America's Crises; 1; The Young Americans

Cheers! Being young, being a member of the tribe, practicing the rights that belong to you because you are young, the youth culture. Spring holidays and the rights of sun and surf and sand and living it up.

In its America's crisis series, the National Educational Television Network presents one of four hour long studies of values in America. The Young Americans, a report on young people and the way they feel about themselves and their world. Your reporter is George Page. 3,000 American college students in Bermuda for Spring holidays. It could be Daytona or Fort Lauderdale or Balboa Beach. Wherever the ritual happens, it's part of the search, the search for identity, the search to find out who you are and where you fit, what you believe and why. I think anybody who doesn't have an ideal is never going to do anything or go any place because how can you be satisfied?

You're constantly changing all the time. You have to have something as a goal. Some people are born, I think, with certain ideals. They sort of live with their whole life and I know that I know a lot of other idealistic people and they do get hurt. Oh yes, I have a roommate that's idealistic and I could just throw it through a wall sometimes because I am very materialistic and I think that it's a very materialistic world. Even though it is a materialistic world, you've got to sort of be a little bit detached too because how are you ever going to know what you really think and what you really want and believe? I think, I believe, the thing that keeps the world going is that people never can achieve anything to its fullest. You know, otherwise if people could achieve everything, it would have to come to an end. It wouldn't go on that if you knew. You have to have a goal, you have to have a well, but the well never ends.

Even though you might not reach your ideals, you have to have it with you or else you'll just take anything. Everything that's well done, you think that. And a couple of days, I'll find out my something. It takes so long to find out what you're something really is. You know, you just keep going and going and going and you say, well, my something will be here sooner or later, you know. It's really, it's really, really good. You have a good, you have a good time waiting for anything. Thank you. One, two, three, four. Well, she was just 17. So you know what I mean? And the way she looked was where we are compared. We'll out every day, we'll out every day. Oh, what I thought of you.

Oh, well, she looked at me, said I'd like to see. That before she saw, I thought it was her. Wow! I'll never leave, will I know it? Oh, well, I thought of you. I was going to hold on my hand. When I come back from, then I put her hand in my hand. They're very casual and informal with each other. I've noticed some boy comes over to a girl. I want to go with the beach in the scooter. He says, he takes her there. That doesn't mean he has a day for the room. He gets there. He says, I'm happy I met you. And he flips on. She does too. My daughter has told me a lot of what goes on because she's with us. But I think they're very casual and very courteous. They seem to be like one great big fraternity.

They're very courteous to each other. I haven't seen her in a very long time. No, it's free. Wow! The youth culture, a separate subculture in our society with its own values, styles, and behavior. A time between childhood and adulthood, which belongs to itself. As a chaperone, how do you handle the bar?

I don't. It's not my problem. I'm concerned, but it is not my problem. Hey! Hey. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Hey! Michigan State University. Fraternity men sponsor a tricycle race for sorority girls. The winner of this week, the winner of this week, the winner of this week. Sociologists say the youth culture is belligerently non-adult. One reason may be because the young today often find it hard to communicate with adults, especially their parents. I don't tell my parents know I drink up here. They know I go to parties, but I don't get into long conversations about what went on or what happened at a party. I do talk to my mother and father quite a bit, but mostly what I've learned in school or what courses I've taken. Because they're really quite interested in what I'm studying. It's my folks and I don't have time to talk about things that are really deep, and I don't miss it, and I don't think my folks miss it. I know they worry a lot about things like that, but I feel that I can decide. And I'm pretty sure they feel that I can decide on important matters like that. We're close and we talk probably once a week on the phone, but a lot of little things like what I should be doing and should I change our major and things like this.

It's more important to me to talk to my roommate or something like that about it than to talk to my folks because they can't really understand what the real problem is. You don't want to give them costs for concern, but we know this is part of our so-called youth culture. These are things we do that have no meaning, really. They have no meaning. So why bother your parents about them? You know they aren't going to hurt you. It's just part of growing up. So why let your parents in? It's nothing they really have to know. So I don't tell my parents a lot of things that go on. I'm sure I would if they felt they really had to know. They may be shocked at first, but if they realize it's still me that's talking. It hasn't really changed me. It's just things that we do because we're young. I don't know. I think that that's a general trend. Unless you're really buddy-buddy with your folks, which I don't think that many kids are anymore when they're this age, you don't give them the straight facts. At least I don't know. You want to keep your folks happy and keep on your side. So you know you white line-o and then what time did you get in last night?

One. Well you got in a 3-30. They didn't hear you. So you know are you drinking while I had one beer? Six. And I don't know. I would like to have a relationship like that with my folks, but I don't know. It's just never been that way. I love them. I'm very close to them. I'm respectful. I'm grateful for everything they've done for me, but like I say, I keep them happy. Whether you go to school in the Midwest or to Harvard in the East or don't go to school at all, it's hard to talk with parents about what's really happening to you. My father seems to have already settled down, settled into his way, settled knows what's right, knows what's wrong. And every time I want to say something to him, I don't want to be settled down. Even no matter what I say, this is not a final decision. This is not a final opinion. It's an idea. I'm sort of throwing it out. But somehow I have to express myself to him, always as if it were a final thing. There was something, you know, that this was the end result in what I decided upon, and this is what I must do. But I never want to do that. I want to just sort of try things out. And trying things out on parents never seemed to work. You can't try things out.

So the best thing I can do with my father is tell jokes. That's something, because that's sort of, you know, that's all right. That's safe. Maybe it doesn't get you into problems. I really don't have much communication. I can probably, my father, leads a very hermitic life and goes to bed very early in the evening. And gets up very early in the morning. It spends most of his day in the attic, writing little notes to himself about how he should work hard. Both of them. Similar to Rick, both of them considered me something of a reactioner. Well, most of my friends think I'm radical. And in our house, he's always telling me, you know, why don't you want to get off your can and do something, something experimental. You know, it's a funny thing to be 23 and find that you haven't got anything to say to your father on Father's Day. Oh, Mother's Day. I got to bring her a Mother's Day card. I forgot it on Mother's Day. No. And we had a big fight that day. So I just laughed and been home since.

We didn't talk that much because I guess I was always out, you know, having a lot of fun in all this jazz. Always goofing around. That's me, you know. I miss them. I know that. I miss my mother. All I ever have is hamburgers. Hamburger in the morning. Hamburger in the afternoon. Hamburger in the evening. 18. Leaving your parents and living at Malibu Beach. Being young always means finding out what sex is about. Today, we hear about a sexual revolution on American campuses and it does exist. It takes the form of a frank questioning of traditional moral views about sex and a confused struggle to find a new morality. The great debate about sex rages on campuses all over the country as among these Harvard Radcliffe students. I think that many girls come to college with a kind of double standard. One that they've inherited from boys is that they've heard talking about sex and voice sex is a great thing.

And boys talk about how many bases they've gone or how far they've gone with girls. And then girls' experiences with sex are quite often. For the first time with boys they don't particularly like and they don't understand what this whole sex business is about. And part of the experience of college is reorienting your thinking and coordinating it with your actual experience. The boys participate in sex very much at an early age because they think they ought to. And because they begin to have very funny anxieties about themselves if they aren't sexually active and able to participate in smoking-room bull sessions. So that there's so much significance is attached to how many times you've gone to bed with a girl. And to whether the girl is a virgin or not. A whole different relationship has to take place just because a girl is a virgin or isn't or something like that. And I really wish so much that you could sort of do away with all labels together and just let yourself kind of relax in a situation and see what comes out.

But I think that discussing the question of whether or not you're going to be a virgin for when you're married is not moral. It's an assessment of your own personal needs and your own emotional needs in a relationship. How about the cliche that you shouldn't sleep with anyone unless you're really in love with them? How do you think that functions in making girls either force themselves to feel that they're in love with someone? Because they really want to sleep with the rationalized there. They're sexual desire. I think if they really want to sleep with them, that's fine. But I think sexual desire in girls is very much linked up with your whole emotional relationship with someone. Again, I say this is some girls. Judy and I went out eastering a spring break and we visited Harvard and I'll tell you it's like a different world out there. To me, Harvard is a group of non-conformists conforming to non-conformity.

I am from the old slum that sex relations and sexual intercourse is safe for marriage. And that's the way I feel. And I'd stay with the traditional. The morals are supposed to be in America. I believe in that and I follow those morals. Well, I disagree with Bill. I'm from the new school. I feel premarital sex is fine with the girl you plan to marry. If you've been going to this girl for a long time and you plan on being married within the near future, I've seen a reason why you can't. Well, sex is a cause of many bad marriages, divorces of that. If you can't have a compatible sex life with your wife, this is what I've read. And it's a cause of one out of four divorces because of this you're not compatible. You should find out before you're married whether you can fulfill a sex act successfully. It's a big thing.

When you think that they should break up, if a couple can't get along sexually, you say six months or so for the marriage. No, I don't say that. I just say they should have a head start on marriage. Especially a girl you're considering marrying is one that you shouldn't have premarital sex with. I would say to be more with the girl that you don't care about or that you don't know at all. Well, that kind of destroys sex in itself. I mean, you should only have intercourse with somebody you don't care about. That may be the revolution that sex is safe for somebody you don't really care about or don't think anything of. Somebody who's loose, somebody who, you know, you can get something off of it. I mean, I think that might be the sexual revolution. Also, I think most of you guys would rather marry a virgin than some other girl, but you know, the chance they're half and half or not. As long as the girls tell them if they are, that's the important thing. And before you're married, you know, go off from what you can get. And you marry, though, I want a virgin.

That seems to be the attitude that everybody seems to be well. I'll take her out and I hope I can, you know, do some good work with her. And that's, you know, before even start dating a girl, that's the idea. You can go out and see what you can do. And then when it comes to being married, they say, well, I'd really like to marry a virgin. I know, and a lot of people aren't as rational as say we are. And they don't realize that. We just started talking about it. So everyone said, yeah, oh, Natch. Oh, we wouldn't marry anyone, boy, who had already had relations before. And they're just so positive. And so positive that the boy they're going with has never had anyone. We were talking about that, too. And I think the general consensus was that most of the girls wanted to marry guys that had had experience. What? I don't know. It's just, I think it's something really psychological. Two. Muston Roch. And an hour is the trick with me. Who are these young Americans?

How will they affect American society and the world? What do they want? If parents want to make money, go to school, have a nice job. I don't want to have a nice job. I'll do anything. It's all of them happy. I don't know. Just be happy all the time. That's all. That's my main concern is to be happy. Have fun. You know, it just... It's just going along. It's been happy. It's been happy. It's been happy. It's been happy. No matter how, if you're happy in your success. I mean, if you're a farmer and you're happy being a farmer, you should stay a farmer. You're happy. You're happy. It's great. The most recent national survey made in an effort to find out who they are, these young Americans, was not conducted by a university. But by a New York advertising firm, young and Ruby Cam. Well, that's fine.

May I ask you a couple of questions? 12,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 19 were questioned. Dr. John Kishler, a social psychologist, headed up young and Ruby Cam's research. 42% of young people, 13 to 17, agreed that the American way of life is very nearly perfect and should not be changed. Now, you could say that perhaps they're just agreeing with a stereotype and that this doesn't run very deep. But there is certainly a feeling of the need to maintain the status quo or desire to without actively exploring new changes in developments and possible advances in various areas. 53% of young people, 13 to 17, agreed that when a large group of people feel that a book is dangerous, it ought to be banned. 47% feel that racial integration is proceeding too fast, so that there are certainly some evidences.

First of all, of anxiety that perhaps the world is changing too fast and the counter to this, a certain conservative, conserving point of view, the desire to slow things down to maintain a comfortable status quo. And how does Madison Avenue plan to use this information about American youth? We have evolved and hypothesis, and it is simply that. We feel that they are going to find their identity through consumption. So we're in the past, we have been making products for young people as against old people, middle class people, as against perhaps higher class people. The suggestion is that we need to refine this further and do a more segmented market. Not only do we need products for young people but for sophisticated young people as against perhaps home-loving young people or literal-minded young people. In other words, in our product differentiation, we feel that we need to build in personalities. In other words, through consumption and through identification with products and services,

people will gain some identity. And so, America's young people with an annual purchasing power of $11 billion are studied very carefully by Madison Avenue. The Admin have a lot to gain if they can capitalize upon the young's difficult search for identity. We're actually pretty powerless. The only power we have is the power of the consumer, and that particular thing we're pretty unpowerfully influenced a lot of things. This is the brightest and best-educated generation in American history.

Even high school students like these at University High and Los Angeles understand that American values are in a state of flux and often just plain mixed up. But unfortunately, studies indicate they rarely know what to do about it and most of them resign themselves to society as it is. Good or bad? Too many people are too materialistic. Just after the money for not necessarily for a job that they're really interested in and this their values all kind of mixed up. The main reason why people go to college now is just to make more money when they get out of college and kind of sell it, but that's what I got. If you're making a lot of money, everybody's happy for you. Everyone's goals now are becoming materialistic regardless of what you produce. If you make money, then you are happy and you are a successful person. What's your definition of success? My definition of success? Well, it's doing what I want to do, what I feel that I have the ability to do, fulfilling it and making discovering new things about it.

In the stake art, for example, I happen to be interested in one respect to art. I paint some paintings. I study what someone else has done. I learn about it and then I start producing my own things and I become original and I use my own mind to logically or emotionally express or produce something that is original and something is mine, something is new, something that can be an intellectual benefit to the society of substantial benefits of society, not material. Most of today's young people develop a sense of powerlessness about their ability to change society. They feel they cannot change the system, so they turn to their own private lives as the only thing over which they have any real control. The noted social critic and expert on American youth, David Reesman, calls it privatism. These students at Michigan State see their futures in terms of their private goals. Politics, society, and the world's problems are a long way off.

Sure, I'd like to just travel around, see a way and just see things with my friends why I'm young and why I can really enjoy these things and then I'd like to get married and so down back in the Midwest again and raise a narrow type family and be a narrow type mother and be great as a kid. I've never really thought too much about life beyond, I'd say, 30 years old. I'd like to get married and I'd like to really be in love when I got married. You know what else? But it seems kind of hard to comprehend that, you know. If I ever did fall in love, you know, you're really nice to be married and Rees are family and stuff like that, but after beyond 30 years of age it seems like to me life looks like a downhill slide from there. Of course, as every girl I have aspirations to Sunday be married and raise a family and Sunday be in love with someone very, very much so that even after I'm past 30 even after I'm past 30 there's something to live for because you have someone to give your life to, someone to do things for

to take away from the monotony of life because as long as you're giving of yourself you still have something to live for. If you were just went to the office every day and you worked and you raised kids after a little while, life's going to start to drag, you know. And I'd like to have something new every day, something different, something great, something maybe physical, I don't know, that would be changing all the time and you could look forward to every day as a new experience and something new to conquer, someplace to go, someplace. Well, like AI is dream about seeing the whole world, you know, seeing everything you've never seen before and doing things you've never done before. All sorts of, I don't know, not too much mental or experiences like build a political, I like to do everything that's physical, you know, like see things and be there and then if you ever got old, you had all these pictures, you know, and you could sit around and say, have all these people around you. You could say, here I was there, I wasn't that cool, you know. Here I was there and here I was there and really enjoyed life, you know. I had a lot of things to do and change jobs maybe and went here and went there and knew people and, I don't know, maybe when you got to be able to be a name-dropper and a place-dropper and, you know, just have an old-time life that way.

If you got, if you ever got that far, you know, and did everything that you could say that you've done everything there was to do, you know. And you've seen everyone there was to see. Maybe a nice home in suburbia and some nice kids. And a beer and a ball game on a Saturday afternoon. The good life of beer and a ball game. The good life being very careful about who your friends are. We were really, you know, after this one church go this year and she didn't push her house. But that's the side of mine. We would have pledged her because we really liked her. And I don't think this is any bias against it, really, because even though our code or our initiation, our type of our whole setup, it's Christian. I still don't think it would have meant me any difference because she as a person was what we were looking for enough because of her religion. And I, for one, don't believe that Judaism is a distinct culture and a whole way of life. I still feel it is a religion. We have a Jewish girl, I'm sure, and when we were deciding whether to pledge her

in it, we had to write all these people and see if it was okay. And it was all such a big controversy. But we did pledge her in it and I agreed to. We have Christian stuff that she had to take and she did it. And now we've nested her to be our chaplain while she passed on that. But she, but it's funny, maybe it just makes me feel good. But I'm proud to say that we have one. I'm really, I'm really proud. And people say, you know, we don't have them. And I say, oh, we do. And I just really actually feel good. And I wish we had more. You feel good inside. But you wouldn't be proud to write gifts and surrounding. You don't think it would hurt the house any to say that. Yeah. All kinds of people will think about you. To me, I don't think I'd make any difference. And I would be just as proud. And if someone, if I told someone and they went on really, that's their opinion. I have a friend in Jewish fellow. I was a bit of a top attorney, which is predominantly Jewish. And every term, right after Rush, he makes it a point. They come up to me and tell him, tell me how many Catholic boys they've pledged. He thinks that's the greatest thing in the world.

Because then they expect the return. I feel that we will pledge Jewish fellows. A lot of my good friends in the dorm were Jewish. And the term before I pledged one of my close friends in the dorm pledged ZBT. And the next term during Rush, I got an invitation to open Rush at the ZBT to our house. And I felt kind of funny about it, really. I mean, I actually didn't want to go. I felt, you know, I felt I'd be out of place there. But still, they don't seem to have any prejudice towards us. But still, I can't see sending human invitation if I was in a similar position. It just doesn't go both ways. Well, it's kind of like an out group fighting to get in. It's what you're trying to make it sound. I mean, what it sounds like is that they want in, but we don't want in with them. Yeah, they're striving so hard to fit in and want to fit in and be one of us, like, just little things they say, well, have you ever been to a better party than this one? Don't we show you the best time? Yeah, they do, but at the same time. And they just, you know, really, really put on such a big show

and really want you to really dig in and really have a good time. And it's just one of those things where I think most gentle girls just back on a situation. And then I think that's one thing, like, we haven't thought that much about it because it's not that close to us. It's never happened. It has never been a real problem. It's only a problem in theory when we can say, under ideal conditions, this is what we do. But the ideal conditions never come about and just never presents itself as a real problem. There's just one of those things where you don't really talk about it and think about it and think seriously about it. You just know that your accepted friends wouldn't approve of it, so you just don't do it. Maybe I'm not typical. In fact, I haven't seen this wild and licentious living that college students are supposed to typify. Gary Bond is a student at Michigan State, too. But he is among the exceptions, the minority of young Americans who see beyond their own private worlds.

Several afternoons a week he voluntarily tutors under privileged children. I've seen at the moment no particular purpose in life that is greater than making life easier for other people. I also feel that teaching in a program like this would be helpful to me and the children could probably well get benefits from it. Zero zero. What do you call this down here? I don't know. That's right. Very good. This is an identity. That's the idea. That's right. 32 is equal to two times what? Um, um, um, 16. I'm planning to go on the Peace Corps and I think that perhaps having some sort of skills would be useful, such as teaching.

I think it can be a help. And I find that the rewards are number of the liabilities. I certainly don't think such things as that in the Peace Corps can hurt anybody. The University of Georgia at Athens. The student body turns out to hear Sargent Shriver give a Peace Corps recruiting speech. A few of them will apply for two years in the Peace Corps. A few young Americans have overcome privatism and the sense of powerlessness. A few have found service in the Peace Corps a step toward defining who they are and what they believe in. And since its beginning in 1960, only 10,000 Americans with any aids have actually served in the Peace Corps. College students in a training session

for a summer of civil rights work in Mississippi. 1100 students volunteered for the project. 437 were accepted for the work. Three of the workers were murdered. We were all apprehensive anyway. And what happened just made a clear fact of what everyone was warned to expect anyway. And so from most of us, it was a chance just to think again about what we'd all been thinking when we signed up of whether it was important to risk even our lives to come. A few young Americans see the Negro struggle for equality as a cause worthy of commitment, as a real way to help change American society for the better. Go for this.

He is not merely the man who, he is the man who, or 1964, the man who commands the most popularity among the Republican, rank, and file borders of our country. The GOP mock convention at Oberlin College in Ohio. These students are showing an interest in politics. Some observers believe the young John F. Kennedy inspired the country's youth to take a more active interest in politics. But Yale University's Dr. Kenneth Kenniston estimates that on a national average no more than 2% of college students engage in any real political activity. And this is true about the best informed generation in our history. In Washington,

a few senators and congressmen are trying to encourage political interest and activity among young people. Sandra Rosenbliff and Tom Gates took time off from school to work for Rhode Island's Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell. They help prepare a study on American youth. We've started trying to solicit response from young people around the country as to what their feelings about their aspirations and their goals and the obstacles that hinge them are. And a large part of what they've said has been repetitive in that I think they're all trying to say in one way or another that they've had a hard time committing themselves to any particular idea or ideal. I think if there are issues national and local issues all the time of consequence and I would think that the youth of America

should be able to grasp something. There is always something in which you are involved whether you would like to be or not. It seems to me that here you are getting involved to the point where you can start to think about making some really broad general political commitment or ideological commitment. They don't always have to be the same thing. I think you're fine. And when you really you feel that you it would make a difference if you did. One of the things that's in is to be cool and part of being cool is cynical. And it's so terribly important not to be overly cool, not to be overly cynical. But after all it's not only action that counts. Few Americans of any age are social or political activists. But in a free society interest and concern are important. And fortunately many young Americans

are interested and concerned. Rick Hertzberg, managing editor of the Harvard Crimson, feels this is true at his school. It's more interest than commitment really. Because the people here, people here are interested rather than committed when it comes to social issues. And they study them fairly with fairly open minds for the most part. The people who are committed also make me hopeful that there aren't very many of that. Hopefully more young people will move toward commitment to something they believe in. Jake Brackman of Harvard, feels he is moving from privatism to commitment. I for a long time, through high school and through my first couple of years here, thought that all I wanted to do was get out of society completely. And just get in some little college or little place and be a professor there. And not that I'm really interested in scholarship at all

because I'm not anything of a scholar. But more so that I could just concentrate on developing a few personal relationships with kids. And as Andy said, it's done in Europe. Play music and bowl around about art. And act in school plays and write a little. And have a lot of kids. And have nothing to do with the mainstream of American culture. But recently, even though I'm still very attracted to this idea, it seemed more and more fantasy to me and more and more almost repulsive. And sort of a sellout of my own responsibility. If we went to work for national educational television, and we started making films of that sort of, if he started putting on his mind, if he started putting on his music program, we wouldn't less than. See, all of us have gone that route. You see? We've tried. You know, we've worked.

He said he worked for television. I said, we've worked in these different jobs. You see? And when we didn't go along, you know, it didn't work out. See, it's a main source of our grievances that to do anything decent and worthwhile in society. You have to stay outside. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Then there is a small group of young Americans who, because they feel powerless to change society from within, believe they must withdraw from it. Society would call this group in San Francisco beatniks. Most of them are bright and well-educated. One was a full-bright scholar. They resent the term beat. They call themselves a protest group, protesting what they consider the rot of modern American society. This society, America? Yes. It was organized along lines that structured a white power street. Yes. Sir, I'll find out. I'll find out. I'll find out. We know. I'll find out. We know. We know. White line. Yet! Yes.

That's right. That this drawn to white power is�를 1974, 選 vaguerly Nationalism. Right. Nationalism. What I think is wrong with this country is that being square is out. That is Lives Matter. That is to be co-opted right now. Wстрė is now back out!. Get up. Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up! We make a film about what people care about. And you create a very artificial atmosphere. So you have the bright lights and it's late at night and you have these things pointing, you see. And it is very difficult for you to get people naturally expressed, but each individual here is involved in something very intensely. You know. It would be... And that normal... Thank you. If we took ourselves that seriously, that we could sit here and just expound our views on phenomena,

the theatre... You know, we'd be crazy. You know. And if your film is in the brass store, or if people lost interest, anybody you talk to sound like is that they do on those television programs. I said, what do you think? Dating should be changed, and we have these views on that. Let's talk about Tsarari. Oh, there's no smile here. There's no excite about Tsarari. There's no smile here. People are going about their business. You know, well, business is a good American word, you know. I mean, it's understood. Because they believe in certain things. And you recognize that. Obviously, no one is going to... No one is going to... going to some sort of newsweek business week magazine because what's being done here, or in New York, it's being done because people believe in it. And if it is believed in... And you see it... Don't show your eyeballs, please. You're going to arrest it. In order for me to exist, I have to exist essentially outside of the system. Because the system doesn't... It won't allow me to torture it.

My system, yes. My system... No. There's an underground system constantly. We feed our four kinds of people. You're also... We feed off the bourgeois system as it stands now. We will steal. We will rob. We will do everything possible to exist. How about you learn about the first thing out of it? Do that by staying outside of the system. You are able to change it. You'll become at that moment the system yourself. At the point in which you become successful and you become the establishment, you kill yourself. Very simple. And you give it over to someone else who can take over the establishment. Is this because you feel that the establishment itself, no matter what, it's a formal structure. We have to do a lot of research before we can find out what a different kind of society can be established. But you certainly can't do it from within. If we became the establishment... Now what do you think that? Now what do you think that? Now what do you think? Okay, okay. So in other words, you have confined yourself. In other words, you can find an area out of protest, no matter what the establishment is for. I tell you now what you think. There are still other young Americans who are out not because they are protesting, but because they were never in. Because they are poor or from broken homes or because their skin is black.

A few have never been in the established society or even in the middle class youth culture. If you're far enough out, you sometimes feel there's no reason not to steal or rob or even murder to get what you want or need. All of these teenage boys in Syracuse, New York, have police records. But they're being given a chance to release their frustrations before they erupt into street fights and riots as in Harlem or Philadelphia or Hampton Beach or seaside in Oregon. Social psychologist Charles Slack sets up a make-believe situation and asks them to act as if it were real. It's called a psychodrama. Murder. That is the problem of boys killing boys. This is the problem. Some people say that the amount of killing that goes on between young men is going up in the world today. That is there are more instances of murder. I don't know what the reasons are. Why some kid might kill another kid or get so violent with that other kid

that he heard him very bad. I don't know what those conditions are. Does anybody ever see them? Anybody here? No. Do you boys? And they go on Robustoy, some of that. And the man and the boy, they have a pistol in them. And when the man, when they tell the man, the oldest hand's up. And he shoots the hand's up a little fast. And then the man and the boy say, he has a pistol and then he shoots the man. All right. The mirror, miss it. Come on. Show me what they're doing. We're not gonna see like everybody did there. We've got little snowoco break up bombs. I'm fine. Hey. No blycia. I don't want you here. How worried are you? Hey, bro. Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Honestly, I'm really, really sad for you. Three, two, one, four. Three, two, one. Now give your shoes. Three, two, one, four. Hey, bear.

Give me a blow, bro. Give me a blow, bro. Give me a blow, bro. Give me a blow, bro. Give me a blow, bro. Give me a blow, bro. Most who are out don't become juvenile delinquents. I left high school because, uh, well, it wasn't interesting no more than me. Figure out it. At the time I didn't need this. But for a high school dropout like David Bowton of Chicago, the struggle to get in is a tough one. I, I realized now I'm more than ever that, uh, I really needed that education. But as it goes, uh, I never realized things until it's too late. And looking for a job, a few jobs I did have, uh, I lost them. And, uh, a lot of time there was due to my own carelessness. I thought at first it was a discrimination. I kept it bottled up within myself, you know,

and, uh, everything. And, uh, it was really a lead down to me and a disappointment. I just gave up on everything when I couldn't find a job. When I did lose, uh, one of my jobs, I went out looking for another one, and when I couldn't, when I able to find it, and, uh, this was really a lead down to me because I didn't want to put my burdens on no one, you know, and, uh, especially my father, because, uh, he's a wonderful father, you know, I wouldn't want to be, you know, bothering him with my problems and so forth. Although, that's what he's here for, you know, and he would listen to me. And, uh, it was just that, this big disappointment for me, you know, having a trust in, any more people, any more, nothing like that, you know. I thought it was all I've tried to, you know, take what they can, and most of them are.

And, the times I do feel kind of lonesome, discourage, and what have you. When it comes down to your boy down to it, you really own your lonesome, you know. But the dropouts like David Bowton or the juvenile delinquents or the protest groups or the committed ones in the Peace Corps, the Civil Rights Movement, in politics. These young Americans are the exceptions. Although they make most of today's headlines about youth, they are the minority. Most young Americans are uncommitted. The decent, frank, well-off and well-educated majority. Convents they can't do much to affect anything, they're personal lives. And how are they different from previous generations? Many top sociologists and psychologists who have studied American youth say that never before have so many of our young people felt so confused.

Confused about what to believe in, about what society wants them to do and to be. To them, the world and its problems look impossibly complex and bewildering. And so they retreat into dreams of private things, financial security, a home in the suburbs, a beer and a ballgame. This is a troubling fact in a society that is counting on these same young Americans to solve the enormous problems of life in the 20th century. It is even more troubling because no challenge has yet been found that would seem to inspire most young Americans to see beyond themselves to a world which desperately needs them. The world is in a very foreign country.

The world is also on the planet of the United States. The world is on the planet of the United States. The world is also on the planet of the United States. The world is on the planet of the United States. They don't cover so much for the ways they come here to be seen by the world rather than just to learn. We're just trying to get away from too much control, too much being held down or anything. I guess all ages are like that when they hear each T-Aged. These days it's even worse because you've got so much hang over your head. You have to worry about it's school, the job, social life, getting away from the parents. They're afraid to face it. It's just rotten. The whole generation is completely mashed down. They just don't care. People lack... It's not that they lack concern, but they lack enough concern to really work at a problem and figure out what might be an answer on the cold or on a lot sort of thing. They're concerned that it might affect them. It might affect their fun. But that's the extent of it, you know. It's sad because it leaves them with any of their optimistic feelings about the future.

I know it's a wrong attitude to have, but what else can you think? And why? Why don't they care enough? Why don't they know who they are or what they believe in? Partly because they feel so distant from their parents' generation. Partly because they don't believe they have much power to change things. And partly because they are bewildered by the wide variety of choices they face. Our affluence, our new mobility, our society's very complexity. All of these things have brought more opportunities and therefore more choices to be made. You get out of college. So what are you going to do? You don't know. You've got the army. You've got job choices. You're a graduate school, but what do you do? They're not bad choices. None of them are. It's the idea of working you. What's the best choice?

You don't know. It's partly because of the nature of the problems of people have to deal with. There's no really easy ideological answer to any of them. And a problem like civil rights is perfectly clear where the right lies. But in order to implement the right, you have to make such a complete commitment that most people aren't willing to do it. Sometimes I feel like painting. Sometimes I feel like writing poetry. Sometimes I feel like acting. I want to be able to do these things and be happy. That would be happy to me. But of course, unfortunately, from practical sense, this is impossible. I have to decide one thing and stick to it. Emory University in Atlanta. The first private school in Georgia to voluntarily open its doors to Negroes. Atlanta is the national center of the Negro student movement. And although many white Emory students sympathize with the Negro students struggle for equality, only a handful has joined in that struggle.

The South is different. But these white Emory students simply more clearly express the attitude you find in most young American. In a discussion with Negro student leader Julian Bond, these white Emory students, who tried being active in civil rights work, tell why they stopped. The society that we live in is actually it's I look at as being bad. Here are a big segment of all population to satisfy. And why they to satisfy? Well, they don't have a we have. But you have the responsibility to go out and develop constituencies that would support you and support your views and your responsibility to awaken in the minds of other students at Emory and other people that you come in contact with, some form of social consciousness. It's terrible to live in a society where you really just can't express what you wish. And this is, I think this is my only restriction as the threat of reprisals against my family basically. Because I really think that I'm committed

as far as an individual can be committed. Last summer, I figured it in front of labs downtown. When my parents got wind of it, they were very proud that I had taken the initiative to do such a thing. But they warned me never to do it again. I mean, my father's business was at state, so to speak. So now, if I were to go out and do it again, I'd have to define my parents' wishes, which are more important to me than, although maybe they shouldn't be, than the socialized commutment. Do you have a responsibility not to let them hold you back and not to worry so much about what they're going to think or whether or not they're going to support you or not? But do you have a responsibility to decide on what you think is right and what you think needs to be done and to go ahead and do it? You can't stick your neck out. Pioneers get shot and they're buried and they're forgotten. And this is what the student is confronted with today. He doesn't want to stick his neck out too far, but yet he wants to keep an open mind towards these things. And this is what the average college student has. He's got an open mind. He's fairly liberal. He feels that all men should be equal.

Everyone should have the same standard of living. But this is as far as they'll go. They'll not go out and demonstrate to prove the point because he's risking something. This combined with the general apathy and the whole fear of tomorrow being blown up combines into a great completion atmosphere. The only tomorrow that concerns a college student is his tomorrow directly. For instance, the fact that he will get a job when he graduates. That is the only tomorrow that concerns him. You'd rather have a safe, secure future in a conventional society rather than risking this and going out and taking active part in some new frontier. It's hard for me to sympathize with any of you when you say that your professional career may be placed in jeopardy or even that your parents' livelihood may be threatened. For several reasons. One, I think that if this country isn't such a state that your career as a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist is going to be threatened because you work with a group that's engaged

in the civil rights movement, then this country is in a bad way. And you ought to set out to change it now before you get ready to take your bar exam or your medical exam. And if this country is in such a bad shape that a man cannot stand up and stand up for what he thinks is right, without suffering a boycott or bombs in the night or stungs through his window, then you have a responsibility to stand up to stop that sort of thing now and not wait until it happens, and not wait until your picture appears in the hometown newspaper as part of a pick-up line but do something about it now and make sure that it doesn't happen. We're not personally committed because we're not personally affected. I think we're living in an age where everyone is more or less looking out for his own neck. This is probably no different than any other age but it's combined with, well, the mass media. It's an age when we have this constant threat to bomb over our heads. It's an age where a president is shot going through an American city and a convertible. It's this constant threat over our heads. We're living for today and tomorrow and for ourselves.

And not for the society as a whole, which we find at best a pretty fruitless world. And as such, we're looking out for the old number one and we're not looking out for the broader sociological responsibilities that we have. And admittedly, we do have them, but they still don't strike home. We're more interested in stuffing our own throats. Then feeding society. This is NET, National Educational Television.

Thank you.