As a high school junior, I can wholeheartedly attest to Mike Nelson's
appraisal of individuality in high schools. Many of my friends have
experimented with different hair colors, piercings (including a lip piercing
which looks not only sick, but painful), styles of clothing, and taste in
music, books, and art. I don't know if we're going to make the sixties look
lame, because we really don't have a single common cause to rally around like
the sixties generation did (the Vietnam War), but if my high school is an
example, we are a very diverse group of individuals. Long live individuality!
-Ben Bjostad
"People have one thing in common-They are all different"-Robert Zend
In a message dated 04/24/97 15:35:37, [log in to unmask] (Mike
Nelson) wrote:
<<As a high school teacher I can tell you here and now that individuality
is coming back and very fast. The conformist ideal wich you so
eloquently illustrated has gone out with yesterdays news, maybe where
you live in your nice comfortable abode, the conformity option remains
steadfast, but here on the reservation and in many high schools accross
the nation young people are striving to set themselves apart from the
whole in ANY way they can.
A few illustrations of this fact . . . students no are piercing
themselves in various and sundry fashions, striving to find the unique
body part that has not been pierced yet. THey do not conform as a
whole, rather show their uniquness by the choice of body parts.
The youth strive to set themselves off physically from others, dying
hair-girls and boys, a huge wave of male coloration is rapant as I
write, choosing clothes, makeup, nail polish, anything that can set them
apart from their 'peers' and make them unique. If you have any doubt of
this look at all the 'Rave' fashions currently on many web pages and
telivision adds.
They constantly seek to rebel intellectually as well, through out and
out revolution, through Anarchy, to being the sole person who actually
'listens' to what an instructor says. Ten years ago, discipline in the
classroom went one way, through negative cycles, now it has dramatically
changed, and many youth are sitting up and paying attention, striving to
learn to make this what they consider a 'crappy' world into a better
place for themselves.
If you have any doubt to the validity of these statements, stop by any
local high school and find out. Like the movie said, this next
generation will make the sixties look like the seventies. . .
>>
|