Georgetown forum; Juvenile crime and elder generation

The older generation and juvenile crime the topic for the eleven hundred and seventy third consecutive broadcast of the Georgetown University radio forum. Another in a series of educational and informative programs from Washington D.C. The Georgetown forum was founded in 1946. This is Wallace Manning speaking to you by transcription from the Raymond Rice studio on the campus of Georgetown University a historic Jesuit seat of learning in the nation's capital. Today's discussion will be the elder generation and juvenile crime participating. Yes but do you know women at Georgetown Professor George R. Houston Jr. assistant professor of accounting Georgetown University's School of Business Administration and Professor Eugene case niter associate professor of business law and Dean designit the Georgetown University School of Business Administration. Criminologists and sociologists can give us plenty of data on the kinds

of crime which young people commit. But instead of shaking our heads and outright condemnation of the younger generation it might be more fruitful to attempt an analysis of the young people themselves. There are many in the older generation that is people over 30. Especially those who work with high school and college is right again the value of the site. Instead of saying what's the world coming to. We might well ask these educators with daily contact with young people what makes them tick what are their ideals What are their hang ups. Today the Georgetown University forum presents three people who have relatively long experience in dealing with college youth. One is an administrator or another a teacher and successful counselor and the third is a trained psychologist now in administration as a dean if women are going to begin by asking them and first Professor Snyder.

If today's kids are different what is their hang up. I don't think today's kids are substantially different than we were when we were the same age. You know they live in a world which is physically considerably different from that in which we were raised. The world is obviously more urban. There are more employed mothers. We have the growth of the ghettos since we were young. It was a ghetto when we were young but certainly not as widespread or as congested as it is today. The thing which most concerns me the big difference I think between today's young people and young people that I knew when I was their age is the aspect of drugs in our modern society and this frightens me very very much. But the basic young person I find no different than I was when I was his age. I repeat that the

physical aspects of his life are different. I think that when we take time to look with dismay at drugs and we should look with dismay at drugs I hasten to add that I think that the current unrest of the young people point out their real greatness. They are concerned. They are deeply concerned about our society where it's going but the future of mankind. And I say that in this point they're better than we were. But their basic reactions what makes them tick what they do why they do it. I see no different than when I was young. Well I kind of disagree with you in a way. I realize the circumstances in which young people today are living are quite different. They're different maybe because of those circumstances or pressures put on them to excel. For instance step back on standardized achievement test 47 percent better

than a little bit on the test. I guess it's a souped up secondary and college education that will go to the young people today but we'll find out just playing more mature and I think I was and other people of my generation. So I don't find them quite different. PROFESSOR Yes I'm sort of agreeing with both of you. Pat I agree that they're more mature and I agree with Jane that they're more concerned with society. However I think that in their being more mature they aren't willing to take the decisions of others or accept the decisions of others as they have in the past as we did as I did when I was growing up. And as a result of this. They were no longer letting us guide their lives in any factor. I think times have changed. The affluence of the time I agree with Jean is certainly one thing. I also think that there may be a changing moral attitude in their

lives. There seems to have been reports of the Kinsey reports for example on sexual mores changes in this type of thing brings us back again to a changing condition or a changing time changing beliefs. I wonder as it has been discussed before if this is really a change in their what they say they're doing or a change in what they're doing that's right you know I always say but I think that it's not a question of there are a lot of the things that they talk about I like to say that we used to have a Victorian kind of taboo sort of ethic where we said all kinds of things were wrong to do them to talk about a lot of the things that we really do it's kind of like the Swedish approach to sexual morality. So I don't look at the kids today are all of the problems that they talk about in the literature and doing. But I think that they wouldn't make a judgment about whether it was right or wrong for someone else to do it.

Are you able to bring that down. Estimates of percentages most of the stuff has been written about sexual mores and there are surveys in which I can't quote accurately but which I read that say that sex relationships should be free but that each individual should be self-determining in me. I don't think that many of them are you know having sex experiences before marriage the statistics of the ladies magazine starts will indicate that there is a great increase of sexual promiscuity in the parlor game or a genuine game of Kiss and Tell. Are you telling me Pat that George is concerned with your telling me that really they're not catching that. I don't know because I don't know all those partners and I ask you about.

I'm sorry for the impression which I have that there is really little difference in the young people themselves that way. Sometime in the past George talked about the changing aspects of our society which is of course what we're discussing at the moment. I just don't see that there has been this change because my own experience enabled longer than anyone else on the panel as well as my reading about the past. I am at a loss to find that golden time with a golden age from which we have degenerated. Well nevertheless I think there is an image or extent of youth today which in which they are pictured as being not only non conformist but non conformist to the point of being almost totally undersupply neither show off or otherwise and I would like like to hear what you think about that whether deserved image or not.

I think probably a very small percentage make so much noise and get the notoriety but I think the large bulk of young people are not that way but I do think because of the child raising techniques and the fact that we reacted to the way our generation was raised that there was a great deal more permissiveness I don't think parents are saying no to kids I don't think they can or should. But I think they're not telling. There is nothing that they can't do. I don't really think they have control over all aspects of their life that they should but I don't think parents today are so out to the kids about very much from the time they were very small and I think we see this when they get into the secondary schools in the colleges no one has ever said to them that I agree with you. Parents are saying but when parents aren't saying they're raising this 6 7 8 year old they shouldn't expect a college to say no when it becomes 18 or 19 years old. Oh I wholeheartedly agree. And this may be a problem within the image that youth is projecting today. You have to get the impression that you're being put on by

a good number of people today. In other words they're acting and they're acting they're funny. They're testing me every now and then they're coming to see what your reaction to a certain situation will be. And when you hold your own line then maybe they'll back off and they'll say well I agree with you also. My only concern with the changing moral problem as I stated before is that they were talking about it more and once we start talking about things very openly and it no longer has the connotation at least from my point of view of being a to ability longer then I wonder if we aren't going to begin accepting the act itself later on and maybe this isn't bad. I personally think it is but that's a personal opinion George. Isn't this the same question as the head of the sex education in the school. There are those who object to sex education in the school because I think on the same grounds that you're objecting to the talking about it that simply sex education itself will lead to more sexuality whereas the advocates of

sex education say no. Let's bring this thing out in the open. Let's talk about it so that we know what we're talking about. And I've always felt that in some of our conversation of the book was No I'm not going to talk. About sex education to a six year old that is in the same terms that one would talk to a 20 year old. I wonder whether we are confusing innocence and virtue with this suppression of discussion. We're still expecting if they're going to live with those two boobs and I don't say that the basic principles on which they're based aren't good for the individual and good for society. But I think really because they are brighter because they're more articulate because they want to know why. But this is what we have to share with them. I hear so many young people say to me how can I possibly adopt your mores and your values when you tell me what they are supposed to perceive what it

is you believe or think just by being in your company. I do not know. Well I'm not so sure all of us do but it might be great for us to talk about them with young people you know and so we think certain things are not. The little developer thought in their presence but were frightened of them I think this is why I raised this extraneous issue of sex education I don't think that we can get with the communication media available today I don't think we can get our young people on stage get to they know how to switch on the television stage to accept things for granted simply father says no. Are you suggesting that perhaps our best bet is to get to try to persuade them that that is where we want to generation failed starts well back when they were small children of the girls because I'm not a parent but I think may be able to turn from a little earlier age now

but I'm not going to be able to have that you know complete freedom but I think we ought to be giving them an opportunity to make choices and decisions and you know in graduate a lot of them are independents and I don't think parents do that I think a lot of decisions for clubs look for those structures and then they let them live pretty freely like say why they think they should do something or why not have television I don't know why they couldn't sort our kids or for a program together and make a decision. Apparently child so little I think there's a lot of violence on this program you know it might frighten you what had bedrooms I don't think I thought was audible Tebo you shouldn't watch this program but let them participate in the decision. Well Georgie you're the one that talked that way I think that we have too much for most of those and I don't think it's been much better. Well we can stop permissiveness at least on an educational basis sometime. Around 6 when child stars enter the age of reason.

How we do our disagreeing with you I think you are. I think there's been a breakdown in discipline and this may go back to your changing times gene we see that the mother is absent from the homes now. In some case out of necessity. In other cases I'm not so sure they have to be absent from the home and the youngster coming home in many cases opening the door and sitting down with the television set alone so there's no one there to help make that decision as to whether he should or should not watch that particular show with the mother not there in person turning someplace else to find a loving family. Maybe there's been a change in the family structure altogether. I would agree with you that there's a change in family structure and I think that we have only begun to see as people the changes in family structure and way of life which future hooks you know they say this is because to my mind there was a problem not

just in connection with juvenile crime and juvenile delinquency and of course we've been discussing it up to now from the standpoint of the young people who we see in college who are largely the particular here drugs town. They are spring affluent suburbia right. But of course there is a crime problem with the black ghetto youth and I don't see a more serious one incidentally. Perhaps it's not as serious given the comparison and opportunities of these people and yet we see the same problem in societies without our religious background and without our economic background. For example we see the same problem happening in Soviet Russia and other places behind the Iron Curtain. And well I'm taking a long range view of this thing is so easy to sit back and be the professor and be philosophic about it saying all come out right. In twelve or fifteen hundred years I don't mean that even though it sounds like that it seems to me that our principal problems and this is in connection with the revolution of our youth are problem in connection with

who are we all know that we can and center right ourselves that young people know they can be incinerated. There's a very very nasty issue of Vietnam but I think the principal issue in our times and the principal cause of our juvenile problems is the fact that the basic structure of society itself must change because the basic way in which man lives is in the process of undergoing revolutionary change. Now What specifics do you talk. I want you address yourself to and changing the basic structure of society. Well I don't believe that we can continue to talk about the whole as a training place for the children of the children were in the home in a in a never cultural economy. Some of because there was no place else for them. They were in the home or in the fields working alongside their parents. And this is recently in the United States is a time American Revolution. Ninety five percent of the population the United States at the time the American Revolution lived on the farm and most of that farming was subsistence farming which meant that the whole family went out in the fields and worked as hard as they could

just in order to put a basic minimum of clothing upon themselves. I question why their day of the high rise apartment or. Continuous reproduction of ticky tacky in the suburbs I seriously question why. What is the way of living in an agricultural society will necessarily be the food which is most adapted to for the good of society. And we're not talking in a religious sense in terms of very religious duties but I'm talking in a sense just keeping society from disintegrating. Can we rely upon what is apparently materially outmoded namely the mother in the home raising the children. A very close knit family just isn't the physical aspect of today's society. What what might replace it five years later. But. Obviously I don't know I think that from reading that

the Israelis are experimenting in this area in the kibbutz. It's my understanding to the Russians have made some experiments in that I think you know more about this a night in their dining or shaker nurseries. It's a place where it's raised as I was. We're trying to raise our own children that we could substitute a professional for a mother's love and yet if it's necessary for the mother or for the family for the family to partake of the more affluent parts of our affluent society and I don't think you can turn people off from wanting to partake in the you know to complain and I will tell you that with jobs and the expectation that we're going to show them this kind of life to return to the home something off the field is asking too much and I want to get back in the fall for saying the girls here at school looking

for and I think there was Georgia because I think in our society confusing for them. That appropriate for them and you know they set high expectations for them educationally good colleges and they train to be a liberal educated woman or in some specific profession you know confront the fact that you know she should perhaps lose her education. Fine just as a wife and mother 24 hours a day seven days a week completely for filling so I think we're getting kind of mixed signals here and I think they're very confused about it. Look at the statistics that 65 percent of married women work and ways especially in the family and in some church institutions were telling them that this really isn't an appropriate thing for them to do so it causes a great deal of confusion I think.

The girls that I've talked to are looking forward to a career outside of them to find something that they can in which they can be home at 3:00 in the afternoon hours arrive home from school. Like I personally hate to see the family giving up this or the predominate unit because it's what I know best. But of course our conversation about the child going on to a good college and getting the best possible education is particularly applicable to wright suburbia. But our great deal of our problem is involved with the black ghetto and just as a casual observation it seems to me that one of the major causes of the major immediate causes of crime in the black ghetto is a machine which automatically picks cotton. And this is meant the displacement of the miserably paid ever cultural workers in the south who have now traded

what is apparent starvation if we are to believe. The recent Senate investigations for the equally miserable life in the urban ghetto and here we have a problem. Quite possibly I have been told as a result of the slave society we have too many fatherless homes. Let's face it the family in the ghetto it's not replaced. I think we're talking something. My reading tells me something like third of the homes at least of the welfare homes are without a male head. That's sort of my statistics but I believe that's reasonably accurate. So we're talking about a substantial number of families which don't exist anymore and these are all the statistics we have tell us that these are the highest delinquency and crime areas in our society today. I am glad that you threw them out of there because I very frequently look at asylum which will let me think about some of the purple of the other be in the home but it was just a burglar but it's quite

alright for a father to be absent from the home and business trips and will be 10 to 12 hours a day. In general I'd like to see it for the perpetual a little clear and effective way to get the kind of society in which you want but where the responsibilities for contact with children are by both mother and father as a truck contention. Professor Snyder that there really isn't a crime today. Juvenile crime to date except in terms of there being more Jevon also and more opportunity. I obviously don't know the answer that question I always do however question the statistics which one sees as to the rise in crime and the first question which one asks is is there more crime or are there better statistics. How I have read numerous articles on this subject. I'm not much better informed than my first impression. I believe however the conclusion which I've drawn and this isn't an expert conclusion is merely as a layman reading

about crime in statistics that there is yes some increase in crime in juvenile crime in the United States. By no means as bad as some of our Lammas would have us believe but certainly bad enough. I'm sorry. My contention is that we're going to continue to experience this increase and really increase whether we've had one up til now or not we're going to have one or we're going to have a worse condition than we have now. And unless we can somehow start immediately to make our studies a livable place in which to live now a livable place in which to live is just not necessarily one where the streams in the sky are free of the particular types of pollution but the noise pollution in major cities the trucks the motorcycles the night pollution is just if you stop and listen is overwhelming we have congestion pollution I'm referring to the congestion of automobiles moving into the city I'm referring to the fact that like my Sunday which was a beautiful day

you couldn't find a place to park in Washington or a way in Washington with more buses with parks in most cities. No seriously I'm RAGO you expressed some concern about this talk of possibly a disappearing family unit. Short of that do you have any ideas as to what might be done of the disappearing family unit. Somewhere there has to be some group that this child can go to when he leaves school maybe we should start school later or longer hours. I don't want to see the Russian day nursery where the youngsters leave school and goes to someone else to define the lives that he's looking for from his parents. Maybe we should keep him in school longer into the parents can get home which is a type of day nursery type of program but I still hate to think of any state or any institutional group giving the love that a parent could give. And this is my

major concern and I don't have any solution forward. I'm just wondering if perhaps the the working mothers that don't have to work should think about returning to the the home providing for a substitute there for Georgia. Why torsion expenses are here in Georgetown. How many of these working mothers do you think are working to provide for all for themselves or are working to provide what they feel to be a good college education Richard this is the affluent the mother with no other support outside of welfare doesn't have much of a choice. I agree with you with the non affluent mother Jean there's a special problem of growing up to find a special solution to the affluent mother that I'm concerned more about and not only working but those are going to be at the Country Club in the afternoon off to the various bridge clubs that sort of thing that's the type that I'm

concerned that maybe she ought to stop and take a real serious look and re-evaluate her own needs and goals and society to see what her own personal thought about her as a person. You know that feeling I think will tend to idealize family relationships and we say well put mother up on a pedestal and say this is a child the most important person in the formation of these children and who should be further away. She's a human being. You know she has little to tell and sometimes she just can't bring that off. This is especially true I think in the ghettos where you know your father absent homes and the mother has to go out go out to work. So to provide just the bare necessities for that. You know the ideal family situation and I wonder how many similar situations are ideal. Thank you for your discussion of the older generation and juvenile crime. Thanks to miss but the dean of women at Georgetown University Law Professor George R. Houston Jr. assistant professor of accounting the Georgetown University

School of Business Administration and to Professor Eugene case niter associate professor of business law and Dean designate of the Georgetown University School of Business and ministration. You have attended the weekly discussion program at Georgetown University radio for a broadcaster which was transcribed in the Raymond Rice studio on the campus of historic Georgetown University in Washington D.C. next week you will hear discussed addiction and you with a crime panel at that time a consist of Dr. Alan Izzy Schwartz Burke clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Dr. David Lanham chief of Legal psychiatric services district Columbia Department of Public Health and assistant professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical School and Dr. James R. associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine. This program has been presented in the interest of public education

by Georgetown University. Your moderator banning this program was distributed by the national educational radio network.