The Times

Kids Continued from page 23

Continued from page 23 in a critical vein recently gave as an example of coddling, the case of a boy whose parents drove him on his newspaper route in bad weather. As one school administrator put it: "What's wrong with this? Why should we go back to the days when we had no cars and had to wade hip-deep in snow to deliver a paper? I know my parents would have driven me if they'd had a car." Conformity is another word bandied freely these days. Is conformity necessarily bad? Organized society would disintegrate without conformity. It is a protective social trait. "We mistake our children's conformity of dress and manners for the kind of conformity about which we should really worry," says Mrs. Winch. "They have their fads of socks, shoes, telephoning, and teen-talk, to be sure. And so did we, didn't we? There's nothing new about teen-age fads. It's only the subjects that change. Benny Goodman in their parents' day, the Kingston Trio today." This kind of conformity does not eliminate creativity. As one teacher put it, "A girl can have a fine creative idea while wearing bobby socks." AS IF our children weren't in trouble enough, they are also found to be under pressure from their parents to be "superachievers." The feelings of the young people about this can be summed up in the words of one boy. "The pressure to achieve," he said, "comes mostly from within ourselves. Of course, our parents want us to go to good colleges, and we want to go to good colleges. We know we can't get into college unless we get good grades. To do this we have to work. I don't see anything wrong with working." It is one of the "positives" of suburban living that the children have the finest opportunity for an education that one can find anywhere, says Mrs. Winch. "Faculties are outstanding. The student body is unusually intelligent and provides a challenge in itself. The children in suburbia with their essential strengths are one of the main reasons why people move to the suburbs, and having moved there, wish to remain." Representatives from colleges throughout the U.S., visiting at Highland Park High School to advise students about their future education, were asked to comment on suburban teen-agers. The reply of Mrs. Adelaide Francis of the University of Kansas City was typical of their point of view. "I've visited 200 high schools in the last year," she said, "and found little difference in teen-agers no matter where they lived. They are, by and large, a wonderful bunch of kids-serious and realistic. As for being indulged, they don't ask whether we have fancy modern dormitories, but who is on the faculty. They're much better prepared than we were to go to college." Why then has the negative image been shown so much more often than the positive? An attack, to be sure, is always stronger than a defense, especially in print, and what goes wrong is more dramatic than what goes right. It made a good story, for instance, in one national magazine, to cite as an example of suburban indulgence and extravagance, the junior high-school student who tried to pay for his lunch with a $50 bill, "which his mother had handed him without hesitation." What the writer did not mention (if indeed he ever checked into it) was that the boy had been taught to save and invest in stocks and bonds and in doing so had made the money for himself. As a joke he brought the $50 bill to Continued on page 26

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