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University Daily Kansan Thursday, March 26, 1964
Advice Given Against Panicking At Forms of Beatlemania in Youth
By Harry Ferguson
WASHINGTON —(UPI) One mistake parents of teen-agers make is that they are inclined to worry about the wrong things. The Beatles induce fever among the youthful female of the species, but the patients always recover without any significant residual trauma.
Psychologists advise parents not to panic when Beatlemania sets in, but to take a philosophical attitude and console themselves by recalling the inscription on one of the mightiest temples of antiquity: "This, too, shall pass away."
Some form of Beatlemania has been with us for 40 years. In the twenties a young man named Rudy Vallie sent the girls into swoons by assuring them in a nasal croon that "my time is your time." He also exhorted them to raise the stein to dear old Maine and shout till the rafters ring. More recently adults have endured Elvis Presley although there is evidence that the king is dying and the Beatles are preparing a coup d'etat.
Vallee, Presley and the Beatles have two things in common—a gimmick and the lack of overwhelming talent. Vallee's gimmick was to sing through a megaphone to make certain that his none-too-robust voice penetrated to the far corners of the room.
Presley's vocal equipment will never make him a candidate for the Metropolitan Opera and his gimmick is the exotic or if you prefer, erotic -movements he makes while singing. If you will pardon a personal opinion, the sounds produced by the Beatles remind this correspondent of the wailing of cats on the rooftops of their native Liverpool, but their boycott against barber shops seems to make them something special.
There may be more than one reason for the popularity of the Beatles, but psychologists say the main one is the status that comes from belonging to a group. Teen-agers have a compulsion to conform and to organize their conformity. In boys it takes the form of dressing alike and driving the particular type of automobile that happens to be popular at the moment. In girls it
takes the form of becoming Beatlemaniacs and even if a girl really doesn't care about the music she is hearing, she is never going to admit it.
The urge to form groups—usually clubs of some sort of secret nature—occurs in children even before they become teen-agers. Being rejected by a club can become, in the full sense of the phrase, an adolescent tragedy. It fairly frequently occurs that boys and girls leave college because they were not invited to join a fraternity or sorority.
join a trade union
A Purdue University national poll of teen-agers documents the urge toward conformity. It found:
- Teen-agers "try very hard" to do everything that will please their friends.
- They feel "greatly upset" if a certain group does not approve of them.
- There is nothing worse than "being considered an odd ball" by other people.
Some psychologists advise parents to do more than merely endure such phenomenon as Beatlemania. They should encourage it by, for instance, furnishing money to buy a phonograph record or two. The worst thing you can do is downgrade the Beatles publicly.
Robert Andrews of the UPI Washington Bureau stirred the admiration of his colleagues recently when he wrote a dispatch beginning: "The Beatles, four reasons why there may not always be an England, arrived in Washington today." This was reported to three teen-age girls, two of whom said Andrews was a square. The other one said he was a square slob.
On a comparative basis, the United States looks worse than any other nation when the statistics on juvenile delinquency are compared. That is because our experts work in a wider age range and are more frank in reporting their findings.
The U.S. Children's Bureau collects statistics from age 10 through age 17. Russia claims a low juvenile delinquency rate but the fact is the Soviet experts work in only the ranges of ages 14 to 16 and do not arrest a youth unless he has committed a felony that also applies to adults.
One of the more successful bus packer-drivers had this answer yesterday: "Just tell them to push, make two rows in the aisles, hold on to the hand rails, and move to the rear. There is plenty of room for more students."
There are about 32.6 million teenagers in America. In 1962 the number arrested was 1.1 million. So far we have dealt almost entirely on the gloomy side of American youth and what we need to keep the picture in perspective is to remember there are 31.5 million teenagers who are law-abiding and leading normal lives.
The unexpected March snow has caused the problem of how to pack 80 to 100 students into a 36-passenger, green and white, bus.
They seem, in fact, to be fired in many cases by idealism and a sense of responsibility toward their families and the world. The Peace Corps is constantly surprised by the number of young people who volunteer for a service that holds small promise of material reward.
Bus Packing Caused by Snow
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