The School
Again, going back to look for a brief moment at the developments in American society from the postwar world (and most of these developments have also spilled over into much of the rest of the English-speaking world), with all the new liberalisms in society, the schools have been perhaps the most liberal and "progressive" of all.
With "progressive education," new methods of audio-visual education, new teaching aids and new texts, complete revolutionary changes have occurred in Western school systems. First came the missile race, and a complete shifting in emphasis in America's school systems.
In the late fifties, the entire emphasis in American education was upon a crash program to produce more doctors, physicists, chemists, scientists of all types. The United States felt itself in a desperate rush to catch up with Russia's sensational "Sputnik" launching, which had captured the imagination of the world and revealed the ugly truth that the United States was, indeed, lagging behind what most of the world had always thought of as a completely agrarian and slow-moving society.
In the flurry of little-researched, and hastily prepared textbooks and teaching methods, America's schools struggled to meet the new challenge.
Instead of recognizing the inherent evils in specialization, and the immediate dissolution in the cultural and social values in the teaching of the technologies, America's school systems plunged heedlessly into a further glorification of the machine, the process, the computer.
Only years later could some of America's universities begin to appreciate the wistful statement of the pimpled freshman who complained, "The only time I'm ever noticed around here is when I spindle my IBM card!"
The teaching of the child psychologists and their advocacy of no punishment, no discipline, and no absolutes had gained acceptance in the highest educational levels. Also, thousands more were now able to afford "higher education" because of the new wave of affluence, coupled with the demand for greater specialization in all the professions and trades.
Hundreds are the evils of the American educational system. It's one of the best in the world — for producing scientists, specialists, chemists, mathematicians — or professional students.
It's also one of the best in the world for producing dissidents, protestors, disenchanted students, and riots.
Today's textbooks ramble through millions of miles of trivia — pounds of pages of philosophy; and the lists of pseudo-intellectuals produced by substandard professors in substandard classes dealing in substandard drivel would rival the lists of honored dead of World War II.
Cite all the successful young corporation executives you wish; point to all the bright young men in grey commanding large green salaries you wish; the stark facts are America's colleges and universities are neither happy nor successful.
And their Federal-supported lack of success is only another part of a larger evil — that of the sacrifice of a nation's youth on the altar of intellectual prattle, while ignoring the true meaning and purpose of life itself.
Said the bewildered Dean of Columbia, David B. Truman, "They [today's collegiate generation] don't seem to know who they are, where they're going, or why."
Astounding.
Presumably — that's what they came to college to find out.
Ask the average student what he's getting out of college — so long as you avoid the subject of sex. You'll probably be surprised.
Today, there is the growing problem of the "professional" student — who talks of being "washed up" at age 25, takes drugs, and smokes pot, and seems bored, apathetic, defeated, and unhappy.
It takes a real love-in, a grand bash of a party, or a huge police confrontation to really excite this kid — something dramatic, like draft-card burnings, flag trampling, or even flying wedges into police lines.
Otherwise, he doesn't really know what school has done for him — besides, that is, provide him with a kind of society-sanctioned, government-supported home away from home where everyone is pretty close to his own age, and anti-social behavior is not only accepted, but expected.
No — the schools, too, have failed our youth.
They have failed to challenge. They have failed to stimulate. They have failed to truly educate — and they have failed to produce the true product of true education; stable minds, mature outlooks, adult emotions, and bright hopes for the future.
The product our colleges and universities are turning out is the sum total of today's youth — bewildered, defeated, thwarted — scared.
And just as sure as you sometimes grasp at time, and try to "hang on" to moments of passing pleasure; so are the good things of life all that much sweeter to youngsters who have only begun to discover their own futures.
Is it any wonder a disillusioned, evolutionized, disabsolutized, unpolarized, disenchanted, partly educated youngster revolts?
Someone once said, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
Is this what the universities are handing out?
Appraise it for yourself.
What do you read in the papers about today's educational institutions?
If you read America's leading papers — you read of sexual revolution, dorm rooms with posted 30-minute use schedules, dropouts, student demands, riots, occupation of administration offices, and probably demands for the resignation of the chancellor.
Somewhere, somehow — our schools have also failed our youth.
Millions of parents sigh with relief when their kiddies first troop off to school with shining faces and well-polished apples. They hope that somehow, magically, teacher will accomplish what they don't know how to do.
Years later, when the big son with pimples and long hair demands the keys to the car, Dad realizes the school hasn't been able to do what Dad didn't know how to do — and that his son doesn't especially sing the teaching system's praises, either.
Again — the statistics are almost endless.
Colleges in revolution; universities in revolt. It seems many countries must live in virtual terror of the news of yet another riot on their 50,000 plus university campus.
Can anyone deny that the school has FAILED as a traditional teacher of moral standards, high cultural aspirations, and the true mores of law, chastity, obedience, honesty, integrity; love of home, country, and God?
The Church
Trying to appraise the real meaning of the "church" as a traditional guardian of right moral conduct and true social values is one of the most difficult of all.
It's difficult first, because almost no one fights like churches do.
Any young collegiate has learned that most major butcheries, bludgeonings, shootings, stabbings and other inhumane deaths administered to hapless humans have either been at the direct behest of, or have received the special blessing of — religion.
Churches today seem bent on two extremes (and haven't they always?) Those are: Either: They seem to be so totally involved and "related" to the hugely emotional social issues that clerics, bishops, priests and others of the "frocked" among us are seen marching at the head of dissident groups; meeting angry cops at the front door of the church where alleged draft-card burners are hiding out, or appearing angrily on television to condemn their own overseers.
Or: So formally and dismally out of touch with modern-day twentieth century problems as to appear an island in a passing flood — untouched, imperturbable, forever dry.
To most youngsters, the prayers, memorized verses, "little old ladies in green felt hats" version of youthful religion was remembered in the same moment as castor oil, father's belt, and 3:00 p.m., on a dismal, rainy day in a dull class.
It was something to be endured, tolerated, and wondered at — never something they really understood, were challenged by, or profited from.
And what, pray tell, could ancients wearing long robes and white beards ever HOPE to give them about how to live in Detroit's tenements, or Bedford Stuyvesant's brownstones? What could a balding man over 50 who whistled his "s's" and sung his talk hope to tell a hot-faced little fifteen-year-old when his special girl had handed him a note after school on Friday?
Oh, they try.
Lamely.
Like the youngish cleric who, for reasons only known to himself, told a group of girl parishioners "Sex is fun. Not only is sex fun — it is also funny . . . This means there are no laws attached to sex. I repeat," he said, "ABSOLUTELY NO LAWS."
"We ought to relax and stop feeling guilty about our sexual activities" he intoned. "And I mean this, whether those thoughts are heterosexual, homosexual, or autosexual."
"The good news of the Gospel which has been delivered to me," he continued, "is that we have been freed from . . . evaluative codes of behavior — freed to act responsibly according to a higher law. If you will, this is the law of love. . ."
The girls didn't seem especially shocked.
They'd been reared in homes. They'd been to school. It was just that they didn't expect such libertine notions from a pulpit. Especially in an all-girls' school, and from a youngish minister.
Have the churches really failed the youth?
Only part of them?
Then why are so MANY of them — yes, SO MANY, so completely disillusioned and disgusted with today's religions? Why are so many EXPERIMENTING in religion? Why are so many looking to oriental customs, yoga, LSD, or their own new kind of teen-nationalism for true religious fulfillment?
No — defend them though some will, the churches of this world and this age have failed a whole youthful generation.
Today's youth has been lied to, and lied about. It has been given the double-standard and the "do as I say, don't do as I do" formula too long.
It has been allowed to look behind the parent's teaching; into the teacher's text; and into the preacher's notebook.
And in all this modern education, there were some hard, brutal shocks.
Today's youth has found it lives in a world filled with tigers. And its answer is a snarl.
Do Two Wrongs Make a Right?
Like many a cynic, millions of youths have seen much of what's wrong with the world: wrong with their elders, their schools, and their churches.
The only remaining trouble is; they don't seem to know what can be right about it.
Without realizing it, millions of them are clinging to the same notion that divided their own parents; frustrated their own teachers, and led their own pastors to prate about sexual aberrations.
They're beginning to believe someone else's sins justify their own.
They think two wrongs make a right.
They imagine sin plus sin equals no sin — that an evil deed deserves another — that futility deserves resignation; and hopelessness deserves no hope.
And they're wrong.
There is an answer for today's youths.
There is a future — a glittering, glamorous, fantastic future ALIVE with promise, excitement, challenge, discovery — love. It's a future the traditional teachers of this present world not only do not KNOW about, but have RESENTED when they DID hear. It's a future their schools, their parents, and their churches have largely REJECTED!
And it's the only future there is.
If you're one of America's more than fifty percent who is under 21 — or wherever you live, and whatever your age, and you want a preview into the most breathtaking future that could ever be imagined, then you need to write for the free booklet we have waiting for you about The Wonderful World Tomorrow — What it Will Be Like.
If you're resigned to defeat — don't bother.
If you're the kind of person who always REJECTS anything truly NEW, and DIFFERENT, then forget it. But if you're not afraid to look into something you've never SEEN before, then write for it, quickly — before you forget.
Your future doesn't probably depend on it. It does!