Socrates: “I know that I know nothing.”

Socrates: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs and tyrannize their teachers.”

Adolescence has never had a good press. “Unmannerly and disobedient” were the charges hurled at the youth of Athens 2,500 years ago by no less an authority than Socrates (who, ironically, was considered quite a cut-up by his superiors.)

While Socrates’ complaint echoes and reechoes through the ages with surprisingly little variation, counter-arguments have rarely been heard. Like all minority groups, adolescents are too busy just trying to live and, besides, have too little power to combat the adult majority’s view of them – i.e., that they are indolent, disrespectful, slovenly and rebellious; that their clothes are too casual, their hair too long (or too short, depending on the historical period), their speech too slangy; and that, generally, they are lacking in the traditional virtues (whatever these might be). Like all stereotypes, this one dies hard.

As any thoughtful person knows, the only safe generalization to be made about adolescence is that it’s a very trying, frequently anguished state of life, with seemingly endless twists and variations in the ways it can be difficult.

—Robert S. Gold, intro of Point of Departure: 19 Stories of Youth and Discovery, a delightful if outdated book copyright 1967, Dell Publishing