Risk and Responsibility

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Risk and Responsibility

Cognitive development and the implications for higher ed

4/5/2007

By Terry Calhoun

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.