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Show Family Weekly I September 7, 1969 What Should Parents Tell College campuses are no longer secluded retreats for the wealthy and is j has given way to the social-protestthe goldfish-swallower er I By SLOAN WILSON Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is just one of this accomplished author's many novels which have headed bestseller lists over the years. His latest book is Away from It All. He also wrote the novel A Sense of Values. He has had a voice in education since 19i9, when he served on the National Citizens Committee for Public Schools until 19SS. He was assistant director of the White House Conference on Education for one year. When I first left home for college 30 years ago, my father said, "Son, you now have an opportunity to forget the present and study the past as prelude to the future." A few minutes later he added, "And please don't come home with a raccoon coat and a ukulele!" Right now I have three children, a son-in-la- w, and two nephews enrolled in American universities, and I can't think of anything like that to say to any of them. I feel more like giving them the advice I got when I went to war: "The important thing is to learn how to stay alive and keep a good conscience, too." As everyone knows, college campuses are no longer secluded retreats or playgrounds. Instead, they are battlefields, where scholars must ask themselves whether they are shirking their responsibilities if they refuse to take an active part in making the great political and moral decisions of the day. I might as well admit right now that I can't mourn this. I've talked to a lot of college students lately whom I have met while lecturing. They are a new breed, and some of them are frightening. But I prefer them to the members of my Harvard class who made headlines by swallowing live goldfish or the young of a later day who rioted only when they tried to steal underwear from the women's dormitories. s, What with football rah-rafraternity emiand the listless studying of dull, nently forgettable courses, I don't think the colleges of the past can be treasured as an ideal worth recapturing. Students today are more serious, and they should be, for they have greater problems than my generation. For one thing, the Depression instilled in us the need to earn money h, Family Weekly, September 7, 1969 high-jink- . and security. A lot of today's youngsters have been brought up prosperously unhappy. They can't see the point of working hard to get a good job and a mortgaged house in the suburbs. That's what they're trying to escape. Present-da- y colleges have lots of students the from slums, both black and white. In my day, the poor seldom went to college, and we rarely heard their complaints. Our era of prosperity is in some ways harder on slum children than the Depression was. It makes their poverty unique and more hopeless. Most of the youngsters nowadays are also far more confused and angrier about war than my generation was. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and when we understood what Hitler was doing to the Jews and other Europeans, my generation experienced the great joy of taking up a righteous cause that we knew we could win soon. The war in Vietnam is, of course much harder to get enthusiastic about. Our youngsters hear some of their elders, both at home and abroad, protest that it is immoral and insane ; others shout that we must win to protect the world against communism. And the history of the Vietnam war, which isn't even legally a war, is foggy and complex. But one thing is clear any war, pushed to its ultimate conclusion, will blow up everybody. It's also clear that while the elderly argue about the war, the youngsters are forced to fight it, no matter what they believe, unless they can prove that they are conscientious objectors, a burden which the present laws make almost i npossible. I3 it any wonder that the youngsters are angry and bewildered? But the great majority of them go calmly along taking the prescribed school courses, falling in love, and trying to make reasonably constructive plans for the future. I do not think, however, that this great majority of quiet ones react the way their parents did. They couldn't, for the world has changed too much. They listen to the wild ones screaming of injustice and try to figure things out. In the quiet ones there is a constant struggle between their desire to lead productive, private lives and to make public protest against injustices. There is not much doubt that many of the quiet, sensible students admire the wild ones. That is why the campus radicals are important nowadays far beyond their number, which is still small. The bearded, d rebel screaming of the outrage of war when this country has not been attacked, poverty in the midst of prosperity, and racial prejudice in the midst of reforms is the big man on the campus these days. The football hero, fraternity president, or that quaint character the man judged most likely to succeed run poor seconds. Our youngsters are not stupid! How could they be with us as their parents? They know that there are radicals of many kinds. Some are psychotics who at heart want to destroy everything; some are disciplined Communists. Others are simply using the great problems of the day as an excuse for stepping up the ancient struggle of the young against the old. There are also a good many genuine idealists who feel that the world is going mad and that it is the job of every sane man to work toward saving it The great majority of quiet students are listening carefully to the rebels, and when they are convinced that they are right on some particular cause, foHow them. Youngsters today need a lot of strength to concern themselves with the great issues of the day and at the same time to work toward the high marks which good jobs and graduate schools universally require. Students who even in normal circumstances might have difficulty making the grades, ae often bewildered and depressed by the demands made on their conscience and intelligence. But colleges emphasize the fact that they are supposed to be dealing with mature persons, not children. A large university is an especially impersonal place with few advisers who have the time to cater to a confused student and offer much encouragement. Colleges do not attempt to supervise the pri- - J I ' long-haire- 'C ; |