that they leave behind the fact that “Too
much of a good thing, is a bad thing.” Children, in the same way, need a balance of everything to
grow up entirely, do not let any factor make them sacrifice their childhoods.
There are many other pressures which are created by the society itself and accidentally
burden youngsters and push their maturity process going faster. Elkind provides some proofs in
reality such as dressing and fashion, changing in programs of summer camps and middle-class
divorces. This can’t be agreed more because these are small components but bring great
influence to adolescence, make them mature rapidly. People have taken advantage of the trend in
the society and earned profit. The trend here is the demand of products to supply for
development of adolescence. It is unintentionally or not that they have motivated growing up
progress significantly. Parents and adults, who are in charge of this dressing permission, summer
camps programmer and irresponsible couples, are people to blame for.
Additionally, multimedia, which is a combination of different types of media that
everybody can access, contains uncensored material making mental impacts on inappropriate
ages. “The media promote not only teenage sexuality but also the wearing of adult clothes and
the use of adult behaviors, language and interpersonal strategies.” (Elkind, 67) Music, films,
television and even books are educated young people in an effective way but by bad contents in
them. They make children think that they are capable of doing the same to adults although they
are not mentally and physically ready. Unsuitable contents should not be provided to children
because they are too young to handle this type of information, also they cannot decide whether
this is good or bad, what to follow and what not to. For this reason, publishers should consider
carefully the consequences of putting contents to public.
As mentioned by Elkind, the idiom “early ripe, early rot” has reflected this result of rapid
maturity very well. An interpretation of the idiom is that, child’s maturity process is similar to a
fruit. Each kind of fruit has its own ripe timing. When the ripening is pushed too fast by any
chemical fertilizers or products to increase productivity, it is not a normal performance.
Afterwards, the fruit will not be as delicious as an organic one. Also, because the fruit is fullygrown by advancement from chemicals, it is weaker in defending sicknesses from the
environment. More than that, the chemicals, unintentionally, rushes off the rotting process of the
fruit, makes it only last in a very short time. Applying children to this metaphor, they are
growing up mentally and physically in an unusual way. Having considered mental maturity,
adolescence is affected by determinants listed such as academic pressure, social pressure and the
multimedia. The consequences of being mature rapidly have resulted in many different social
issues. Issues like teenage sex, venereal disease and unwanted pregnancy have become an
afflictive topic in recent conferences. Stress diseases, juvenile crimes and even suicides are also
sad portraits of today’s teenagers. Those problems cause damages to adolescence in particular
and to the society in general.
The foreseeable downward quality of human resource has put out one big question for
people to answer. Who is going to fix this, the negative powerful influence which speeds up
youngster’s maturity, if nobody agrees to stop earning personal profit on it? People who are
parents, siblings, relatives or teachers, friends of adolescence; program editors, books or
magazines publishers of children accessible media; and every people from other parts of the
community should take into thorough and careful consideration to answer the question as well as
to solve this urgent issue of rapid maturity.
Bibliography
Elkind, David “The Hurried Child.” Childhood’s End (1989): 7-32. Print
Harder, Arlene F. “The Developmental Stages of Erik Erikson” (2002): n. pag. Web. 29 Feb.
2012
Wechsler, David “Child Development” Intellectual Development and Psychological
Maturity (1950): 45-50. Print.