“That’s a tough age,” people say about the eighth-graders I teach.

After 20 years with 14-year-olds, I’ve learned a few things. The most important thing? Remember who the adult is. The second-most important thing is awareness of a dynamic between teacher and students – at all times, be aware of who is responding to whom.

That is not to say students may never be allowed to take the initiative. When proceeding in a constructive direction, their ventures should be encouraged, but the teacher should always be ready to take control when necessary. It’s much the same with a parent raising children, or a leader in the world at large.

When people turn 18, they’re adults in the eyes of the law. At 21, they enjoy nearly all the perks of adulthood. They can become congressmen at 25, senators at 30, and president at 35. Many, however, never actually grow up. Many look older on the outside, but are still babies on the inside – not sure what they stand for or what they stand against, not centered. They can be charming, funny, entertaining, but won’t make good teachers and won’t make good leaders either. Fourteen-year-olds sniff them out quickly and push the boundaries of acceptable behavior, testing the teacher’s reaction. Nearly every class has a few who will push it as far as they can while the rest observe with interest.

But students are ambivalent, too. They like to goof around under the dubious command of teachers or parents who don’t really mean what they say, but they also like knowing that genuine grown-ups will assume control if everything falls apart. They don’t want agitators to take over completely because chaos is not amusing for long. Extended lawlessness gets tedious or even scary, and they’ll crave the return of authority. Adolescent instigators don’t like authority, but they’ll accept it from a real adult who they know means business.

A former student stopped by my classroom recently, and we were discussing some of these issues in the abstract. He’s unusually well-informed about world affairs for someone so young, partly because he was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. The experience changed him. It made him realize what was important and what wasn’t. “Those people want to kill us,” he said. He was only 12 that fateful day, and his maturation process accelerated. He told me he wanted to go into politics and I asked him why. He said he thought he could do some good, and I suspect he will some day.

President Bush’s priorities became clear after Sept. 11, too. Whatever kind of person he was before that day, he was a leader after it. I’m not suggesting he lacked anything on Sept. 10, but just as it did with my former student, it became clear to him what was important and what was not. He was the new leader of the strongest country on Earth and he was being tested.

Although in my 30 years as a teacher, I’ve had at least three students who went on to become murderers, I don’t want to imply that American kids are in a league with Middle Eastern terrorists. They’re not, of course, but Osama bin Laden’s rhetoric about the United States before Sept. 11 is strikingly similar to talk I’ve heard from students who get away with outrageous behavior in a classroom. “Did you see it when Johnny did that? The teacher didn’t do anything!” That’s exactly the kind of braggadocio bin Laden used with his terrorist minions when talking about how President Carter did nothing after Iranian students took Americans hostage; how President Reagan did nothing after terrorists blew up 250 U.S. Marines at Beirut Airport; how President Clinton did next to nothing after al-Qaida blew up two U.S. embassies, the USS Cole, and the parking garage under the World Trade Center. Bin Laden considered the “mighty” United States a cowardly paper tiger unwilling to use its teeth. He perceived that U.S. leaders and U.N. leaders talked tough but did nothing.

If a teacher or a parent says, “The next time you do that, I will … ” over and over again and never takes action, 14-year-olds know they’re dealing with someone who doesn’t mean what he says. Terrorists know that, too. It’s the same dynamic.

President Bush is different. So is Prime Minister Tony Blair. They’ve had their enemies and no shortage of critics, but people everywhere in the world are beginning to realize that they are a couple of genuine, grown-up leaders willing to take charge when things fall apart.

Thank God for that, because we’re all living in a tough age.

Tom McLaughlin, a teacher and columnist, lives in Lovell. His e-mail address is [email protected].