ABSTRACT

Society as a whole has still not found within itself a place for adolescents. With one hand they are urged to continue education in secondary schools, county colleges and evening institutes, while with the other they are forced into long hours of often monotonous work. Their holidays are too brief for true recreation, * too long for their scanty resources to fill adequately with any pursuits yielding long-term satisfaction. In wartime they are urged to join pre-service units, but, when the war is over, society's need for their help and interest is much less clear. It is not, therefore, surprising that adolescents themselves, particularly those who do or might join clubs, are confused and unruly. Physiologically they are in difficulty. They have outgrown childhood without yet fully developing their potentialities of mind or body. Awkwardly placed at home, they alternate between lapses into childhood dependency and grandiose parades of adult behaviour which they are unable to sustain. Their new biological urges are neither fully understood by them nor yet ripe for normal expression. Old interests are left behind, new ones not yet apprehended. Particularly the young person who has just left an elementary school is in difficulty. He finds within himself a vacuum which childhood, receding, has left, and which maturity has not yet filled. The public or secondary schoolboy has this vacuum more or less filled by athletics, cultural development and intellectual growth. The elementary schoolboy, proceeding into the adult work world, finds himself involved in a type of living which he can neither enjoy nor comprehend but to which, for his own social survival, he must conform. It is primarily these awkward adolescents whom the youth movement seeks to serve and must serve until or unless society evolves a better instrument.