Risk and Responsibility
Cognitive development and the implications for higher ed
Last week, a reader objected to the part of my column where I noted a connection, in my mind, between some thinking and research I had been doing about the risk-taking behaviors of young people, and the fact that we tend to fight our wars with the lives of those same young people. I hope he was reassured that I had meant no offense, after I shared with him that, during the period of 1967 to 1971, I had spent more than four years in the military, including three Vietnam tours.
Youth in Asia
I didn't share with him then, though, what I will share with you now. I have, ever since the mid-'70s, described myself as "ignorant and naïve," when explaining how it came about that I ended up with a lot of medals, including the
Vietnam Service Medal
with three "campaign stars." I was lucky. When I did see combat, it was always in situations where I was relatively protected, surrounded by friendly troops, and I escaped unscathed.
I happen to have been raised in a small, economically depressed, Ohio River valley town. Although I had consumed vast amounts of the East Liverpool Carnegie Library, in those days of static-y television and local news that really meant "local." I really knew nothing about much of the outside world. Certainly I had no concept of what fighting in a war was like, the United States' involvement in the murder of Ngo Dinh Nhu, or the likelihood that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was "manufactured." I didn't have to be recruited: I didn't know what to do with my life, and the concept of "serving my country" while seeing the world was all that I needed.
Like I said, I used to say that I was "ignorant and naïve." I was. I also did not have a fully mature brain, although you would not have been able to persuade me of that, and neuroscience of the time probably would have said that I did. It's only recently that brain imaging has made it clear that certain parts of the brain that allow mature, reflective thought, do not complete their development until a person is in his or her mid-20s.
Cognitive development
One of the ways this late development seems to express itself is in
higher crash rates for teen drivers
. No doubt there is an evolutionary advantage for humans, in general, in the fact that our young people are a little more likely than mature adults to take certain kinds of risks. There are so many ways that young people express their inclination to take risks: sexual behavior, drugs, MySpace and FaceBook, driving recklessly, and so forth. Certainly, just the act of leaving home and attending a college or a university is risk-taking of a sort, and something that is easier for a 20-year-old to do than for a 50-year-old. Unfortunately, the same is true of, for example, strapping on a bomb and expecting to end up in paradise after the blast.