Why would anyone care about teenagers?

“Maybe I’m something special, and maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m here for a reason and I might be going somewhere after this, but then again I might not. I wonder where I fit in?”

--Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager

These words inspired Thomas Hine’s personal reflection on his teenage years and those of his generation. Like most baby-boomers, they spent most of their adolescence trying to define themselves and their generation, and to understand the commonality shared by this lack of identity encompassed in the quote above. When do teens feel they belong? Why do they feel they don’t belong? How are these ideas different today than they were 40 years ago? How has time and location affected this idea?

These are some of the questions that will be explored during our newest teen internship project, Teen Miami. Although Hine’s wrote the quote above for his high school assignment in the 1960s, these words still ring true today. This chasm was evident during my teenage experience growing up in Miami during the 1990s and is still echoed today with some of the teenagers I speak to about Teen Miami.

Once such example happened a couple of weeks ago when I was invited to speak to a group of teenagers about our project. I always prepare what I am going to say in order to deliver my message as effectively as possible … or so I thought. On this particular day, I was thrown back with a question by a young lady in the audience, after I planned my delivery, passed out materials, encouraged an open and constructive dialogue where others participated, she raised her hand and asked, “Not to be rude or go against your mission or anything, but why would anyone care about teenagers? Why are we so important?”

At this point, as you may imagine, I started thinking I didn’t plan my message as effectively as I thought, if she hasn’t gotten the point. Despite having felt this way in my own teenage years, 15 years later I was startled at her question, and it immediately made me realize the complexity and weight of her reasoning. So I started reevaluating my approach and realized maybe this is a common feeling among other teens in the room, school, neighborhood, city, state and world, independent of whatever I would’ve said in that library on that day.

So I took her question and gave it to the group to answer. Why would we, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (HMSF), create a teen program where teenagers would come to the museum and document and research teen life across generations in South Florida? Some teens retributively answered her; others didn’t know what to say even though they were nodding their heads throughout my presentation; others supported her question. Why? Why? Why?

After seeing the response from her fellow classmates, I tried answering her with some fodder about the teenage years being your “glory” years and that they shape your life in so many ways and stressed a common sentiment among all teens from different generations … yada yada yada. Ultimately, she looked at me with the same confused look and I said, “I would encourage you to try to answer this question in your creative piece. Ask yourself this question, ask others this question both your own age and adults, see where your search takes you and then present what you find.”

I can only imagine the look on her face could only compare to the look of relief on Columbus’ face when his sailors saw land for the first time on his maiden voyage. It was that incredible look of relief that said, I know where to go from here, which gets to the heart of the program. Although, her question was a pretty loaded one, with so many possible answers, it was understood she should take the journey to seek and find these answers out for herself.

 Overall, this is what Teen Miami seeks to do; to provide the tools and develop the skills to guide the teens through this process of self-discovery. This project bridges that disconnect from a sense of alienation, common to all teens, to a feeling of empowerment in an otherwise confusing period. Although, the program will encompass museology, study researching and archiving procedures, exhibition building/design, mediation and team building at its core is the idea of finding where you belong and where you are going by building content and researching teen history of South Florida.

If anything, I would hope my answer would engage the young lady that asked me that question, and encouraged her to become part of history by documenting others, and, by doing so, finding the importance of her identity as a teen, Miamian and South Floridian.

-- Mariela Rossel, Teen Miami Coordinator