Charles H Milby High School - Buffalo Yearbook (Houston, TX)

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thinking for themselves in the rapidly changing world as well as in the academic circles. Despite the vast numbers (Milby has more than 2000), modern high schools are producing individuals who are capable of The Beginning of the Search for Identity When a teenager reaches the stage when his independence means rejecting the ideas and values of his family, he seems like a distant, mysterious renegade to his parents. For many adults the legions of teenage boys in jeans, sportshirts, and long pointed black shoes, and mobs of teen- age girls screaming and fainting over shaggy-haired Beatles evoke thoughts of the mindless masses. They are not com- pletely right in this judgment, however. While teenagers do conform to a great extent in their dress, language, and customs, this very conformity separates them from the older generations, whose authority they are trying to escape. An important part of attaining maturity is learning to make decisions and selecting personal ideals. In many cases, the values that have been imposed on them by parents and teachers must first be rejected. In some homes, for example, children are taught that their religion is the only acceptable one; when they meet intelligent good people from other faiths, they begin to wonder how these people can be so intelligent and so badly mistaken at the same time. They become acquainted with conflicting ideologies, politics, re- ligions, customs, prejudices, and ideas, and from this con- fusion must choose what they are going to stand for. Although they frequently vacillate between extremes, stu- dents are great ones for identifying with or standing for something. They seize hungrily upon causes such as conserva- tive or liberal politics (seldom middle-of-the-road stuff), ban the bomb, anti-capital punishment, existentialism. Peace Corps, repeal the draft, discrimination, and or lower the voting age, and proceed to get themselves deeply involved. Involvement is sending letters to the editor, writing essays for English or civics, arguing angrily, discussing and debating in all-night jam sessions, marching and carrying banners. Involvement is a characteristic of teenagers who do not yet have their college education, profession, or marriage partner cinched, and there- fore have very little reason to be complacent. Being a teenager with a highly personal search for identity is a serious and sometimes painful business. A single year in his life has many milestones, many lessons in living, many rewarding relationships with people. This is what this yearbook is all about.

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The faces of America are as varied as the personalities, but behind each is some of the spirit of independence that made this country free. The character of modern American individualism is symbo- lized by this sculpture of a powerful man, striding vigorously towards his goals. 7

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 Age of Turmoil But just considor, as an adult, if you were sud- denly put back into your adolescence. You'd sud- denly have to decide all over again whether to marry or not, and then who to marry. And the problem is complicated by the fact that apparently nobody you like, likes you. Then imagine on top of this, while you are in this awful quandary, you have to decide whether you are going to be a doctor, an actor, a salesman, an engineer, or an aviator. And you have to make both of these decisions at the same time. And you have to make them at the time of life when you are least compe- tent to make any decision, when you have no ex- perience, and worse still, no money. When you're in a terrible emotional turmoil, when you've just gone through a very serious physical change. I noticed when my boys wore growing that they just lay on the bed day after day. But their clothes didn't fit them day after day. Man changes more than most any other animal until you get back to a frog. If you were an adult and you had a period of four or five years when you changed that much physically, you'd go to a rest home, you'd be understood, you'd retire. But this is the very moment when society makes its heaviest de- mands . . . the very time when the body is making its demands and the emotions are making their demands, and society is making its demands. To top all this, you have to pass an exam in French irregu lar verbs and your mother is hysterical because you're not carrying out the garbage.