Society refuses to consider
humans in the variety of their potential. From the Projection of
Education Statistics to the Year 2006, we learn that the total
private and public elementary and secondary school enrollment in
the USA will increase from 49.8 million in 1994 to 54.6 million.
Of the 49.8 million in 1994, only 2.5 million graduated high
school, and by the year 2006 the number will not exceed 3
million. Students themselves seem to be more aware of the
excessively long cycle of education than do the experts who
define its methods, contents, and goals. This creates a basis
for conflict that no one should underestimate.
Growing up in an environment of change and challenge is probably
rewarding in the long run. But things are not very simple. The
pressure to perform, peer pressure, and one's youthful instincts
to explore and ascertain can transform a student's life in an
instant. The distance between paradise (support and choice
without worry) and hell (the specter of disease, addiction,
abandonment, disappointment, lack of direction) is also shorter
than prior generations experienced it. Hundreds of TV channels,
the Internet, thousands of music titles (on CD, video, and radio
stations), the lure of sports, drugs, sex, and the hundreds of
fashion labels-choosing can be overwhelming. Literacy used to
organize everything neatly. If you were in love, Romeo and Juliet
was proper reading material.
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