Current Issues in Journalism

The next great generation?

Andrew Brownstein. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Washington: Oct 13, 2000. Vol. 47, Iss. 7; pg. A71, 2pgs

IT MAY BE HARD TO BELIEVE NOW, but in the early 1960's, it was still possible to find a Pat Boone record at the top of the pop charts or an Annette Funicello movie at the local Bijou.

The culture seemed so bland, in fact, that Clark Kerr, then president of the University of California system, predicted that the next wave of students was "going to be easy to handle."

By the end of the decade, that forecast had gone up in smoke like so many burning draft cards.

Forty years later, college administrators look at the Generation X culture of Eminem and South Park and predict that the students of the future will continue its coarse and cynical ways.

But if a new book is correct, those officials will follow in the unenviable footsteps of Mr. Kerr.

In Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage Books), Neil Howe and William Strauss argue that youth culture is on the cusp of a radical shift, much as it was in the Beach Blanket Bingo days of the '60's.

The "Millennials," the generation that begins with this year's college freshmen and extends into the near future, is teamoriented, optimistic, and, like the G.L's who fought in World War II, poised for greatness on a global scale, according to Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss. And, if the authors are right, many of those changes will be seen first on college campuses.

"I think campuses will be unrecognizable in the year 2010," says Mr. Strauss. By the time the second decade of the

new millennium rolls around, the Zeitgeist on campuses might be something like this: The least race-conscious and most femaledominated generation in U. S. history will have increasingly less patience for the politics of boomer faculty members and will rebel against university policies they see as promoting separatism. Admissions offices will increasingly be focusing on men, who will be dropping out in record numbers. In an age when the most important color is green, class will overtake race as the hot topic of debate.

WATCH OUT FOR PARENTS

Parents who once obsessed over their youngsters' Little League games will play an equally meddlesome role once their children go to college. Universities will create offices of parental relations to handle the avalanche of e-mail from mom and dad.

Boomer parents engaged in free love and talked about changing the world. The authors say that the far-more-modest Millennials, who even shied away from gym showers in high school, will talk about sex but work at making real changes in society. if, at first blush, it is hard to accept the notion of children reared on Barney and Boyz II Men being "the next great generation," consider the evidence:

According to national surveys cited by the authors, homicide, violent crime, abortion, and pregnancy among teens have all plummeted at the fastest rates ever recorded. Teen suicide rates are falling for the first time in decades.

The Millennials' views are diametrically opposed to those of their parents. Half of Millennials say they trust political leaders to do what's right all or most of the time, according to a 1997 CBs News/New York Times poll. A 1998 Primedia/Roper National Youth Opinion survey found that, when asked "What is the major cause of problems in this country?" more teenagers named "selfishness" than anything else.

SOMETHING MORE IDEAL'

Those on the leading edge of the generation say they are aware-sometimes painfully so-of the pressure to become better than their parents.

"I think we are being molded into something more ideal," says Alexandra Kagan, a freshman at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y. "It was like reality hit ... and people realized society was on a downward spiral. They're trying to have us conform to a new standard, rather than have us run all over the place like they did."

Millennials, as portrayed in the book, are a generation accustomed to following rules. They grew up with uniforms in elementary school, new achievement tests in junior high, and metal detectors in high school.

Far from the image conveyed in the media of an idle youth, the authors argue, Millennials are programmed by their parents to an extraordinary degree, with ambitious schedules of homework and extracurricular activities.

"I don't want to say my childhood was rushed," says Christopher Loyd, a freshman at San Antonio College who was interviewed by the authors. "It was just very busy. "

The reason that Mr. Kerr and current prognosticators come out wrong on the youth question is that they assume that each generation will be a linear extension of the one before, according to Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss.

The authors hold a Hegelian view of history that predicts generations will evolve in cyclical patterns: Each new generation attempts to solve a problem facing the previous youth generation, corrects the behavioral excesses it sees in the current midlife generation, and fills a social role being vacated by the departing elder generation.

Hence, if the authors are right, the Millennials will form the communities that alienated Xers longed for, heal the societal fabric worn by narcissistic boomers, and build institutions as did their G..i. forebears.

"Boom and X are a very libertarian combination, and that's what they're rebelling against," says Mr. Howe.

LOOKING FOR A HERO

Every generation has an icon who comes to symbolize its ethos. For the college students of the 60's, it might have been Abbie Hoffman or Timothy Leary.

The Millennials are too young yet to have their own symbol, but Craig Kielburger, a 17-year-old Canadian, may come close.

When he was 12, Mr. Kielburger read a newspaper article about a Pakistani boy hisage who was sold into bondage and murContinued From Preceding Page dered when he spoke out against child labor. Using the Internet, Mr. Kielburger mobilized volunteers, and within five years, had established Free the Children, a 100,000-member organization that assists children's causes around the world.

A New View of Students

In the authors' view, Mr. Kielburger's vision is a precursor of the kind of change and organization of which Millennials are capable. "This is a generation that will build rockets to go to Mars rather than make movies that wonder whether we should," says Mr. Strauss.

Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss make an unlikely pair of historians. Mr. Howe is an economic-policy consultant and a senior adviser to the Concord Coalition, an organization formed by several former U. S. senators to battle the federal deficit and protect Social Security. Mr. Strauss is the director of the Capitol Steps, a Washington-based satirical-theater troupe.

They met in the 1980's, and their mutual interests led to the 1991 publication of Generations (William Morrow), a study of 14 American generations from Plymouth Rock to the present. Though academic respectability largely has eluded them, their four works have won critical acclaim and the ear of the powerful. Vice President Al Gore called Generations "the most stimulating book on American history I have ever read."

But to some, the authors' generational theory sounds like the sociological equivalent of a Ouija board.

"It's impossible to separate generations that way," says Arthur E. Levine, president of Teachers College of Columbia University and coauthor of When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait of Today's College Students (Jossey-Bass, 1998.) "These are just stereotypes."

CONSISTENT MESSAGE

The authors counter that their theories are easily tested. Besides, they add, they've been saying pretty much the same thing for more than a decade. In 1991, when it looked to most critics like the youth culture was spinning out of control, Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss were virtually alone in forecasting that crime rates would fall and academic performance would rise by the end of the decade.

In the case of Millennials Rising, many students and administrators say they can already see indicators of the trends predicted by the authors.

"Five or six years ago, students were real angry," says Linda Kuk, vice president for student affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "There was an overwhelming sense of entitlement. It was always 'I pay your salary, and you should do what I say. Screw your rules.' "

Those attitudes are slowly starting to change, she says. Students are still getting in trouble, but are more likely to take responsibility for their actions. When tragic events occur in their lives, Ms. Kuk said, students tend to be more resilient.

"They seem, on the whole, happier," she says. In the eyes of Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss, the generational tone of the Millennials was set by the determination of their parents to avoid the neglectful child-rearing practices of their past. The Millennials' college experience will be marked by parents who give new meaning to the word "overprotective."

"The parental perfection complex is coming to college," says Mr. Strauss. "Picture the parents watching youth soccer becoming the parents watching the admissions process-with the stakes even higher."

The authors predict that the push for higher standards in elementary and secondary school will be transferred to college. There will be increased calls for pregraduation competency testing and the elimination of remedial classes. The line between the haves and the havenots will be drawn over issues like who can afford college-selection counselors and private tutors. With the competition intense, rejected students and their parents will complain more and more about a perceived unfairness in admissions.

The authors' notion of an Office of Parental Relations is not science fiction. There's already one at the Rochester institute, and many others have emerged in recent years.

Some younger students find all the parental attention a tad embarrassing. "My parents walked me through every step of the admissions process," says Mr. Loyd. "During orientation, it was humiliating. I was walking around campus with my mom."

CHANGING CAUSES

On the social front, the old boomer causes tied to race and gender will fade, the authors write, "to the chagrin of aging faculty." In their place, there will be new questions-about class and the dwindling numbers of men. As women increasingly take over the leadership of student government and clubs, and men flee academe for the workplace, "how to bring young men back into higher education will become recognized as a national problem," the authors state.

John N. Gardner, executive director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College at Brevard College, in North Carolina, says the trend is already well under way.

"Men are in for a rude awakening," he says. "There are very few things that I am sure of, and that's one of them. It's the biggest change I've seen on campuses in 33 years."

In an otherwise optimistic take on the current youth culture, Millennials Rising strikes one loud note of discord.

With their love of rules and trust in institutions, the Millennials could be led astray by a demagogue or use technology in Orwellian ways, the authors write. Mr. Howe and Mr. Strauss note that the G.I. generation, which the Millennials are supposed to emulate, came of age at the same time as others who followed a strong leader in the pursuit of a giant cause: their counterparts in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.

But a less fanciful possibility is that a generation that combines the cultural conservatism of the 50's with the Big Government politics of the 60's might just turn out ... boring, prone to practicality rather than creativity or introspection.

Lucy E. Rollin, a professor of English at Clemson University and author of 20th Century Teen Culture by the Decades (Greenwood Press, 1999), says she has noticed that her recent students demand that "everything be spelled out" in detail and have trouble thinking for themselves.

"I was trying to get them to write with their own voice," Ms. Rollin recalls. "But they couldn't use the word 'L' They said their highschool teachers never let them use it. It was sad, really."

Then again, Ms. Rollin was born in 1941, making her a member of the so-called Silent Generation. The tides of history were different then.