SECTION A: WHAT SHOULD TEACHERS KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD
OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS?
Valuing What Our Students Know
By Judith Kaufman
Judith Kaufman teaches child and adolescent development to elementary and secondary educa-
tion students in the Hofstra University School of Education and Allied Human Services. She be-
lieves that most of the problems associated with adolescence arise because “teenagers are
trapped in a world where they are no longer allowed to act like children, but are not permitted to
be adults.” According to Judy, “Adolescence is not a natural phenomenon or developmental
stage, but rather a modern social construction.”—Alan Singer
Who we are as individuals is a product of the social context of our lives. We become who we
become because of the experiences we have as members of families, communities, ethnic
and religious groups, social classes and societies, and the way we are perceived and treated
because of our race and gender. This perspective on human development is called social
constructivism.
Of course, there are biological aspects of being human, but we cannot isolate those as-
pects from who we are as social and cultural beings. All human potential is expressed
through a particular culture. I think that we are born with almost infinite potential, but once
we become a part of a cultural environment, we are fundamentally altered and shaped by
that environment. Our neural structure is shaped by each encounter in our worlds; connec-
tions are established and severed and potential ways of being are both nourished and
starved. This process continues throughout our lives. As we experience new things, we con-
tinually grow and change.
As a social constructivist, I believe that to be effective, teachers need to understand that
both they and their students shape and are shaped by the communities in which they live. I
want to start off discussing who I am and how my social context has shaped my understand-
ing of schools, children, and adolescents, and then discuss my views on what it means to be
a teenager in this society and the implications this has for the way we organize schools.
I teach human development in a teacher education program and I am a former elemen-
tary school teacher. I was born in 1955 and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. I have one
brother, who is 4 years older than I am. The neighborhood I grew up in was a post-World
War II suburban community built up with help from federally subsidized mortgages. It was
ethnically mixed with Jewish and Irish Catholic two-parent families. The children in our
neighborhood grew up together and went to the same public schools.
My parents were traditionally Jewish in the sense that education was highly valued and
my brother and I received religious instruction in the afternoon after the regular school day.
There was never a question that my brother and I would go to college. However, it was not
as important for me to go to a “good college” because I was a girl.
The Jewish community in Worcester was, it seemed to me, a middle-class community and
my parents seemed to be the only working-class Jews. Looking back as an adult, however,
the community was quite diverse, wealthy and poor, secular and ultra religious, and every-
thing in between. As a child, though, most of my classmates appeared to be from wealthier
families and I felt marginalized. Their fathers were large business owners whereas my father
was always struggling to earn a living. I think I accepted the anti-Semitic stereotype that
Jews were supposed to be successful and I was always wondering why my family did not
look like everybody else’s.
226 CHAPTER 9