11 - Finding common ground: Implications for policies in Europe and the United States

Summary

Countries sharing democratic traditions all aim to have well-educated individuals who are mentally and physically healthy and who share the knowledge, values, and skills needed to become productive workers, responsible family members, and active citizens (Takanishi, Mortimer, and McGourthy, 1995). However, it is becoming increasingly clear that these countries, specifically those of Europe and the United States, which are the foci of this volume, have far too many young people at risk of not becoming competent adults.

Thus, in working together toward the 1994 Marbach Conference, both the Johann Jacobs Foundation and the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development shared an interest in exploring ways in which European countries and the United States could better prepare all their young people for the coming century. The chapters in this volume represent the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of educators, health professionals, and researchers in labor economics, cultural anthropology, biology, psychology, and sociology in search of promising approaches. This concluding chapter identifies the common ground reached, the implications for educational and social policies, and the continuing dilemmas facing nations in preparing their young people for adult life.

Finding common ground

Globalization of the risks of adolescence

The experience of adolescence in the United States and in European countries, although different in important ways, is becoming increasingly similar (Chisholm and Hurrelmann, 1995) As Rutter and Smith (1995) document in an Academia Europaea study of post-World War II trends in psychosocial disorders among adolescents in Europe, increasing num- bers of European youth are engaging in crime, abusing drugs, taking their own lives, and becoming depressed.