Princeton High School - Tiger Yearbook (Princeton, WV)

Page 7 text:

a better generation. The rift between the generations in our time is puzzling, because the age gap between them is small. Some people believe kids are steadily getting worse, in every way. Older citizens are automatically appalled by almost everything our kids do. If kids do it, it's bad even if their elders do it themselves without self-criticism. Authorities warn us never to pick up teen-age hitchhikers. Haven’t parents lost control of their offspring? Aren't college kids rioting? What about the way they dance? Their music? Pop art? and so on and on. Endlessly, and endless nonsense and libel! We are all to eager to accept all such accusations without question. No nation ever before undertook such massive blackguarding of its own young. To whom can I speak today? The gentle man has perished The violent man has access to everybody. The iniquity that smites the land It has no end. There are no righteous men. The earth is surrendered to criminals. the writer's nostalgia for the older, gentler, more righteous time strikes us as very modern. The writer could be alive today, but this poem was written by a man contemplating suicide some 4,000 years ago, in the time of Egypt's Middle Kingdom! It is an abiding characteristic of man to believe that the old virtures are disappearing, the old cause disintegrating, and the old, good, stern ways no longer honored. Often we forget that each generation must refight the old crucial battles on its own battleground and so dicover it's own truths. Let us for a moment think differently. Take time to look at the people you will meet in this book and see them as they really arc. The finest people on earth, the finest there ever was, arc America’s minor citizens, American kids, TEENAGERS included. Yet we seldom take the time and effort to honor our next generation. Let us cease to be critical and look to our youth for bright promises of a better tomorrow. After all we really have nowhere else to look for hope. America's youth is this nation's future, and with them rest the only future we have. In this book you will see profiles of the brilliant and the excep- tional. You will meet those who feel on the outside of things, and those who have difficulty keeping pace with their companions. But all of them are IN THE ACTION! And almost without exception they are doing their best. Open now the pages of our book. Look at their fads, fashions, their kooky likes and dislikes. See them in moments of quiet tension and in frantic displays of release. Let our camera show you in both individuals and groups the leaders of tomorrow. It’s a go- generation and the whole of humanity is betting on them. Young America WILL have it's say. Teens are tops! And I think this pictorial essay proves it. Now is the time for action and the place is PRINCETON HIGH SCHOOL. 3

Page 6 text:

HALF THE WORLD IS UNDER TWENTY-ONE. TEENAGER'S. Everywhere today we hear about how many rioted over the week- end, how many are drop-outs. And most of all, how many of them there are! By 1970 more than half the people in America will be under 25 years of age. Say ’’juvenile and nine adults in ten will think delinquent . Know any juvenile delinquents? High-school dropouts? Narcotic addicts? Most of us don’t. Mention teen-agers to the average adult and a whole spectrum of ills immediately flash into view. The term is a sterotyped label which is applied to every member of the most diverse group in our population. It is a high abstraction, a term which lumps together everyone in the second decade of life into a luridly colored mass. The very use of the term is depersonalizing and monstrous, turning living, breathing individual young people into a feared mob. Today’s teen-age mass activity all too often makes unflattering from page news. We create a sterotyped group and then anything a few do we make representative of many, especially if it is antisocial. (Xir teens are victims of generalizations-false general- ization. The only way this sterotype can be broken is to refuse resolutely to look at individual children in terms of sterotype. We must insist that children are not teen-agers, typical or atypical. Our teens are named, loved, identified individuals, each different from the other and from all others. They share the same decade of chronological age but they realize that individuality counts. Our treating them as one great homogeneous unit-thc TEEN-AGER significantly increases the need of members of this mass to search for some identity, even if it’s only a haircut. The answer to sterotyping cannot be found in counter argument -- in stating how many teens think education is important or how many do belive in God. The answer lies in looking at each individual and not at the mass. Most teenagers want to be a part of their community, they want to do constructive things to help others. Most clubs and activities organized by youth are just for that purpose. Teens arc full of energy, ideals, and zest to start right on their adult careers and lives. The psychologists, the economists, the educators, all of 2 the experts arc right when they say that teenagers have a tremendous impact on both present day and future America. No one can seriously doubt that it is the taste of the teens that decrees the trends in music, entertainment, fashions and even the language. Every teenager in America should be proud to know that. The adults should rest assured that the impact that their revolution will have will be all for the good. Revolution? Are we headed for a youth-dictated culture? Un- doubtedly we arc. But what kind of revolutionists are they? Despite newspaper headline and adults well-founded concern with their problems, delinquets represent only a minute percentage of our teen- age populations. The teens in this book are neither rebels or conformists- they are both! They conform to the ways of their own generation but rebel against the ways of the older generation. The revolution among teen-agers in our generation is neither rebellion nor an act of conformism. It is the search for a truth amongst all of the advertisement, influencing and propaganda directed at die easily influenced teen. This group is more important than we realize, more influential than we admit and wealthier than ever before in the world's history. They have grown up accepting the amazing concepts of space travel as commonplace. They have lived an entire lifetime under the comfortable umbrella of man's greatest era of prosperity and easy money. Certainly a new social and economic force is at work in America today. As a result we may well be witnessing the beginning of a revolution. Not a revolt, but a change in the status of a group destined to become more dominant in the make-up and conduct of our society. Many teens are trying hard, with an almost frenzied eagerness to come to terms with the world around them. This generation is maturing faster, accepting more responsibility than any other. Their genuine concern for our society is demonstrated by those who join the Peace Corps at 18 or 19, their own periodic publications now flooding the country, by the Olympic swimming champions who dedicate every waking moment to training and winning recognition for their country. More than ever before, die teenage element” is living with inventiveness, dedication and accomplishment. It has been said that the greatest job of any generation is to raise

Page 8 text:

CRJBUU Lights . . • 0 Barger Lilly Ernie Bragg Bill Culp Mickey Kassem Melvin Lester Larry Showalter Ricky Noland Tracy Pettrey