Like an erratic rash that seems to clear up to only return, an old debate has resurfaced once again in discussions of Protestant youth ministry.  This debate surrounds the very nature of adolescence.  What is it?  And where did it come from?  The tension is between those that assert that adolescence is a social construction of Western modern societies and those that see it as a universal biological reality.  In other words, to put it crudely, the questions of debate consist in these, “Are adolescents created from the forces of culture or the powers of natural biological determinism?  Is it industrialization, secondary education, and consumer society that make adolescence?  Or is adolescence just the natural stage of an organism that everyone, across time and space, has moved through?” read more