Urban America as a context for the development of moral identity in adolescence

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1998 by Daniel Hart, Robert Atkins, Debra Ford

Although increased funding is necessary and helpful, money by itself cannot resolve the problem, because adolescents need opportunities to explore roles that can only be modeled by responsible persons who are usually acting in the context of social institutions. Consequently, we see no other option than to ask adults and institutions in impoverished areas to expand their missions to include support for the development of moral identity in adolescents. Many of the institutions that remain in urban areas work hard to offer support for their communities and to offer opportunities for their adolescents. In Camden, for example, churches have been particularly successful in supporting adolescents' explorations of work designed to help others, and many of the care exemplars described earlier were introduced to community action by their churches. But churches are under tremendous pressure to provide a range of resources to urban communities, and consequently there remains a genuine need for others to provide support to adolescents.

Our view is that other urban institutions should assume part of the responsibility for providing opportunities for moral identities to develop. Community service in schools, for example, may be one way to provide institutional support for the articulation of moral identities (e.g., Youniss & Yates, 1997). We have high hopes that institutions that typically have not done much to support development can be transformed in ways that will help adolescents grow in beneficial ways. For example, youth sports offer a tremendous opportunity to influence adolescents. Through sports one can reach adolescents who are not academically talented, adolescents who do not volunteer for service clubs in a high school, and so on. Moreover, sports can serve to bring together groups of adolescents who do not otherwise associate with one another to work toward a common cause. Finally, the adults who work with adolescents in sports are volunteers, or so lowly paid that they are essentially volunteers: Most of these adults report that their actions reflect their concern for youth.

In our program in Camden, STARR (Sports Teaching Adolescents Responsibility and Resiliency), we try to allow sports to realize its potential for supporting healthy development. In particular, we want adolescents to recognize that they can make meaningful, responsible contributions to their communities. Toward that end, we arrange for the teams in the league to do some type of community service in Camden. We also try to support the developmental potential of sports by training the adult volunteer coaches to model the kinds of behavior that they want the adolescent athletes to emulate, and provide ample opportunity for the adults to form relationships with the adolescents by offering a year-round program of activities. Finally, we emphasize the responsibility that adolescents have to each other: We expect the older kids to make sure that the young kids get home safely after practice; we ask that everyone work to keep the chaos of bus rides to a minimum; and we rely upon the adolescents to help us plan the future of the program.