Treadmill for today's youth must be changed
By DAVE DANIELSON
Guest Editorial Writer
The crowd massed about the university's doors, milling, vibrating and shaking. Enraged screams drifted through the air, as helmeted policemen with blank, expressionless faces, strode into the gigantic mob. Young students—fighting, twisting, struggling—were dragged into the paddy wagons, some hit by the billy clubs the policemen carried.
In the background, television reporters kept their cameras filming, and across the nation, people sitting in comfortable chairs watched in horror as they saw the violence bursting from their television sets.
One stout man, about 40 years old, stared at the scenes flashing at him from his color tube. He was surrounded by a large ample home in a suburb where all the houses were alike—looking almost like rows of cardboard boxes. He had two children and a marriage which was uneventful, if not happy. He had a good job, which paid well, although he wasn't completely satisfied with it. He had ulcers, and his doctor had told him to lose some weight.
He stared at his set and was repelled and alarmed by the terrible violence centering about the shaggy-haired, moustached students and the robot-like, determined police.
Questions hammered his mind. Why did the students scream and holler so, as if something unjust was going on? Why did they bring police to them and battle on the lawns of institutions of learning? Why didn't they go to their classes and sit there, listening to teachers? Why can't they be happy with the way things are?
Student riots have become more common and more violent in the past few months, and they seem to dance across our TV screens with regularity. Violence seems to be the cry of agony from youth, or at least from part of them.
This part, whether it is a minority or not, has had great impact upon America. Why do they rebel? As their elders wonder, why can't they be happy with the way things are?
Perhaps they view the United States as one of its prominent features: the highways of America.
You grow up; you go to school. You turn onto the entrance ramp to the highway. You go through elementary school, then junior high, and, quietly, you are being prepared for a society that's been planned for you without your advice.
You catch glimpses of the cars rushing forward on the highway ahead. By ninth grade you're supposed to have a good idea about what college you're going to and what your major will be. By 11th grade, you must have almost certainly made up your mind.
You're accelerating to highway speeds on the entrance ramp so you can merge smoothly with the highway traffic itself when the time comes. You go on to college, even if you're tired and bitter with school and need the challenge of an adult life now. You study, and you do what your teachers tell you to do, whether or not they're good at it.
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You take a fleeting look over your shoulder to see if there's an open space for you to squeeze into. You graduate from college, and finally you marry. You have children and raise them so they, too, may grow up to get on the highway.
You sit in a chair behind a desk and spend most of the rest of your life working on a job that sometimes turns out to be tasteless and boring. You've finally squeezed into the mass of cars—vanished without a ripple.
This is a black, dull, tedious vision of American life, but many youths are seeing it. They want something more.
What about the person who would like to travel by a country road that has intersections with other roads and room on the side to pull over and rest awhile?
And what if a person does enjoy the highway system, but wants to get more out of it than simply holding on to the steering wheel? What if he want more than just growing up, going to school, finding a job, getting married, and dying—all without joy.
What if he wants to do things he really wants to do, instead of meeting requirements of society and taking so many classes of such-and-such that just don't appeal—or apply—to him?
The politician, the microphone held in front of him, licked his lips uneasily before answering the question the reporter had just put to him.
Some youths are afraid the highways are too stiff, having been made out of concrete that has long ago set—rock hard.
"I'm glad you asked that question," he said carefully, considering what might be the popular view. "My belief is that these students are ruining a great American institution—college. They're keeping students who want to learn out of class. They tear apart; they're
Then, there are their quiet brothers, the so-called "silent majority" on campus.
un-American. I wouldn't be surprised if these riots are Communist inspired."
The problem is that students wonder if they would be noticed at all—if not for violence.
As Kenneth Keniston, a psychologist who has made a study of student protestors, remarked, "it's doubtful that the activists are used for any political purpose of their own." Their movement, he believes, is too open for subversion, and Communism is a far cry from their idea of government.
"Look," one might speak up, "I can see why some of these guys are rebelling—I mean, I've been through the same system they have. My parents have a miserable marriage; I don't want to get stuck in some rubber-stamping job. I hope that the radicals will change the 'establishment' for the better, but I fear that they'll only tear apart what's good about the country already."
But violence is blurring the American public's view of youth. If youth keep on destroying, America will continue to ignore the valuable points youth bring up and see only the pointless destruction.
Meanwhile, frustration builds in the student activist. He sees intensely the cracks and fissures in the past generation's freeway, as all youths do, although he too often ignores the smooth and pleasurable features of the road. Most often, he sees the scars on the cement of education. He attacks the college because it is the system he has been in for so long and knows it well.
For this was during the 1950's, when the country was much quieter in general. Then came the civil rights movement, which gave students who wanted to speak a voice, and the student movement has continued to build since then.
Now our country is not quiet. It is loud and yelling. Almost everything is questioned. Few believe our country is always faultless.
"Students and youth are like the rest of us—only more so," was the remark in the magazine "Psychology Today" by Clark Kerr, former president of all the campuses of the University of California.
"If you want to understand the country," he advised, "you'd better look at the students, because they are a very sensitive weather vane that will tell you which way the winds of change are blowing."
Keniston, the psychologist, pointed out that only a little over a decade ago, offspring had unsettled their elders by being silent and apathetic.
"Students and youth are like the rest of us—only more so." Our students, who have grown up by the light of the television set—as no other generation has—who have seen the earth reach for the moon, who have known amazing technological advances, are even more severely involved in the anguish and turmoil.
Youth has a stake in the future. Some may escape through drugs or drop out. Others may
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stand by and be silent. But most are committed. These youth hope for the future but fear the present. They erupt and bubble and boil.
Again a youth of the "silent majority" speaks. "It's too bad that the protestors, in their search for change, have become violent because they met frustration elsewhere.
America has only two extremes and not the moderate middle she desperately needs. America needs someone who will speak up bravely but will not turn to violence and arrogance. America needs someone to widen the highways, but not tear apart what is already there, someone to fill in the cracks in the cement.
America can only hope that someday youth will compromise.
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