INDEX OF QUOTES
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We contend that any sophisticated intervention with antisocial youth must have a moral component. Angry, hardened kids who don’t relate to adults and who show little empathy for others are described by many as untreatable, but most have at least a residual conscience. In Fritz Redl’s terms, our job is to "massage numb values" and cultivate the hidden virtues of delinquents. After all, over 90 percent of them say it is important to keep promises, tell the truth, help others, and so on. (Gregg et al., 1994). Another early pioneer in work with troubled and troubling youth, Nicholas Hobbs (1982), has challenged his colleagues to move beyond their preoccupation with the negative. He noted that psychologists have a massive literature on anxiety, depression, and aggression, but know relatively little about joy or well-being. By ignoring positive human motivations, we create anemic programming for youngsters. Only by refocusing our attention on their strengths, and by developing competence where it does not yet exist, will we create truly powerful interventions for these powerful young persons who are masters at circumventing our systems of behavioral control. No doubt the great expectations of early pioneers in youth work were driven more by ideological fervor than empirical realism, but such Pygmalion optimism inoculated them from self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. The Ukrainian youth worker Anton Makarenko once chastised a colleague who was cynical about a particularly difficult youth, telling him that since he had no hope for the youth, he would not be allowed to work with him. Perhaps today’s professionals have a shortage of this passionate Pygmalion optimism. |
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Gregg, V., Gibbs, J. and Basinger, K. (1994) Patterns of
delay in male and female delinquents’ moral judgment. Merrill Palmer
Quarterly
Hobbs, N. (1982) The troubled and troubling child. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass