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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, June 28, 1966
College-or a job?
(Editor's Note; This is an editorial written by a high school teacher enrolled at KU recently in the Publication Advisers Institute sponsored by the Wall Street Journal's Newspaper Fund and the School of Journalism.)
The teen-age boom has created various situations requiring attention both by parents and responsible public authorities. This year 3.7 million young Americans will celebrate their 18th birthday. This is an increase of more than a million over last year. Projected statistics show 27 million teenagers by 1970, up 4 million.
This situation creates both problems and opportunities for America. The two most serious problems are the demands for jobs and better educational facilities.
SCHOOL ENROLLMENT will rise 39 per cent in the next 10 years. By 1970 it is expected that more than 7 million teenagers will be college students. To meet this demand, junior colleges now are being built.
Employment for those who do not continue their formal education is a most urgent problem. A recent article in the U.S. News and World Report states that already more than three quarters of a million teenagers do not have jobs and that the unemployment rate among teenagers is nearly triple the rate for all age groups. The reasons stem from the fact that many teenagers fail to qualify for jobs that demand skills and special training. Jobs created by the government, such as Neighborhood Youth Corps, may be a possible solution. The teenagers who do not get jobs become dissatisfied and some become juvenile delinquents.
BIG BUSINESS, however, considers the teen-age boom an economic boom. The teenagers of today have known nothing but good, prosperous times and have developed the habits of spending more money than their age group in any other generation. For example, the National Education Association points out that the
average income of teenagers is $489 a year with a range of weekly allowance from $2 to $10. About half of these teenagers are earning their money by doing odd jobs.
This year teenagers will spend about 14 billion dollars-by 1970 it will be 21 billion. The teenager no longer spends his money just for malts and movies, but he uses his money to buy phonographs, records, cameras, typewriters, clothes, and even contact lenses. Youth are influential when a new family car is purchased, and they also have perked up the used car market.
For these reasons teenagers are now influencing the planning of America's future. As these teenagers marry and rear families, they will become the backbone of America. It is imperative that they be taught by their parents and their teachers sound social and moral values. They must develop intelligent attitudes now if they are to become the leaders of the future. They must know how to handle the responsibilities and problems that will confront them.
THEY MUST REALIZE that the weekly allowance which they have been receiving will not support a family and take care of everyday living expenses. High school students should give some thought to what they can do in the field of employment if they do not intend to go to college.
Many parents feel it is a disgrace if their children do not give college a try, but some students are not capable of or interested in higher learning. In this case, the student should pursue some skill and take advantage of the opportunities it affords to earn a satisfactory income. If the teenager can do something, he will never be in need of welfare, unemployment compensation and other forms of "subsidized income." There is no unemployment for those who can do something.
- Helen Bennett
Sukarno no longer a great power
UPI Foreign News Analyst
By Phil Newsom
The starched white uniform and the Black Moslem cap were the same, but the man who wore them was not the same Bung Karno of old.
The face of the President Sukarno who addressed Indonesia's highest policy-making body, the people's consultative congress, was puffy. He read from a prepared text bare of the extemporaneous lightning flashes that for 20 years had stirred the hearts of 100 million Indonesians and led them to the brink of ruin.
AND WHEN HE finished his speech the applause that once would have rocked the 10000-seat Bung Karno sports palace was only moderate.
He had sought and received assurances from Indonesia's ruling triumvirate that he would not be embarrassed by a congress debate on his position.
The triumvirate headed by Lt. Gen. Suharto wanted him there as an expression of unity between the president and the armed forces.
SUKARNO IS AT his best when the invective and the slogans flow treeley as if from some inner fountain and not from the printed page. The army restricted him to a text screen in advance.
And so it was no sudden Su-karno whim when he suggested it would be "good" if the congress review its 1983 decision to make him president for life.
Slowly but surely the "Bung" (brother) was being pushed into the figurehead position he said he would never occupy.
THE REVIEW Sukarno suggested probably will not come until 1968 when it is expected a new congress will be elected
and by that time it is possible that such will not be necessary,
For Sukarno is a sick man. He is 64, old by Indonesian standards. He has lost one kidney and the other is long overdue for treatment in Vienna.
But meantime he is needed by the triumvirate composed of Suharto, Foreign Minister Adam Malik and the Sultan of Jogjakarta, economic minister.
THE HIGH DRAMA of last fall's Communist-directed abortive coup against Sukarno, his own mysterious role in it, and the subsequent slaughter of up to 300,000 members of the Communist party in Indonesia largely are things of the past now.
And as the army-dominated new government moves cautiously away from the precipice of disaster, it still must face the problems of subversion, of centrifugal forces which threaten to tear the far-flung islands from the central government and of a chaotic economic situation.
But away from the political tensions of Jakarta, in the hinterlands among the 3,000 islands that make up Indonesia, Sukarno retains much of the father image of the revolution against the Dutch.
THE NEW LEADERS promise to return Indonesia to the United
Nations and to reopen the way to private enterprise. Indonesia's foreign debts come to $2.5 billion, including a billion to the Soviet Union, some $200 million each to Japan and the United States, and lesser amounts to others.
The heritage left by Sukarno is not conducive to confidence either at home or abroad. This is the reason for caution now.
Carry Nation's story to troops
Through the Stars and Stripes newspaper, U.S. servicemen abroad have learned about the world premiere of the opera "Carry Nation" at KU.
A special full-page article and pictures of composer Douglas Moore and the opera cast appeared in the June 10 issue of Stars and Stripes, a publication distributed to U.S. servicemen in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
The article, written by Associated Press writer Harry F. Rosenthal, describes Moore's enthusiasm for the new opera and gives background information on both Moore and his opera.
Summer Session Kansan
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The opinions expressed in the editorial column are those of the students whose names are signed to them. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the editor's. Any opinions expressed in the Summer Session Kansan are not necessarily the Office of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.
"If You Want To See The World, You Can Join The Army"
BOOK REVIEWS
United Press International
Ashenden or The British Agent, by W. Somerset Maugham (Doubleday $4.95): After 39 years, Ashenden is something of a period piece but also something of a prototype for today's Agent 001 and his genre. Maugham's novel, really more like a series of short stories linked by two main characters, was first published in 1927.
It was re-issued once before, in 1941, and supposedly was taken literally by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels during World War II. Similarities to the current crop of secret agents include an Intelligence Department head who is known only by his initial and an agent who fancies himself as a food expert.
Unlike his modern counterparts, Ashenden is abstemious in his use of spirits and he is no skirchaser.
Yet even without romantic interest for the agent, his is an interesting tale spun by a master storyteller who knew whereof he wrote. Maugham had been a British agent during World War I.
Stepping Westward, by Malcolm Bradbury (Houghton Mifflin $4.95): Like many another European, James Walker, young English writer of indifferently successful fiction, and hero of this novel, comes to America in search of new experience. He comes at the invitation of a Midwest university to fill a "creative writing" fellowship.
After an eventful ship passage during which several interesting types are forced on his attention, one of whom he pursues, he is introduced to American university life with its direct-speaking and-acting students and ambitious faculty all hell-bent (presumably American fashion) for some undefined goal.
His refusal to sign a loyalty oath starts a train of events which include fleeing to the Pacific Coast and Mexico with the beautiful student, Julie Snowflake, and starting back to England, chastened but with a wider understanding of the American world and of his bumbling self.
Bradbury tells the story with witty charm and narrative skill that keeps the reader turning the pages eagerly for more.
Jacqueline Kennedy: A Woman for the World, by Robert
T. Harding and A. L. Holmes (Vanguard $5.95): A pictorial biography in black and white and colored pictures from the files of UPI with narrative text from Jackie's early years to the present. There are pictures of the young Jacqueline and the young senator from Massachusetts, their wedding, the inauguration, world travels, with their children, and last the shocking events of November 22, 1963, and the unforgettable funeral. A fitting addition to the growing library of commemorative Kennedy books.
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The Mission, by Hans Habe (Coward-McCann $6): The mission referred to in this sensitive novel is the one assigned to the central figure, Prof. Heinrich von Benda. He is sent to attend the International Conference on Refugees, at Evian-les-Bains, which was called by President Franklin Roosevelt for dealing with the Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany.
Professor Benda, a world-famous physician, is ostensibly an observer for the Jewish community in Vienna. Actually he has been ordered to present a Nazi offer to release 40,000 Austrian Jews on payment of $250 apiece or $1,000 a family.
History has recorded the failure of the Evian conference to accomplish anything for the refugees, except perhaps to highlight the helpless position of the attending nations.
The novel explores the desperate state of the Jews.
The plight of the professor in his despairing mission symbolizes in dramatic terms the attitudes and situations that culminated in the world's worst genocide. It's a terrible tale, well told, and seems to lose no impact in the translation from German by Michael Bullock.
***
Tai-Pan, by James Clavell (Atheneum $6.95): A blockbuster of a novel running to almost 600 pages of small print and packed with enough grandiose schemes, adventure, action, intrigue, characters, love and sex to satisfy most readers.
The scene is mid-19th century Hong Kong which has just become a colony of British.