Erin Crouch
7th & 8th Grade Art
“Sensitive Sam”
Physical Development
Sensitive Sam is
a thirteen year old boy in the eighth grade. He has dirty blonde hair and
is about four feet and eleven inches tall.
Most the other kids, even the girls in Sam's art class are taller than
him and he is slightly overweight for his height. The average age for the
height spurt for adolescent boys is twelve and a half years. Sam is past
this age, but he has not had a growth spurt. He looks as though he may
not reach puberty for a few more years. Research tells us that
late-blooming males do not fare as well as late-blooming females. Males
who reach puberty early develop a strong sense of self worth and are generally
viewed by others as likeable, independent, self-confident and more
attractive. On the other hand, late-bloomer males such as Sensitive Sam
are not well liked and are often perceived as annoying and attention
seeking. This is the case with Sensitive Sam, as he constantly needs the
teacher's attention, is not well liked by his peers and whines profusely.
Sam does not play any sports or intramural activities at school. Sam
could greatly benefit from playing sports as they improve self-confidence,
motor performance, cognitive and social development. Sam says he does not
enjoy sports because of his size.
Since Sensitive
Sam is slightly overweight he may be at a higher risk of developing an eating
disorder such as Bulimia Nervosa or Anorexia Nervosa. Mostly this is problem
for girls, but many males, mostly homosexual males,
also suffer with eating disturbances. Additionally, many young teenagers
do not receive adequate nutrition for growth. Sensitive Sam sometimes seems
tired and easily irritable which may be a sign of an iron deficiency.
Overall Sam is
not vastly behind his classmates in physical development. However for Sam it
may feel like a lifetime. The fact that he is a late-bloomer makes Sensitive
Sam feel like he does not fit in with the others.
Cognitive Development
Sensitive Sam is of
above average intelligence. Sam always finished his artwork early and
frequently researched class projects at home. He would read long novels
after finished his work. Sam is in the beginning of Piaget's formal
operational stage. During this stage the adolescent learns to reason and find
solutions for a problem more like a scientist. In middle and late
childhood, the child needed concrete events or things to learn. In the
formal operational stage the adolescent is now more capable of internal and
abstract thought and learning. If Sensitive Sam was asked to answer
Piaget's pendulum problem, he would be able to use hypothetico-deductive
reasoning to create a hypothesis, test his hypothesis, and then solve the
problem. Sensitive Sam is now also capable of
propositional reasoning. Therefore he is able to examine the logic in a
series of propositions and come up with a correct conclusion. Sam said he
would enjoy being a paleontologist when he grows up because he enjoys studying
dinosaurs in his science class. Sam is in the tentative period of
selecting a career.
During adolescence Sam's attention span increases and becomes more
accommodating to specific tasks. His strategies of learning become better
leading to a better ability to store and retrieve information. Similarly,
his brain's processing capacity increases, which creates a larger working
memory and allows more information to be memorized at one time.
Sam's new cognitive abilities create changes in his self-perception. This
change occurs mostly during the transition between concrete to formal
operations. Many young teenagers become increasingly disputative and have
distorted images of the world, known as the imaginary audience and the personal
fable. Sam's sensitivity probably stems from his increasing egocentrism
and self-consciousness that occurs during this stage in his life.
Social Development
The name
"Sensitive Sam" comes from Sam's acute sensitivity to the teasing and
taunting of his classmates. One boy simply stared at Sam during Art class and
he almost came to tears! Sam is teased occasionally for being short and
overweight. This causes Sam to be extremely self-conscious. He seems to
feel all whispered comments and haphazard glances are at his expense.
Peer pressure is a
huge social conflict during the teenage years. Many young teenagers are pushed
and pressured into trying new things or performing adult tasks, like shaving
and wearing make-up, much earlier than would they on their own. There is a
tremendous peer pressure to date, even among eighth graders. Sensitive Sam does
not have a girlfriend but he said that he would like to have one.
Sam is mostly a loner. While, it is common for adolescents to cut down their
circle of best friends from the average of four to six during middle childhood
to the average one or two during adulthood, Sam says he has only one best
friend: his cousin who attends a different school. During adolescence
most peer friendships start to become less superficial and more tight-knit, but
Sam's friends at school seem to be mostly superficial: he doesn't really care
for them but they are the only kids who will eat lunch with him.
When asked the
traditional Heinz dilemma question, Sensitive Sam said "I think stealing
is always wrong." Therefore according to Kohlberg's theory Sam is in the
social-order Maintaining group in the Conventional Level. According to
Erikson, Sam is in the identity versus identity confusion. Sam may have
trouble in this struggle as he seems to have little initiative to involve
himself in sports or other new activities. However Sam's sense of
industry seems to be strong, in that he can evaluate the careers in which he
would excel. He seems to have a strong sense that social skills are not
his strong suit, but that he would excel in careers using numbers and
ideas.
Piaget and Erikson
According to both
Piaget and Erikson, the adolescent is one of the most important stages of
cognitive and social development. Cognitively Piaget called the
adolescent stage formal operational thought. During the formal
operations stage the Sensitive Sam, being an adolescent will begin to be able
to perform the scientific process. The adolescent is able to form a hypothesis
and then test it using the scientific process of controlling variables.
As the adolescent ages the amount and range of variables can be
increased. This type of reasoning is known as hypothetico-deductive
reasoning and Piaget's theory states that this begins in adolescence and is not
possible in late childhood. During childhood, Sensitive Sam was in the
concrete operational stage. During this stage he based all predictions on
reality and the concreteness of the objects placed in front of him. However,
as an adolescent Sam is able solve problems based on mere possibility and test
them to see if they will work in reality.
Erikson’s
theory deals with social development. He
theorized that each stage of an individual’s life is characterized by a particular
conflict. The positive accomplishment of
each stage helps to lead the individual to the positive completion of the next
conflict. The stage of social
development that Sensitive Sam is currently in is called the Identity versus
Role Confusion stage. Erikson believed
this adolescent period of finding identity to be the single most important
stage in social development. If an
adolescent is able to form a strong sense of identity, they are then able to
meet the rest of their life with confidence.
The next conflict in Erikson’s social development theory is the Intimacy
versus Isolation, during which Sensitive Sam will eventually learn to have
intimate relationships. If Sam is not
able to form a strong self-identity he will have trouble completing the next
stage of social development as well.
Erikson
believes the adolescent period to be a time of “trying on” new things. The adolescent, such as Sam, is able to
experiment with various careers, lifestyle choices, hobbies, and more. This experimentation leads to some minor
delinquency in most adolescents; however Erikson notes that during this stage
most successful youngsters are able to participate in productive behaviors as
they age.