ABSTRACT
Adolescents seem always to have made excessive demands on the patience of adults. Headteachers who once thought of girls as the stabilising influence in their schools have been known to quail at the sight of some of their new-style female adolescents clad in what is still thought of as masculine attire and expressing their opinions as forcefully as any boys do. Adolescents of the lowest intelligence can show concern for others, can delight in making and giving. They can also, under different circumstances, show nothing but self-centredness, destruction and greed, or at least brashness and a crass insensitivity to the needs of anyone but themselves. Young girls, bombarded with propaganda which it is very hard for them to resist, avoid confronting reality by accepting the trivial role.
