Showing papers by "Philip G. Altbach published in 1973"

The new pilgrims : youth protest in transition

Abstract: This is a Reader consisting of seventeen pieces. Eleven of the essays in this volume first appeared in the Annials of the Anereican Academy of Political anid Social Scienzce 395(May 1971). While the title of this collection is a "grabber," it is rather misleading and, I believe somewhat overdone. The collection does not really deal with "Youth Protest in Transition" but primarily with the behavior and attitudes of a very select group of college students. Second, with the exception of several essays by the youth lovers (e.g., Mankoff and Flacks, Lifton and Seeley), there is little which would support the "Pilgrim" image (according to Webster, pilgrims are people who travel to some holy place as devotees). These comments are not meant as a criticism of the collection. Rather, they are made in order to point out again that as social scientists we have been prone to attribute to most youth the characteristics of what are in fact our perceptions (based most often on little empirical research) of a relatively small segment of the student population. The collection is, however, well balanced and does provide a realistic bench mark as to where social science is with regard to data and theory concerning aspects of the youth socialization process. Both youth supporters and youth doubters are represented. Equal time and space is alloted to those who believe that there is something unique about contemporary youth and to those who believe it has all happened before and that this too shall pass. The collection also includes a brief but welldocumented historical review of American student activism prior to Berkeley, an excellent discussion of "The Development of the New Left" (by James P. O'Brien), and a helpful bibliography dealing with student activism (compiled by Kenneth Keniston and Michael Lerner). Finally, Karl Mannheim's discussion of the problem of generations, taken from his Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge, should remind students of generational behavior that much work yet remains to be done.

The National Student Association in the Fifties: Flawed Conscience of the Silent Generation.

Abstract: The U.S. National Student Association is the largest student organization in the United States with more than 600 affiliated student governments representing two million students. The NSA has served as the major spokesman for American students before government agencies and on the international scene. Yet, the NSA is considered by many students as a meaningless group-as the “sandbox” of student politics. In The NSA community up. I t has a sense, both of these descriptions are accurate. has been a voice for the American student in periods when few other groups were speaking provided services to its members such as travel