Word: taffel
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Where this thing for thongs comes from is obvious: Britney, Beyonce, The Real World, even PG movies like Freaky Friday. When a 12-year-old wears a thong, "it's not about rebellion against adults," says child therapist Ron Taffel, author of The Second Family: How Adolescent Power Is Challenging the American Family (St. Martin's Press; 2001). In Taffel's view, the adult establishment has become too weak and weary to inspire rebellion. Getting thongs or tattoos or body piercings, he argues, is actually a "statement to other kids that they are part of this very, very intense, powerful...
...Save the Last Dance or ad campaigns like Benetton's, that interracial dating is cool. "In adolescent life and culture, kids hang out together in all different kinds of groups. It's what's accepted, what one sees on TV, in the movies, in tons of advertising," says Ron Taffel, author of The Second Family: How Adolescent Power Is Challenging the American Family. "Now when kids date interracially, they're not doing it to rebel or upset their parents but because it's a part of life. It's a profound difference...
...science-minded teenagers, the elite high school has another justification. Explains Taffel: "Many Nobel Prizewinners do their outstanding work in their early 30s. There's so much to learn that you have to do it early or you won't arrive at the frontiers of research in time. You can't specialize narrowly any more; biology flows into biochemistry and on into mathematics." Jerome Metzner, chairman of the school's biology department, agrees: "When you get a bright youngster and focus his interest early, the kid soars like a comet. He gets a five...
...doctorate, then teach math." Marriage waylays most girls heading for graduate school, but a survey of both sexes a few years ago showed that 13% of the school's alumni had taken two or more years of graduate study. Not all Bronx High students go into science; Principal Taffel maintains that those who do not are better grounded in what he pointedly calls "the other humanities" than graduates of most comprehensive high schools...
...calculus and calorimeters at Taffel's school; he recalls that he has attended four school dances since he took over in February, and last week tryouts began on a student-written play. There is no football team at Science (too expensive), but last year the school won the city tennis championship, in 1956 won the city mile relay and handball titles. Another sporting championship it picked off last year: the Interscholastic Mathematics Contest title...