Evening star., 1932-07-24
YOUTH ALL RIGHT,
EDUCATOR HOLDS
Declares Mature People Are
the Ones Who Have
Gone Crazy.
BY WALTER TRUMBALL.
ciol nicpotcb IN The Star


NEW YORK, July % (NANA)-
DR.. Henry W. A. Hanson, president Of
Gettysburg College. and preacher at
Harvard and the University of Penn
sylvania, says youth is all right. 1t is,
he asserts, the mature people who have
gone crazy This he believes Is partly
because we have a middle-aged class
left over from the war and still feeling
its effects. DR.. Hanson says the world
cannot get drunk on blood without hav-
ing its morning after.
There are no new problems" as
serted DR.. Hanson. Time has seen
them all before Youth has not changed
fundamentally. 1t is only its dress
which has changed. We see it clothed
in new phase and it looks unfamiliar.
But such fashions Of mind are as
ephemeral as most fashions.
The ideas Of YOUTH" continued the
man whose class at Roanoke produced
four college presidents. 'are changable
what they were yesterday, and they
will be something else tomorrow. But
the ideals Of youth remain pretty much
the same.
Boys Are Idealists.
"The average boy" insisted DR.. Han
son, 'is an idealist. His love for the
heroic needs only cause-something
to live for and to fight for. We call
him Indifferent. If he is Indifferent,
the fault is ours.
'Churchianity' does not appeal to
the youth of today. But youth re-
ever. The principles of Christianity
civ iy,1v or =
talking straight. seeing and thinking
straight, and living straight. In his
heart, youth tends toward all those
things.
"One of our main problems" said
Dr. Hanson, lis to get bit of color
into youths daily existence, to imbue
somehow the commonplace with an air
of adventure and romance. We never
use good sense in regard to youth. One
reason is that, as the years pass, we
forget youths viewpoint.
Life" explained DR.. Hanson, "can
almost be divided into three periods.
The first is the period of credulity,
when We believe everything. The sec
ond is the period Of skepticism, when
we believe nothing. The last is the
period of sane faith, when we are open
minded see things in an intelligent and
reasonable light, and weigh them calm
ly at their proper value That third
period always is ahead of youth, down
the road of time.
I'VE educators have our own farm
problem" said Dr. Hanson "A farmer
knows that land must be cleared and
soil properly prepared. Otherwise, he
cannot expect a crop. And farmer
plants seed intelligently. He knows,
for example, that he cannot plant buck
wheat and expect to reap oats. But
we don't always use sense in our plant
ing"
DO you mean" DR.. Hanson was
asked, that our present system of edu-
cation and our handling Of youth leave
a lot Of room for Improvement"
Reap What Is Sown.
Certainly" he answered. THE fun
damental idea of education has nothing
complicated about it. What you put
into the boy, you get out of the man.
You reap what you SOW"
IT," said DR.. Hanson, "you do not
give the boy the proper ideas and ideals
nobody but yourself to blame if he has
other ideas when he grows up. Youth
is not SO hard to handle. 1t demands
mainly that you be honest and fair.
None can detect hypocrisy or injustice
more quickly than youth"
DR.. Hanson doesn't entirely subscribe
to the theory that youth today is more
mature than youth few decades ago,
although he admits that present eco
nomic conditions tend to make young
men more serious and more conscious
of a certain responsibility. When he
was asked in which direction he thought
youth was going, he said:
Forward, of course. 1t is in the ad-
vancing ranks of youth that bright
hope for the future lies"
(Copyright, 1882. by the North American
Newspaper Alliance, 1nc)