YOUTH IN CRISIS

[Music] all men attention all men get your forms at this platform proceed in the next station and pick up your tags place the tags around your neck then go to the next room where the headings for your forms will be made out for you no smoking please with a map responding to the call of war magnificently and by the millions the united states is finding its first opportunity in 25 years to take an inclusive look at the mental ethical state of england out of this mass mobilization the nation has been able to piece together a clear picture of its youth based upon the collated results of selective service physical examinations and upon new and searching psychiatric tests designed to detect any symptoms of mental instability have you ever had any obsessions obsessions i mean ideas that drive you to do something and uh no matter how hard you try to forget them you can't well yeah i guess so i remember when i was a kid i used to have spells where i was afraid to touch a knife for fear i'd cut my throat ever feel that way now reports from the nation's induction centers on the number of men rejected as mentally unfit for service in the armed forces have been a sharp blow to american complacency to no one have these reports caused more concern than to the director of u.s selective service general lewis b hershey in selective service during the past year we have found that of the total number of white residents rejected one out of every four was rejected because of a mental or nervous condition where does that leave america if she is to win this war what measures are being taken to make us psychologically more fit but two psychiatrists who understand what the relentless pressure of war can do to the mind and nerves this is but one phase of war's harsh impact upon the american people we psychiatrists are not unduly disturbed by the number of army discharges for psychoneurosis while these men may need special attention many of them can and do make excellent adjustments in civilian life what we are much more concerned about is the imp war conditions in home and community upon children and adolescents leading to neuroses and delinquency upon america's youth the excitement and emotional tension of war is today exerting an influence which psychiatrists fear may be felt for years to come for the most part small children think of violence and sudden death in terms of harmless fantasy three message beats on my day drag hate me i can't die i can't even see only those wartime experiences which deeply affect the child's sense of security are apt to do any permanent harm darling don't be frightened it's only an air raid drill remember we've had them before up there all around them the young sea wartime strains bringing old hatreds to the surface and releasing long pent-up impulses they feel the rising sense of anxiety and insecurity that drives their elders to such senseless outbreaks of savagery as race rioting and they are quick to absorb the new spirit of violence and recklessness and the conversion to all-out war effort of american industry and the american community has confronted many young people like their elders with a profound and unsettling change in their manner of living today us industry is employing hundreds of thousands of women who before the war were homemakers devoting their full time to their families and their family responsibilities and though this employment has brought new economic security to many homes to others it has brought domestic upheaval and disruption the door key kid whose working parents leave her to ship for herself at home is today a familiar wartime phenomenon [Music] lighting the fringes of many towns in crowded industrial areas are squalid trailer settlements inhabited by families who have broken up their homes to migrate to jobs in new war plants everywhere children of working parents are being left without adequate supervision or restraint freed from parental authority youngsters are venturing into new and unwholesome worlds experiments with new sensations such as the smoking of marijuana are tempting more and more teenage youngsters along dangerous paths for boys of this age just too young to be taking an active part in the war are all too often finding abnormal outlets for their wartime excitement the pedaling of obscene books a furtive and despicable occupation has become a lucrative sideline for unscrupulous shopkeepers in some high school neighborhoods for war stimulated adolescents are impressionable customers for this kind of cheap pornography [Music] more and more parents are facing the problem of maintaining discipline over teenage boys who for the first time are earning man's wages i suppose you're going out again tonight yeah so what jimmy you have no business staying out half the night coming home all liquored up look i'm getting sick and tired of being treated like a kid i'm making as much money as you are and i have a right to have a little fun in the eyes of his contemporaries and in his own eyes the youth who is in the big money is a man and feeling himself a man the teenage boy feels entitled to act as he believes older men do but all too often his behavior becomes a sorry reflection of the moral laxity which he has observed among adults of his own community too many adolescent girls even those in their earliest teens war is opening up avenues of unaccustomed excitement to them any man in uniform seems a hero and in towns crowded with footloose soldiers or sailors it is easy for them to get passing attention they could not normally expect but too many youngsters thinking of themselves as victory girls believe it is a part of patriotism to deny nothing to servicemen and the adolescent girl with experience far beyond her age is beginning like her brother to reject parental discipline betty do you realize what time it is oh mother don't be such an old fuddy daddy today the grim story of what war is doing to american youth is being recorded on the nation's police fluffers which show that since 1941 a 10 years downward trend of juvenile delinquency has been completely unstartlingly reversed and contributing to the gravity of the situation is the tendency of many municipal officials who regard socially protective measures as a luxury to sacrifice them for the sake of wartime economy mr mayor we still have to cut 25 000 off this budget it seems to me with all the other demands we've got to meet it's time to cut down on the children's court we've been paying out an awful lot of the taxpayers money for probation officers and child psychiatrists i say if we cut down on the children's court we'll have a crop of criminals in a few years that will cost us about 10 times what we're paying out now okay but the way to cut a budget is to cut it the nation's press backed by social workers and psychiatrists has been spotlighting the rising trend toward juvenile delinquency profoundly shocking to the public where the figures revealed more shocking still was a rise in reported cases of venereal disease among young people of 15 to 24 amounting in some communities to as much as 47 percent within a six-month period please have your daughter here to see the doctor tomorrow morning at nine o'clock children from every social and economic group are figuring in the nation's alarming statistics of crime among youth juvenile delinquency now is recognized as a major problem by the top law enforcement officials of the land of course mr hoover i realize that the fbi is a federal agency while the problem of juvenile delinquency is necessarily a matter of local law enforcement but our young people are getting out of hand everywhere well i know ms robinson every report i get from the field tells me how enormous the problem is we are doing all we can by working with the local agencies but no amount of law enforcement can solve a problem which goes straight to the home the solution isn't in arresting these youngsters it's up to the parents to give them a home life which will be free from the temptation to delinquency upon the home environment in which he grows up depends the character of every individual whether his family is rich or poor the child needs above all affection that can be depended upon to give him a sense of security of being wanted in the family group he needs recognition as a personality recognition of his childish achievements to give himself confidence doing regular tasks as part of the family group the child learns to accept responsibility and discipline and to understand the cooperative terms on which society exists and it is from the example of his parents that he acquires the moral and ethical standards by which his adult life will be governed it is when the family fails to meet these fundamental emotional needs of the child that society must take up the responsibility but when the courts are obliged to intervene young offenders must be given guidance and offered wholesome outlets for their impulses if they are to written to a useful place in the community now while you're on probation i want you to remember that what the court is here for is to help you goodbye these children they're not really bad most of them just products of rotten neighborhoods and bad family situations they get into trouble and then the burden is on the whole community even more important than agencies of correction are those whose aim is to help the child before he gets into trouble today enlightened communities maintain child guidance clinics where parents whose home problems have been multiplied by the war can find the help they and their children so urgently need more and more u.s towns and cities are recognizing the necessity for more day nurseries where mothers employed in war industries can leave their children to be cared for but most essential of all is the task of providing a constructive outlet for the energies of the young meeting their deep-seated need to feel that they are sharing in the war effort giving them a sense of participation in the affairs of the community and the nation by fostering intelligent and spontaneous discussions of current issues as has been mentioned before hitler has been in power since january 1933 and uh he has uh indoctrinated all of his ideas into the to the youth of germany and another thing i want to say and i think that you do need occupations for a while because i don't see how you can't have occupation you can't finish the war and then let the germans do whatever they want everywhere far-sighted citizens are urging that schools be thrown open after hours to serve the families of the neighborhood as social centers where youngsters can absorb themselves in hobbies of their own or participate in government projects like the making of airplane models for purposes of identification for the average youth is in no danger of becoming a delinquent so long as he has something to keep him busy some acceptable way of working off his normal exuberance and curiosity some way of ridding himself of the tension generated by war wide awake communities are doing their best to meet these natural needs of youth some have done it by providing a healthy outlet for the teenage boy's desire to show that he is as tough and daring as his older brother in the service ymcas church clubs boys clubs and settlement houses which in peacetime provide youngsters with organized and supervised recreation are today filling a more than ordinarily important place in the nation to keep youngsters away from dives and drinking places there is the dry night club organized and operated by the local young people themselves where they exist experience has shown that most youngsters prefer these clubs to more dubious hangouts in rural areas the 4-h clubs are filling the need of country boys and girls for constructive social activity and keeping them interested in america's biggest business agriculture such useful wartime projects as victory gardens have served the incidental purpose of giving the young a chance to make their contribution to the common effort while bringing them closer to the home and to their parents for the well-adjusted home built upon a foundation of affection and understanding is still the surest ball work for safeguarding the nation's youth but while it's fighting overseas for their homes and their country the nation itself can ill afford to endanger by neglect the future health and happiness of that younger generation for whom the war is being fought and to whom the post-war world belongs time marches on you