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Show High Time Youth Concern By FORENCE BITTNER I am concerned about the 'younger generation. Of course I am; everyone is. It is our civic duty. Since younger generations were invented, simultaneously spawning an older generation, adults have worried about juniors and bemoaned their condition. What's to become of them? THE EXACT point at which one stops being a younger generation and joins the worriers has not been pinpointed. pin-pointed. It is much easier in butterflies, for instance. They wriggle out of coconns and unfold un-fold wings and are immediately immedi-ately accepted as older generation. Primitive people who might have been smarter than we are, solved this problem with frightening and secret rites which veritable children were forced to undergo. After they emerged, they were adults and no longer had to be worried about as the younger generation. THESE primitive peoples thereby totally eliminated an entire separate species of being be-ing which we have labeled "Teen Agers". Since we have become enlightened and keep our young in school forever, thereby lengthening the "younger generation" status almost indefinitely, we have generated for ourselves a considerable con-siderable chore. WORRYING about a younger generation which goes on until the men wear beards and are thereby distinguishable distin-guishable from girls is a time consuming and difficult job. Seems like our government which has a bureau and a department for absolutely everything else has been terribly remiss in this area of our national life. To my knowledge there is no official whose duty is specifically to worry about and to assist others in worrying about the younger generation. I DO NT mean to imply that our young have been neglected. neglect-ed. If there's anything our young don't suffer from it's neglect. They are so taken care of and hovered over and protected from child labor and immunized and counselled and orthodontized and taught scores of unnecessary and totally to-tally unusable skills that it is a great marvel they have time and energy and opportunity to do anything at all which gives concern. Is there any possibility that what our younger generation needs is a little healthy neglect? Carefully supervised, super-vised, of course. OH, TEACH them and counsel coun-sel them and advise them and . then expect them to do something all their very own. Maybe some of them need some lines drawn like Uncle Jim said about his brother's son who received a complete skiing outfit and lessons to go with it in addition to a season's pass for a local ski lift. "NOW THAT'S edging into the ridiculous. Course I never had no kids, but seems to me parents owe their kids rearm and schoolin, but playin. Kids ought to be able to do thei r own playin." Aunt Martha has her opinions on child rearing too. Watching a daughter practicing practic-ing piano while her mother scrubbed the kitchen floor. Aunt Martha sniffed, "Well, it's a poor house can't afford one lady." AUNT MARTHA and Uncle Jim, however, are probably some of the few experts in child rearing I have met. They qualify as experts since they never raised a child. There's nothing like being a spectator to make an expert. Ask any football fan. This younger generation worrying problem needs more careful consideration. There is so much wasted effort. If we pooled this worrying and assigned as-signed it to experts, we could |