In recent years, some studies — albeit controversial studies — have suggested that marijuana can have adverse affects on “the maturing adolescent brain,” Science Magazine reports. However, a recent breakthrough study found that there may be “no measurable link between marijuana use and lower IQ.”

Most of us have smoked weed at some point in our lives. And if the conversations I’ve had with friends and family are universal, most people had their first toke when they were in junior high or high school.

But according to the study, conducted by Nicholas Jackson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and his colleagues, that may not be such a bad thing. As this study differs from previous research that only examined a “single snapshot in time.”

Jackson’s study examined 789 pairs of adolescent twins between the ages of 9 and 11 from two ongoing studies. “Over the course of 10 years, the team administered five intelligence tests and confidential surveys about marijuana use,” Science reports. The researchers also asked about “other drug use such as opioid painkillers, cocaine, and binge drinking. Marijuana users lost about four IQ points over the course of the study. But their abstinent twin siblings showed a similar pattern of decline, suggesting that the loss of mental sharpness was due to something other than pot.”

Jackson says that the study’s findings lead the researchers to think the “something else” was something in the twins’ shared environment — most likely home life, school, and peers.

While this study is making waves right now, another recent study found similar results.

This separate study was conducted by Valerie Curran, psychopharmacologist at the University College London, and her colleagues.  The study examined 2,000 non-twin British teens.

While these studies were well written and researched, they still don’t prove without a doubt that marijuana doesn’t harm teens’ brains.

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Image of teen smoking weed via Shutterstock

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ColumnQuick: The Beatles or the Stones? Ginger or Mary Ann? Bomb Syria or don’t bomb Syria? It’s silly to equate the gravity of these choices, but it’s clear that our culture delights in and demands quick decision making. To be unsure is to be lacking true character and deemed less-than-relevant. Consider the din of mocking reserved for those who sit “on the fence.”

Yes, we are called on to know—or at least say we do. And we are called on to know now. Reaction to the situation in Syria illustrated this well. After Basher al-Assad forces’ use of sarin gas and Barack Obama’s (for some long-awaited, for others misguided and exceptionally American) saber rattling, many of my friends, acquaintances, the nation and the world quickly made their selections. Statements in defense of both tacks, in traditional and social media, were definitive, clear, justified. Despite the fact that a process was unfolding, in the days and even hours following the August 21 incident, decision making happened quickly, teams were chosen and colors donned.

I too leaned in one way fast (for these purposes, it doesn’t really matter which one), but I ultimately found myself uncommitted—and subsequently increasingly uncomfortable. Dear friends, smart people, emphatically broke both ways, while I just couldn’t pull the trigger, as it were, and join one chorus or the other. I’d like to think that I was taking the time to gather all the data (one of which emerged as what now seems like a fortunate accident) as it came in. Perhaps there was just too much to consider. Perhaps I lacked decision making stamina after so many years of White House war drumming and the battles that followed. In any case, I felt caught in crossfire between instantly fossilized sides. Not a fun place to be.

Young Decision Making

Perhaps we’re wired in a way where being confronted with a choice translates into quick decision making. After all, right out of the pubescent gate we’re challenged to establish personal and generational identities by choosing this and not that without too much thought. How much did we listen to our parents music before declaring it irrelevant? The [insert your favorite band here] was where it was at for Generation [Yours]. Same for our fashion/politics/spiritual decisions v. theirs. While the extent of such rebellion varied among us, almost to the young man and woman we agreed, we were not going to be like our forebears. And here’s to that.

And so we charged (or backed?) into our truths: Rock over classical, modern over traditional, anything to (mostly unconsciously) define ourselves as part of our generation and/or clique. Some of this was pure fun. (For me, it was the Beatles and Mary Ann.) But short shrift and quick disposal of anything “other” was the order of the day. No need for hmms. And no time, either. Seeing the other side or dilly-dallying on where we came down meant being vulnerable in a no-man’s land where no one seemed to have your back. Being part of a tribe was paramount and those without quick decision making skills lacked status or even acceptance. Consideration was shunned and changing minds forbidden. As author and Penn State cultural studies professor Michael Bérubé once pointed out, “It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it.” Ah, youth.

Despite the fact that there is supposed to be a time to dispense with childish things, as we’ve grown older and left that messy sandbox, we still don’t always do a good job of taking in the broader view before decision making. In fact, the rules of our adolescent tribalism remain with us in a way that permeates our adult lives and our culture as a whole.

Consider This

The problem is that once we succumb to the pressure for quick decision making, defending our position in the face of new or unfolding information (or even changing tastes) can become a matter of ego—and that’s bad news. Even as the events of Syria unfolded, both the Obama-as-war-monger and punish-with-ordnance camps remained entrenched. But the facts on the ground were that a complicated situation with no easy answers was to a great extent diffused by a combination of factors and, dare I say it, a flexible thinker in the White House who took advantage of emerging facts and opportunities, both hoped for and unplanned. And none of this jibed with either side.

Again without comparing the graveness of such choices to the Syrian question, how many times have you read a book or seen a movie or encountered a piece of art and, though moved, were perplexed enough to need digestion time to tease out your thoughts and realize the full impact of the experience—only days, weeks or even years later reaching a conclusion. How many “one second thoughts” have you had? Sometimes understanding takes time—and sometimes it never fully happens before something leaves your figurative field of vision. Embracing this state of mind isn’t always easy, but it’s often critical to accurate decision making.

None of this is to defend apathy or disinterest—politically, artistically or otherwise. We’re not talking about those folks who on election night still insufferably seem to be neither here nor there, many of whom never had any intention of learning about the candidates, or even voting. (I, for one, am as uninterested in the uninterested as they are in me.)

I also don’t mean to challenge certain instances where we know what we know and delayed decision making is just senseless. (I remember advising my son upon his entering college to delay choosing a major until they threatened to throw him out. He chose Film on day one and two years out of college is enjoying a budding career in the field. Turns out he knew what he knew.) Moreover, some choices require quick action—if there’s a tiger in the room (or enemy planes in the air), taking one’s time before decision making would be pretty damn, well, thoughtless.

But here’s something to think about the next time you’re feeling uneasy about being perched on that fence: Shooting from the hip is an inaccurate game if you’re not Butch or Sundance. Bullseyes are most often attained when one takes careful aim before pulling the trigger (again, as it were). Know that assuming a thoughtful, jury’s out position can be an assertive and intellectually aggressive stance in itself—and one with its own style, if that matters. Of course, you might be well informed and confident, and being temporarily or permanently undecided is a rare occurrence for you. That’s fine. The trick though, as it is with so many things, is having the wisdom to know the difference.

(For the record, after careful thought and lifelong review, I’ll take both the Beatles and the Stones, and Ginger and Mary Ann.)

“Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott@adelson.org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

HyperKulture: In Swoon’s Way – Time traveling and Staring Down Florence Syndrome

InPRINT: A Novel Challenge – Take Action and Read Outside Your Box

InPRINT: You Want Erotic? The Countless Shades of Anaïs Nin

InPRINT: Albert Camus and the Biggest Question of All

InPRINT: Gatsby, Paradise and the 1% – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pre-Occupation

Images: SAN_DRINO (top) and Desmond Tan

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Futuristic, pretty, handmade, techie, and minimalist schools make high school look more fun than it really is.  

Not that anyone in his or her right mind would want to repeat high school. Pretending that you could, however, might the innovative architecture of these structures make it a more compelling proposition? Or is the glossy new coat of contemporary schoolhouse design simply that? A pretty, but impractical cape.

Ecco Eco founder and textile artist Abigail Doan veers towards the latter. She and her husband send their kids to a modest school in Sofia, Bulgaria. “There is no campus per se, but a lovely neighborhood building,” she explains. “What makes [a school] exceptional, frankly, is the spirit of family involvement…not necessarily a feeling of ‘elitism’ based on higher learning housed in state-of-the art buildings or sleek classrooms.”

Like a good book or beautiful person, it’s the inside that counts. In the case of school, the curriculum. Nevertheless, using pure aesthetics as a litmus, here are a dozen schoolhouses that rock.

Vittra School Telefonplan turned to Danish studio Rosan Bosch to create a school without classroom walls. As observed by PSFK, it looks like Google HQ – engaging, creative, ergonomically dashing and kind of enviable. Oh, to be a kid again (who happens to live in Stockholm). It must be noted, however: kids at the real Google school are not nearly as plugged in as the kids in these photos.

The two-story Sydney Centre for Innovation and Learning is full of nooks and crannies with clever names like the Brainforest, the Parklands, the Glasshouse and Greenhouse, the Sandpit (a place for concentration), the Bridge and Deck, and the Loft (for seniors only). There are no formal desks and chairs; the exterior, designed as series of sharp corners and sheltered spaces, give it a boat-like appearance.

The Penleigh and Essendon Junior Boys School in Melbourne is in a residential area dominated by Federation and Italianate mansions. A recent project by McBride Charles Ryan resulted in giving the school this striking façade. A true “building of imagination.”

Copenhagen. Of course. Ørestad College (which is the Danish version of high school) is airy and contemporary with dashes of colorful transparent glass that rotate automatically with the sun. It also features “swirling staircases” and “platforms upon which students lounge on big orange pillows.”

Local craftsmen, pupils and teachers built the Handmade School in the rural Bangladeshi village of Rudrapur, alongside other artisans and volunteers.

Located on the largest of the Canary Islands (Tenerife), Rafael Arozarena High School melds in well with its surroundings, meant to represent a mound of volcanic rock. Designed by AMP Arquitectos, it features a concrete exterior treated in a wash of “chameleon-like” tones.

This contemporary structure was designed by Austrian design firm Coop Himmelb(l)au and bears a likeness to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It houses High School #9 in Central Los Angeles and is a public high school for the visual and performing arts.

Canning Vale High School in Perth, Australia was designed to reflect its teaching philosophy: embracing a more “complex, open and adaptive society common to the 21st century.”

Originally a simple maintenance project, firm Lemieux and Smith Vigeant Architects Collective ended up completely renovating this secondary school in Quebec, Canada. Yes, that is a rock climbing wall at the far end of the basketball court.

Martinkallio School in Helsinki was designed as a compact rectangular structure to minimize its impact on the wooded terrain that surrounds it.

The Facilitair Centrum Niekée in the Netherlands is a colorful bubble-wrapped school replete with open decks for large group teaching and hanging skyboxes for smaller seminars.

The allure of going to school in Switzerland starts with the scenery. Peeking inside of the upper school in Thusis, located on a plateau between the town and a river, Swiss neutrality with a dash of Eastern minimalism makes the grade.

Images: Rosan Bosch; Web Urbanist; Imagine School Design

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Even when the writer isn’t Mark Twain, changing someone’s words is tricky business. I’ve always said the best editors are the ones who are so subtle that you can’t tell what they change in your copy, and yet your piece is better. So, when considering the new version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” that eliminates the prodigious use of the “n-word” throughout the novel, there are two big problems out of the gate: One, if we can agree that Twain is an American literary treasure, it’s probably no one’s business to give his work what’s referred to as a “heavy edit.” And two, the man’s dead. Game over. If he’s not part of the discussion (and he’d want to be), it’s cheating to have it.

That said, Twain and his work are part of our nation’s living culture (the story was even covered by Entertainment Weekly) and there are bigger issues at play here than simple editing ethics. One is straight-up censorship. The other is laziness regarding our relationship with young adults – the target group for the two options being offered here: The reworking of Twain’s text for “innocent eyes” or kicking the book upstairs to only be taught at the college level (proposed by Lorrie Moore last weekend in her NYT op-ed, “Send Huck Finn to College”).  Both impulses are well-meaning, but are wrongheaded disservices to our youth and ourselves.

Regarding censorship, taking shots at book banning is easy when the would-be banners are reactionary thugs concerned with thought-policing our culture by ensuring that so called subversive reads (from “Catcher in the Rye,” to “Lolita,” to “The Communist Manifesto”) remain unavailable. Taking on attacks by science deniers and bible thumpers that would cut us off access to scientific facts is also a no-brainer bailiwick for anti-censorship types. (A friend who works in publishing recently showed me an excerpt from a faith-based children’s science textbook used for Darwin-free schooling. Oh dear.)

But it’s a lot more difficult when attempts at information control come from those concerned with issues having to do civil rights, be they about race or sex. (I’m recalling now a professor who once hurled a copy of Homer’s “Odyssey” across a college freshman classroom, symbolically excommunicating it from the canon because of its hideous maleness. This same person later refused to be a reader on my thesis on Kerouac. Doing so would be playing a role in legitimizing what she said was his texts’ misogyny.) The “Huck Finn” controversy is a tough one, to be sure. I cringe when I read the n-word in the novel today as an adult, just as I did when I was young. Likewise, as a Jew, Ernest Hemingway’s great “The Sun Also Rises” has always provoked winces at certain ugliness. I do understand the instinct to get the word out of the classroom.  (The term “injun,” it should be noted, is also dispensed with in the new edition.)

But I turn to Katie, the teen liaison at the local library who’s completing her master’s degree in library science with a focus on Young Adults. Katie’s an old-school liberal, feminist, anti-sexism and anti-racism, solid citizen of the best sort. Here’s an excerpt from a paper she recently wrote about a decision she made that she thought was best for young girls:

“I recalled my decision to remove a popular magazine, Seventeen, from [the local library’s] Young Adult collection and replace it with another publication. As I made that decision, I was aware that I was wielding control in an undemocratic way, but I didn’t see my actions as “censorship.”… I was in denial about my act of censorship because I thought I was right. … [But] It didn’t matter that I had a litany of ‘good’ reasons for wanting the magazine removed – I was putting my personal opinion ahead of patrons’ wants and needs. That prioritization is never acceptable and is in direct conflict with my personal philosophy of affording information access. … I saw how, on a practical level, I must be ready to defend access to material I personally find abhorrent. This is my duty as a librarian and a youth advocate.”

This is the type of (sometimes counterintuitive) vigilance we must display to make sure high school students have access to work that, like “Huck Finn,” some of us might find distasteful. I know we’re talking about curriculum here and not a teen magazine – but we’re also not talking about Nazi propaganda. Keep in mind young adults’ access to material is consistently under attack and it is specifically here that we need be on guard to defend our rights to information. Most efforts to ban books are focused on this part of the society’s population under the guise of protecting innocence.

The second option, being floated by Moore and others, is that we suspend teaching the book until college and adulthood. “The remedy,” she says, “is to refuse to teach this novel in high school and to wait until college – or even graduate school – where it can be put in proper context.”

Refuse? This is an example of the laziness of our approach not only to engaging and teaching this age group, but also to understanding and respecting their cognitive sophistication, and to owning up to the sometimes uncomfortable world in which they live and form opinions. Until graduate school? What does that say about ourselves as adults and our ability to think and learn?

No one would advocate handing material on complex subject matter to young students without teaching it. Try this on: Material regarding safe sex has unsettling terms and concepts that teenagers can’t “get” on their own. Best not to teach it. Doing so might create a (gasp!) uncomfortable classroom situation. Come on, people. Our job is to teach our children – to offer them context. This is not always a comfortable task – for them or us. In this case, we’re talking about our nation’s legacy of slavery, racism, judgment and hatred. The notion that high school kids aren’t ready for important subject matter is really an indictment of our own lack of creativity, if not indifference. And for those teachers who are (so unfortunately) intimidated by these ideas, there are myriad aides especially designed to teach this book and the controversies it elicits. Go ahead, type it in: “Twain Finn Teaching Controversy Lesson Plans.” A child can do it.

As parents and teachers, we do have to make some choices about material that is and isn’t appropriate to teach young people. No one’s saying that “Tropic of Cancer” or “Lolita” should be part of standard high-school curriculum. But these books are not “Huck Finn,” and regardless, if kids are reading them, we best should be ready to teach them. Tossing them under the rug and saying “see you in college” is simply irresponsible.

If we want our kids to grow up to be conscious adults, we have to teach consciousness in dynamic and intelligent ways. We can reopen the arguments around what Twain was trying to accomplish in his great work, why he chose the terms he did and his possible motivations (good or bad) behind their use. But I’m going to leave that to the thousands of teachers who have successfully taught the book and the millions of high school students who have read it, were taught it and learned great lessons about our culture and compassion from Twain’s masterpiece.

Image: khrawlings

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When my daughter told me she had joined a club at school called “Silent Earth,” I felt a moment of pure maternal panic. I couldn’t help feeling that Silent Earth sounded like a group of excessively emo girls dressed completely in black, wearing goth eyeliner and cutting themselves. I could easily picture this group holding Wiccan worship meetings in a dark corner of the school cafeteria. I braced myself for a long and serious talk about teen angst.

My daughter is a gentle and kind-hearted girl, but when I voiced these concerns she rolled her eyes with enough force to detach both retinas; I correctly interpreted this as a positive sign. If you’re unfamiliar with high school-age females, let me enlighten you: eye rolling is an extremely healthy outlet for teenage girls. It means that the girl in question feels comfortable enough to express her innermost feelings. Also, she finds you utterly ridiculous.

My daughter quickly informed me that Silent Earth was the name of her school’s environmental awareness club. It is a collection of high minded students working together to protect the planet, to encourage recycling and, incidentally, to gain admittance to prestigious colleges.

These are all laudable goals, but I couldn’t help asking why the club burdened themselves with such a depressing name.  My question was answered with a shrug – that universal, all-purpose teenage gesture. Depending on the conversation it can mean:  “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” or “get a life.” It almost always means “please get out of my room.”

At my daughter’s school, Silent Earth has a reputation for attracting kids who are not merely padding their resumes for college admittance. Its members tend to be earnest and well-meaning young people who are genuinely committed to environmental issues. The club members encourage other students to ride the school bus, they promote locally grown produce, and they teach elementary school kids to be more eco-friendly. They have won awards from local government for the impact they’ve had in helping the environment. But I can’t help feeling that they would attract more members if the name was less of a buzzkill.

My daughter actually agrees that the club should be called something a little less grim, but at the same time she wouldn’t necessarily prefer something that sounded too upbeat. Recently we had dinner with friends and found out that their son was a member of his school’s environmental club, an organization with the far perkier title of “POP” (an acronym for preserve our planet). My daughter accepted this news with mild interest, since she had no idea this young man was concerned about the environment. But when I mentioned liking his club’s name, she could barely hide her distaste. She explained to me, at great length, that no one at her school would ever join a club with an oppressively cheerful name like POP. “Way too Disney,” she said, with a quick but dismissive roll of her eyes.

The Earth may be silent but teenage girls, happily, are not.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: burgundavia

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