This is Your Brain on Puberty

What every high school teacher has at one point at one point thought:

Learning happens in the hippocampus, a brain region that plays a key role in acquiring memories. From a cellular perspective, learning takes place when the connections between nerve cells are strengthened. Interfere with those stronger neuronal connections, and a brain can have trouble laying down new memories. Which, apparently, is what happens in adolescence. At least in mice.

Scientists used a variety of methods to study the brains of pubescent female mice. And they discovered that a particular protein, a kind of GABA receptor, for those of you keeping score at home, crops up in the hippocampus during puberty. These receptor proteins interfere with neuron communication and thus prevent the sort of synaptic strengthening these young animals need to learn.

Perhaps we should end education at 5th grade, put teenagers to work, than give them option of getting a good education in their 20's. It would definitely show them the value of that education.