St Norbert High School - Argos Yearbook (De Pere, WI)

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YOUTH AT ST. NORBERT HIGH: 1. The main social event of the year, the Junior Class Prom; 2. Sports, pitcher Bob Clemens scores as the Squires defeat Preble; 3. Religion, the opportunity for weekly confession gives spiritual refreshment; 4. Education, a crown of glory — graduation from St. Norbert High. Page Six

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BISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN SPEAKS TO YOUTH . . . What Americans call teen-agers, or adolescents, covers that period midway between springtime and summer. As what happens to the trees and the blossoms during March determines the fruit, so the experiences of teen-agers help mould their maturity. Some youths, like some fruits, ripen too soon, and others never seem to ripen, but there are others who fulfill the best aspirations of an older generation. The psychology of teen-agers is as important as it is interesting. The three dominant characteristics are: interiority, imitation and restlessness. Interiority : A trait often missed because of the energy of youth is its consciousness of solitude and its sense of aloofness born of the realization that a kind of barrier is thrown up between itself and the world. Boys try sometimes to overcome this barrier by shaving before their time, thus leaping the wall between adolescence and manhood. Gestures are clumsy, uneasy, ungraceful; arms seem too long and always in the way; words have little value for exchange purposes with adults in establishing contact with the grown world. There are more images than ideas in the interior world, which may account in part for the inability to establish raport with others. Sometimes this very ineptitude increases interiority and drives the youth back into himself. Because exterior actions do not always give release to the inner world, the teen-ager often has recourse to an inner world of images where he has an interior adventure, picturing himself as a hero on a football field. Movies are popular be- cause they are a good feeder for such day dreams and hopes. The general picture, however, is of one who has suddenly arrived at a growing interior depth but, not knowing its value, expresses himself badly. Imitation: There is a profound philosophical reason for imitation. The ego is under the imperative need of emerging from itself as a chrysalis; the interior is bursting to affirm itself in personality. Imitation becomes a substitute for originality; originality commits the youth to effort, labor, pain, perseverance and sometimes the scorn of others; but imitation gives one the needed exteriorization through a kind of social conforniism. Locked up in itself, youth must emerge. Since it is harder to be oneself, and at that age one does not quite know what is oneself, it becomes a hero-worshipper; hence the fan clubs, fanaticism for players of per- cussion instruments, the idolizing of some so-called movie star. That is why in the high school age one finds very few who ever dress outside of the pattern set by a few. The creative minority in adult life is few; therefore the youth must not be taken to task for imitation. This mimicry could be dangerous if what was idolized were low; but it can be also one of the ennobling influences of youth if those who are imitated are noble, good and patriotic. Youth imitates be- cause it wants to create and creation marks the end of interiority in a constructive way. Restlessness: Perhaps a better description of restlessness would be a mercurial affection. There is extreme mobility in youth, due to the multitude of impressions which flood the soul. Life is multiple; there is little harmony because of the great variety of appeals from the external world. Hence the appeal of certain youths of a certain type of jitterbug music; it provides a muscular outlet for sense energy which has n ot yet been rationalized. Because of this agitation, it is difficult for a youth to fix his attention on any one object; perseverance in study is hard; the impulsions of the moment solicit with a loud voice. This could end in delinquency if the activity never found a target. But at the same time, like the other characteristics, it can also be the salvation of the youth, for he is really running around the circumference of human experience in order to decide on which particular segment he will settle for life; he tours the world of professions, avocations and positions and then decides in which he will repose. Once this energy becomes canalized, focused and rationalized, it becomes the beginning of a life ' s work and an adolescent begins to be what God intended him to be a man who in loving virtue knows how to love a woman, a friend and his country. This materia! is copyrighled. It is printed here with the gracious permission of His Excellency, The Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen. Auxiliary Bishop of New York. Page Eight