^ generation war-game MARGARET MILES
In just about every age of history the middle-aged have despaired of 'the younger generation' and mused about 'things being a lot different in our day'. Does the widely voiced concern about today's generation gap amount to much more? There is no longer a consensus of belief that can be presented to the young and they are bombarded by the media but are they really any more vulnerable? The seizure of the pre-publication copies of the Little Red School Book by the police is surely the sort of panic action which people indulge in when they are afraid. And fear of the young by the old, or older, seems to me to be an underlying cause of the sort of generation-war-game played in the book The vulnerable
generation'.* Do we really have to worry so much as to whether 'they' are better or worse than we were, and does it really threaten us that 'they' are more experienced (and I don't just mean in sex) than we were? After all, they will all too soon become 'us', and do we not merely demonstrate our paranoia if we divide society too rigidly on horizontal age-band lines, take sides and engage in verbal war against the young? I am assuming that the vulnerable generation is the young, but the book reveals all too clearly the vulnerability of those referred to in the first person, and who are now the old. In fact, the chapters on the abdicating adult and the affluent society show how parents, progressives, educational cranks, working mothers, the welfare state mentality, the rat race?representing presumably quite a fair proportion of the old?have failed to set standards for the young. So the young get and worse and, paradoxically, are both feared and envied by the old. It is this chronicling of the cliches about contemporary society which blurred for me the real message of the book, which I take to be that we all want young people to be responsible and unselfish, well-educated and imaginative, but that forces are at work in society which makes these aims difficult to fulfill. But was this
worse
not always so? There are plenty of genuine extracts from writers in the past which would confirm the claims
*The vulnerable generation by Elizabeth Manners Cassell, ?1.80
40
of St. Bilious of Septicaemia. Incidentally an index would have been helpful as would references. I found it quite difficult to find some references and quotations which I wanted to check after a final reading. Those of us who have attended school prayers for many years will be familiar with a prayer in which the interceder asks for the power to 'distinguish things that differ'. Now I have always taken this to mean that we want to be able to distinguish between the important and the trivial, the long term and the short term, the basic and the superficial, the wood and the trees, and to be able to analyse our own motives and try to find out whether we are acting from fear or envy, self-pity or for another. Where I found Miss Manners' book disappointing was that for me it is over-generalised and does not distinguish sufficiently clearly between things that differ. I am just not able to identify with the
care
generalised 'we' who are the old, nor to recognise the 'they' who are the young, when Miss Manners compares and contrasts the generations. Indeed Miss Manners herself often finds that she has to qualify her generalisations. Surely we must look for the person behind the funny clothes and long hair? We must distinguish between the peaceful demos resulting from deeply held we must not confuse matters of morals with matters of convention. All the topics dealt with in 'The vulnerable generation' are of deep concern to anybody in touch with young people, and I. read it, as many will, voraciously, seeking ?indeed longing?for enlightenment, but I was still hungry at the end because my questions were not answered. I cannot go along with the plea that if only 'they' would realise that all that 'we' stand for is good and constructive and that all would be well if 'they' conformed to it. After all, is not one of the dilemmas of our time that there is no longer a consensus of belief nor an agreed code which those running our schools can present to the young, as I suppose there might
convictions, and mindless vandalism, and
have
been
said to have been when the post-1902 schools were establishing themselves, and when the great majority of over 14-year-olds were not in the care of schools in any case? And the picture is still further complicated by the existence in our schools not only of the professing Christian and the conscious non-Christian, but of representatives of the Muslim, Hindu and other faiths, not to mention the indifferent, the apathetic and the hostile. So not only do we have to
at all, but also for young people from other cultures and other faiths. Is it not less than fair to impute destructive motives to those who in all seriousness are trying to find a code which is acceptable and workable in a society as mixed as ours? Humanists and secularists are not evil people trying to wean the young away from the faith they have been brought up in; those who concern themselves with these matters are trying to build up a morality based on social responsibility to fill the vacuum left by the failure of a morality based on a set of religious beliefs
secondary
find
a code for the whole range of the native population, most of whom formerly would not have been in school
Sunday
Mirror
which no
longer appeal. Similarly, educationists who believe in comprehensive education are not inspired by envy and hatred, they are not against intellectuals or middle-class values or grammar schools; they stand for a good life and a sound education for all our young people: they are not the creators of social change but are trying to meet the needs which social change has created, and of course they are the first to recognise that it is fiendishly difficult to try to give all the opportunities, the aspiraions, the standards perhaps, which were formerly available only to the few. I go along with Miss Manners in feeling a deep anxiety about some aspects of current scciety, but I would isolate and possibly intensify the alienation of the young by attributing our present discontents largely to their activities and way of life. There are divisions and dangers but they run through society from top to bottom and from old to young, and they can kill. Ought there not to be another volume called perhaps 'The vulnerable society'?
In just about every age of history the middle-aged have despaired of 'the younger generation' and mused about 'things being a lot different in our day'. Does the widely voiced concern about today's generation gap amount to much more? There is no longer a consensus of belief that can be presented to the young and they are bombarded by the media but are they really any more vulnerable? The seizure of the pre-publication copies of the Little Red School Book by the police is surely the sort of panic action which people indulge in when they are afraid. And fear of the young by the old, or older, seems to me to be an underlying cause of the sort of generation-war-game played in the book The vulnerable
generation'.* Do we really have to worry so much as to whether 'they' are better or worse than we were, and does it really threaten us that 'they' are more experienced (and I don't just mean in sex) than we were? After all, they will all too soon become 'us', and do we not merely demonstrate our paranoia if we divide society too rigidly on horizontal age-band lines, take sides and engage in verbal war against the young? I am assuming that the vulnerable generation is the young, but the book reveals all too clearly the vulnerability of those referred to in the first person, and who are now the old. In fact, the chapters on the abdicating adult and the affluent society show how parents, progressives, educational cranks, working mothers, the welfare state mentality, the rat race?representing presumably quite a fair proportion of the old?have failed to set standards for the young. So the young get and worse and, paradoxically, are both feared and envied by the old. It is this chronicling of the cliches about contemporary society which blurred for me the real message of the book, which I take to be that we all want young people to be responsible and unselfish, well-educated and imaginative, but that forces are at work in society which makes these aims difficult to fulfill. But was this
worse
not always so? There are plenty of genuine extracts from writers in the past which would confirm the claims
*The vulnerable generation by Elizabeth Manners Cassell, ?1.80
40
of St. Bilious of Septicaemia. Incidentally an index would have been helpful as would references. I found it quite difficult to find some references and quotations which I wanted to check after a final reading. Those of us who have attended school prayers for many years will be familiar with a prayer in which the interceder asks for the power to 'distinguish things that differ'. Now I have always taken this to mean that we want to be able to distinguish between the important and the trivial, the long term and the short term, the basic and the superficial, the wood and the trees, and to be able to analyse our own motives and try to find out whether we are acting from fear or envy, self-pity or for another. Where I found Miss Manners' book disappointing was that for me it is over-generalised and does not distinguish sufficiently clearly between things that differ. I am just not able to identify with the
care
generalised 'we' who are the old, nor to recognise the 'they' who are the young, when Miss Manners compares and contrasts the generations. Indeed Miss Manners herself often finds that she has to qualify her generalisations. Surely we must look for the person behind the funny clothes and long hair? We must distinguish between the peaceful demos resulting from deeply held we must not confuse matters of morals with matters of convention. All the topics dealt with in 'The vulnerable generation' are of deep concern to anybody in touch with young people, and I. read it, as many will, voraciously, seeking ?indeed longing?for enlightenment, but I was still hungry at the end because my questions were not answered. I cannot go along with the plea that if only 'they' would realise that all that 'we' stand for is good and constructive and that all would be well if 'they' conformed to it. After all, is not one of the dilemmas of our time that there is no longer a consensus of belief nor an agreed code which those running our schools can present to the young, as I suppose there might
convictions, and mindless vandalism, and
have
been
said to have been when the post-1902 schools were establishing themselves, and when the great majority of over 14-year-olds were not in the care of schools in any case? And the picture is still further complicated by the existence in our schools not only of the professing Christian and the conscious non-Christian, but of representatives of the Muslim, Hindu and other faiths, not to mention the indifferent, the apathetic and the hostile. So not only do we have to
at all, but also for young people from other cultures and other faiths. Is it not less than fair to impute destructive motives to those who in all seriousness are trying to find a code which is acceptable and workable in a society as mixed as ours? Humanists and secularists are not evil people trying to wean the young away from the faith they have been brought up in; those who concern themselves with these matters are trying to build up a morality based on social responsibility to fill the vacuum left by the failure of a morality based on a set of religious beliefs
secondary
find
a code for the whole range of the native population, most of whom formerly would not have been in school
Sunday
Mirror
which no
longer appeal. Similarly, educationists who believe in comprehensive education are not inspired by envy and hatred, they are not against intellectuals or middle-class values or grammar schools; they stand for a good life and a sound education for all our young people: they are not the creators of social change but are trying to meet the needs which social change has created, and of course they are the first to recognise that it is fiendishly difficult to try to give all the opportunities, the aspiraions, the standards perhaps, which were formerly available only to the few. I go along with Miss Manners in feeling a deep anxiety about some aspects of current scciety, but I would isolate and possibly intensify the alienation of the young by attributing our present discontents largely to their activities and way of life. There are divisions and dangers but they run through society from top to bottom and from old to young, and they can kill. Ought there not to be another volume called perhaps 'The vulnerable society'?
