GROWING PAINS

Miss Parkhurst, the originator of the Dalton Plan, is still very actively engaged in working with youngsters today and this open forum on what the teen ager thinks, feels and does is based on her talks and programs with adolescents all over the country. From high schools, junior colleges, corrective institutions, settlement houses, their voices are heard and most of this is direct interview material on that troubled time when parents and children grow apart, when the older generation is no longer infallible, the younger generation more assertive. The discussion here ranges from boredom (without indicating what has been recently labeled elsewhere as the new neurosis- listlessness), daydreaming, sex, creativity, going steady for girls or for boys and the sense of security it gives; over various phases of delinquency, and its collateral dangers- teenage marriage, unmarried motherhood, crime; over special problems for the Negro youngster, the American Indian, the Jew; over the values of a home, of faith; etc., etc. While this- within a psychologically oriented frame of reference is a sociological sounding, there is guidance for both generations and in a sense Miss Parkhurst addresses a dual audience, it is accessible and sympathetic.