Adolescence
In Nepalese Context

By Niranjan Prasad Upadhyay

THE term adolescence comes from the Latin word adolescers meaning, "to grow" or to maturity". It has a broader meaning that includes mental, emotional, social maturity as well as physical maturity. An eminent psychologist, Piaget highlights that adolescence is the age when the individual becomes integrated into the society of adults. It also includes very profound intellectual changes.

Changes

The period of adolescence, which varies from person to person, falls approximately between the ages 12 and 20 and encompasses both physiological and psychological changes. Physiological changes lead to sexual maturity and usually occur during the first several years of the period. This process of physical changes is known as puberty, and it generally takes place in girls between the ages of 8 and 14, and boys between the ages of 9 and 16. In puberty, the pituitary gland increases its production of gonadotropins, which in turn stimulate the production of estrogen in girls, and testosterone in boys. Estrogen and testosterone are responsible for breast development, hair growth on the face and body, and deepening voice. These physical changes vary significantly from person to person and from one culture to another.

Change include questioning of identity and sexual role; movement toward personal independence; and social changes. As adolescence progresses, many of the interests that were carried over from childhood wane and are replaced by more matured interests. Also, because of the greater responsibilities older adolescents are expected to assume more responsibility and the consequent decrease in time to spend as they wish, many older adolescents are forced to limit the range of their interests.

The Nepalese government has introduced "National Adolescent Health and Development Strategy" paper in 2000. In that paper, government stresses that young people of today are tomorrow's adults. The fertility behaviour of adolescents is a potential determining factor for future population growth in a country. It is of paramount importance that an environment be created and adequate support provided to enable adolescents to develop their full potential and enjoy a healthy and responsible adulthood. Adolescents comprise more than one fifth 22 per cent of total population. The government further highlights that nearly half of 15-19 year old adolescent girls and a fifth (20.6 per cent) of the adolescent boys aged are married. Nearly 40 per cent of Nepalese adolescents between 10-19 years age are illiterate. The gross enrolment rate decreases from 86 per cent at a primary education level to 11 per cent at lower secondary education levels respectively.

Adolescents in Nepal often encounter many problems, which include lack of awareness and knowledge about sexual and reproductive health, early marriage, early and frequent child bearing, unsafe abortion, STD/HIV AIDS, and substance abuse. These problems are often exacerbated by social problems such as poverty, illiteracy, child labour, gender discrimination, violence and abuses including girl trafficking and prostitution

National Planning Commission of Nepal highlights in the Ninth Plan (1997-2002) that youths should be treated as a most important group of the population. But efforts towards resolving their problems, fulfilling their needs and utilising their potentialities and specialties have not been satisfactory. The National Planning Commission further stresses that youths who are currently studying at the universities or have already graduated will be involved in the rural and community development programmes. This involvement will assist in covering such areas as development activities, environment, population health, sports, culture and tribal, women and youth development.

Adolescence in Western societies tends to be a period of rebellion against adult authority figures, often parents or school officials, in the search for personal identity. Many psychologists regard adolescence as a byproduct of social pressures specific to given societies, not as a unique period of biological turmoil. In the context of youth's overall development, the government remarks that youths as developed agents of the 21st century and they will be made capable of confronting the existing challenges like poverty, illiteracy, backwardness and superstitions.

The health of adolescents is linked to physical, psychological and social abilities that help to determine their behaviour. Healthy development of adolescents is dependent upon several complex factors: socioeconomic circumstances, the environment in which they live and grow, family life, community and peer relationship, available opportunities for education and employment and access to health information and service.

Psychologist, Elizabeth B.Hurlock (1997) remarks that building a moral code is difficult for adolescents because of inconsistencies in standards of right and wrong they encounter in daily life. These inconsistencies confuse them and hinder their progress in building a moral code that is not satisfactory to them but which leads to socially approved behaviour. By early adolescence, both boys and girls are well aware of their good and bad traits, and they appraise these in terms of similar traits in their friends. They are also well aware of the role personality plays in social relationship and thus are strongly motivated to improve their personalities
by reading books and articles on the subject.

The effects of external culture developed and expanded through mass media are also concentrated in the youths. In the course of imitating foreign culture recklessly, youths have fallen prey to confusion and directionless.

Gender expert, Lifschitz (1993) stresses that adolescents may use occupational stereotypes more than gender in evaluating male and female behaviours. When high schools students rated male and female characters in traditions and non-traditional occupations, the gender typing of the occupation had a greater effect on the personality traits.

Transition Period

In conclusion, the adolescent years are maturing years, and transitions are made from childhood to adulthood. This is a period when problems come up, such as how to study, how to build a career, getting along with peers and parents, and having enough money. This is the period of physical maturity. Psychologically, at this stage, an individual manages his or her problems fairly well and becomes a reasonably happy and well-adjusted person.

Hitler’s House Haunts Austrians

By George Jahn

WORLD is spreading: Hitler lived here.

For decades, few people outside Leonding knew the Nazi dictator spent his boyhood in this picture-pretty town near the west Austrian city of Linz. In a country that is still struggling to own up to its past, Leonding would have preferred to keep its Hitler connection out of the public eye.

Safety Hazard

But this year, the house where Hitler lived for six years until age 15 was becoming a safety hazard and a decision had to be made: to renovate it or tear it down? That, in turn, spawned a painful dispute.

Some in the town of 22,000 wanted the empty house designated as a memorial to infamy, while others demanded it be razed - both ideas too radical for Mayor Herbert Sperl, a self-described man of consensus.

Instead, he got the town council to approve a plan to renovate the house, leave it unidentified and use it to warehouse coffins for the nearby cemetery.

"Rededicating it for this function is one way of making sure Hitler isn’t being glorified," he says.

Although renovation work already has begun, others remain opposed.

They point out that other buildings - Hitler’s birthplace in Braunau to the west and a school he attended in Fischlham to the south, display memorials or plaques condemning his crimes against humanity. And most Austrians today acknowledge that their country was not only a victim but a perpetrator during the Nazi era.

"I suggested that we should make it a monument, a memorial to the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust," says Dr. Claudia Mueller-Wechselberger, a 42-year-old physician at the local hospital. "Turning the house into something it never was won’t change history.

"It’s time people here stopped turning away and started facing facts - Hitler lived here, among us."

In March she wrote to the regional newspaper, the Oberoesterreichische Nachrichten, complaining that the estimated dlrs 300,000 cost of renovation would be better spent turning the building into a memorial.

Reaction was quick - and in some cases scary. People accused her of casting their community in a negative light by publicizing its links to Hitler.

"I started getting anonymous calls, nasty cursing," she says. "Some of them asked if I had children."

A town councilwoman stopped greeting her. So did neighbors, and "one of them said that if I ever write another letter to the paper, I should make sure I don’t list my address again," Wechselberger said.

Hitler was born in Braunau, an Austrian town on the German border, and lived there until the age of 3.

As Germany’s fuehrer, or leader, he paid triumphant visits to Braunau, Leonding and other boyhood haunts after Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in 1938.

Although Braunau’s "Hitler House" has long been used as a workshop for the mentally disabled, it remains a place of pilgrimage for admirers and a venue for anti-Nazi demonstrators. Gerhard Skiba, mayor of the town of 16,000, says Braunau’s reputation as Hitler’s birthplace is an eternal burden all its residents must bear.

Lucas Dorn-Fussenegger, a member of the environmentalist Green Party, was one of only two out of Leonding’s nine councilors who voted against the mayor’s plans.

His suggestion: Identify the house for what it was - Hitler’s home until 1904 - and put up a mirror next to the sign "so that the visitor can see himself and recognize that the intolerance that led to the Holocaust begins with the little man."

Opposed was the rightist Freedom Party of Joerg Haider, whose past praise of some Nazi-era policies and disparaging comments about Jews prompted the European Union to impose temporary sanctions on Austria when the party joined the government coalition two years ago.

Freedom Party councilman Horst Wagenhofer says he would have preferred to "drag the house down rather than make it a magnet for leftist liberals and their graffiti."

In any case, Hitler’s shadow is bound to go on looming over Leonding.

In the cemetery beside the house, his mother, Klara, lies in a grave by her husband, Alois, surrounded by burned-out stumps of votive candles that attest to frequent visitors.

Ignorance

Cemetery workers and passers-by shrug and profess their ignorance when asked who visits the graves. But at least one is not afraid to speak her mind.

"I’m glad someone is taking the time to treat their memory with respect," said Ilse Maier, 55.

As for Hitler, she said: "It’s good that he lived here."

(AP)

Good Results, Exhorbitant Charges

By PNK

SLC exam results in the wee hours of that fine June 16th morning fine tuned the dive for the worm. Yes, the birds in their nests got up with yawns. The hunger was there and it was only a matter of time with the right strategic dives that food could be had. But in this case the birds of colleges were the birds of prey to scoop down as fast as possible to snare the SLC graduates.

It is no wonder that innovations had to be devised if a college wanted to get maximum enrolment from students who had just got free from the four walls of the school by climbing over the oft repeated "Iron Gate". Howsoever difficult it might have been for most of the students to walk out of the school confines, the job of finding the right college offering the right subjects was still a tougher job. It’s no wonder that many a fathers have lost their sleep and hair on their head just thinking on what their son/doughter was to become in the future.

The reason is plain that the choice of a reliable college, among the umpteen ones, for their wards to study is a tough proposition. It has been difficult even for those parents who have received a degree or two. It’s not an easy job even going by newspaper ads which highlights this or the other educational institution. And those colleges which pick out ads must be affluent. It’s no peanuts giving colour ads or half pages to highlight the salient features of that particular institution (big business for newspapers, no doubt). Of course, they say that ads are the way to enhance business. And imparting education has become a business like anything else. There may be no wholesalers but at every corner there are retailers. The retailers, as is their habit, go for the hard sell techniques. The evidence for this can be found if you turn the pages of any newspaper or weekly.

The money flows out of the college coffers. Whose money? Not from the school administrators’ wallets. They can’t be so generous as to be the milk of human kindness. The high charges imposed on the students i, e, the parents, result in increasing school or college revenues. So the thought of putting it into good use by spending tens of thousands of rupees on those glamorous ads. To go for a few more rupees there’s a choice of going for the coloured ones. After all, it’s investment for grand returns in the days to come.

If that’s not enough why not publicise their achievements. The pictures of toppers from their college in the earlier exams are there to top it off. The students by studying in the concerned college are the lucky ones to have their pictures published. Isn’t that a privilege? Must be an achievement by the student’s viewpoint to be seen staring out of the pages. Maybe an incentive to newcomers.

The story is still incomplete on these types of ads. The scholarships offered defy all imagination. For some it may be 100 per cent ( some have even offered uniform dress together with waiver of transportation or hostel charges, stationery and so on). Well, that’s not all. It could be 75, 50 or 25 per cent also. Isn’t that great for those who have come out to greener pastures. It’s an honour for those who have passed SLC. At the same time, it presents the unhealthy competition that prevails in the market. And where are the concerned educational outlets going to meet their annual budget from? Yes, from the students who enrol and pay full tuition, transportation and other charges. It naturally means that they have to have a very high rate of all charges. Doesn’t that make education in a private college very expensive? Barring a few, the case is the same for all the private ones engaged in the occupation. The results may show the good side but on money matters it’s gloomy in a poor country that Nepal is. Any panacea?