NUMBER THREE

WINTER, 1965

EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION OF MODERN YOUTH

DIAIECTICS IN THE WORLD OF YOUTH

Characteristics af the new youth culture; its complex temper of lucidity and revolt

oriented toward a new future and demanding action: its nature, origin, questions

and possibilities.

THE PRESENT MORAL CRISIS AND YOUTH CULTURE

Today's crisis in morality as grounded in a three dimensional revolution

within culture that has engendered the new world of youth and the need

for new educational processes.

111

A PROJECT IN IMAGINAL EDUCATION FOR YOUTH

Methodological assumptions, curriculum and pedagogical techniques of the educational experiment conducted by the Ecumenical Institute; a typical class session.

IV

YOUTH IN THE URBAN­SUBURBAN CONIPLEX

A comparison of the youth culture set in the dynamics

of urbanization pre-dispositional images, responses to

the experimental encounter, restructuring

of imaginal capacities.

YOUTH'S CHALLENGE TO ClVILIZATION

Imperatives upon society as revealed in the Institute project

appropriating the youth culture in its urban context, trans

posing the human image, and reconstructing the

educational vision.

Copyright ° 1965 by the Ecumenical lnstitute

THE FIVE ESSAYS

in this issue of IMAGE were written by the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute not so much as a report but as an attempt to share the comprehensive insights gained from a two­year experimental project made possible by the Wieboldt Foundation and other interested friends in the hope that this document will be useful in many quarters of national life and as an expression of gratitude to those who so helpfully supported the experiment. Appreciation is also extended to those who gave their support to the ten years of practical research in the Southwest, Midwest, and Chicago that preceded and made possible the recent project.

EDUCATING THE

IMAGINATION OF

MODERN YOUTH

DIALECTICS IN THE WORLD OF YOUTH

STANDING IN THE MIDST of our times is a new creation: the world of youth. It is the home of the emerging adult who is suddenly a fascinating and engaging figure. Though not yet mature, not very wise, he is most serious and quite dissatisfied with things as they are. His new world is not merely an unhappy accident in a certain segment of the population: it is a global phenomenon, self­conscious and powerful. In South Korea it toppled a government In the United States it initiated almost singlehandedly the Negro s revolution for human dignity. In other moods it is capable of unbelievable violence and anti­social action. Whatever its origin, whatever its future, \~!e have on our hands a youth culture, world­wide in scope, cutting across ethnic and geographic lines and social and economic classes. It commands our attention.

Trying to explain away this new phenomenon, adults call it delinquency, anomie, the drop­out or teen­age problem. To dismiss it we look for youthful personality defects or particular problems in the home environment. Such efforts may well be sincere, but each presupposes an image of youthfulness that is the product of a prolonged deception. When we attempt to relate our definitions to reality, we discover adolescents are no longer where we put them. They have forged a culture of their own which is more a state of mind than a geographic spot or social condition. Few adults comprehend this. Its fabric is practically impenetrable to an outsider unacquainted with the particular signals by which adolescents share with one another an understanding of their situation and their aspirations for the future.

It is our aim to consider this world of youth- what it looks like, what sort of cultural backdrop formed it, what kinds of questions it poses and what may be done creatively to encounter its questions. This dissertation intends to navigate four excursions into this new world of youth to provide a means for apprehending the signals it is sending back into the world. Broadly considered, these excursions may be termed a depth analysis of the dialectics of youth culture. They reveal that young people today are grounded in lucidity; they are defined by revolt; their orientation is fundamentally toward the future and they are prejudiced toward action.

NOTHING IS MORE OBVIOUS today than the loss of youthful innocence. Tragic as it may sound to the less adventuresome, the truth is that not even the little child is afforded protection from the psychological and social pressures of twentieth century living. For an adolescent who has contemplated these pressures, innocence has fled completely. However angelic the face, however undeveloped the body, the eyes of our youth today are open to see. Their minds are capable of independent thought. They know too much for this age though they never appear as old as they actually are.

The point is that the new world of youth is grounded in lucidity. Whether twelve or twenty, he knows either directly or indirectly the harshness of human reality. Moreover, he has thought about it. It is simply not possible to speak of youth in our day without taking this fact into account. The feeling of invasion which every adult knows before the piercing glance of a teen­ager bears witness to this awareness.

Most adults respond to youthful lucidity with simple irritation. This response ignores or denies an obvious complexity. The emerging adult has been born into a time which is experiencing a deep global rupture. He has experienced a gradual, daily exposure to the way life "really" is. He has had little opportunity to be ignorant of the affairs of history. Thus he exhibits an arrogant assurance tangled with a cynical suspicion which he uses to probe into the lives of other people, institutions and traditions. Because he is lucid, he possesses a self-confidence while trusting nothing. This is the peculiar dialectic which is the foundation of the youthful intellect today.

It should therefore surprise no one that he often appears bewildered with everything-codes and values, structures and dreams. He is subject to doubt and left without innocence as a shield. Withdrawal from the realm of commitment becomes a life option for today's adolescent. This form of bewilderment, however, is only one of the prices he pays for his lucidity. He also faces, as a natural consequence of a curiosity turned cynical, the inner turmoil of self­depreciation. He seems hardly sure, despite all he knows, that he can trust himself. This internal tendency toward withdrawal and self­depreciation represents the enormous inner distance which he constantly travels because of his peculiar quality of consciousness. Unless we see this complexity within his assurance and suspicion, we can hardly appreciate the courage which is required of him.

Most observers do not see the emerging adult as a courageous being. We fail to see beyond what we call his "state of confusion." We do not see the potential for creativity in his strange, ambiguous mixture of arrogance, cynicism and bewilderment. Thus we may not be able to feel as he feels: human and glad of it, bewildered but not destroyed, sensitive because he intuits what a man must have for his journey in life.

BECAUSE THE VERY EXISTENCE of the young adult is grounded in this peculiar quality of lucidity, his refusal to be automatically governed in any final sense should be understood as a natural, albeit complicated, consequence. Instead this refusal has become a popular flag by which observers designate the so­called youth problem of moral decay and psychic turmoil. This problem is not that uncomplex.

Street corner gangs across the world are thought of as hoodlums in black leather jackets. Although most of them would not be seen in such attire, they are quite capable of inflicting meaningless pain and destruction. Whether they occupy the streets of Saigon or rove Chicago's West Side, their negation of the structures of society and of normal human relations is enigmatically rebellious. It is a "no" which society must consider, not merely because it represents a threat to efficiency and order, but because it implies something beyond the obvious that we need to hear. Juvenile delinquency is not merely a "social disease." As the well­known Broadway musical tried to teach us, it. is a life stance which affirms far more than it negates on the "West Side" of any city.

The youthful criminal is so universally caricatured we often forget that the world of adoles- cence is also defined by the image of sullen Holden Caulfields who are disgusted with the phoniness and lack of integrity they see about them. They know too much to be fooled by­ slothful attempts to round off the sharp edges of human existence. They feel too deeply the hurts and defeats of being human to be bothered with people who can only talk about feeling or who cannot feel at all. Although quiet and withdrawn, they too are defined by revolt, the way of negation. It looks like resignation but has its counterpart in uglier moods and suggests more than appearances reveal.

What is implied in this dialectic of rebellion and resignation is a refreshing concern for integrity and selfhood. Disruptive as it may be, the emerging adult seems intent upon doing his own reflecting. He intends to work out a sexual identity which is his, without too much attention to time­honored taboos. He is creating his own standards for educational and vocational significance, and he is forming new ethical models accordingly. If he is an African, he insists upon possessing his own national destiny with or without the approval of the world. If he is a school drop­out in Boston, he will not sit bored and lifeless in an English class where it is forgotten that he cannot read. He would rather rob banks, and he does. In any case he will be himself.

But this revolt is costly. He knows enough to be afraid of losing himself, of disintegrating into phoniness. Therefore his standards are high. Every time he lowers his guard, he cannot ignore the fact that something is lost, something priceless and irreplaceable and inwardly he mourns. He is engaged in an exhausting inner struggle which can quickly capture all his fascination. He thus faces the danger of becoming brittle, insensitive and therefore of defacing the consciousness which maintains him. Just as easily he can succumb to self­pity and lose the quality of revolt which characterizes him.

Others call him hostile, frustrated, out of touch with the real world. He knows better. For this inner tension, with all its concomitant dangers, also gives him the sense of sight he needs if he is to find his tomorrows.

HOWEVER THREATENED WE MAY BE by the adolescent's wealth of consciousness and his refusal to submit to the traditions of authority, we should not be astonished by the young adult's insistence upon the value of tomorrow. He lives in a time when institutions are crumbling and the imagination of man is being revitalized. Only the blind deny this. Of course he is callous and indifferent to the loyalties of his forebears. He does not live where they lived. He cannot respond to the signals of an ancient flame precisely because he is inundated by the prospects of an unimaginable future. To be sure, his loss of memory has a crippling effect, but it enables him to be open to tomorrow without prejudice-a power beyond the comprehension of sages who have many memories but little vision. His rootless residence in the present makes him appear shallow, but it gives him a mobility his fathers can only talk about.

To romanticize this orientation is, however, a serious mistake. Living toward the future is a diflficult posture to take before the present demands. Hence, it should not surprise us that the young adult is subject to extremes. On the one hand, he seems determined to take his stance without the help of past images on the conviction that they are fallen idols. Politically and economically he becomes a radical with extravagant fervor. On the other hand, he has a tendency to reach deep into the cultural memory to recover an image or values long since out of touch with the times and embarrasses more polished conservatives by becoming a reactionary with missionary zeal. In either case, it is necessary to remember that his aim is to move creatively into the future.

This interesting but unsettling way of relating to time and history sheds light on the peculiar quality of the adolescent's search for an identifying role in history. In contrast to the preceding generation, the emerging adult is not raising the question of meaning merely on the personal, subjective level. Therefore he is not undermined by the haunting recollection that he does not know who he is. His search for identity is turned outward into the realm of causes and commitments. Its orientation is the future. He sees the endless whirlpool of self­analysis and senses the danger of self-hypnosis. He seems to be saying that he wants to discover himself in action: that is, in the middle of history.

Perhaps this explains why he often looks so pitifully alone. His encounter with the future has turned him inside out. While most urban analysts are fretting about the need for space, he experiences an inner vacuum which simply leaves him drained. He does not want space, but fulfillment. The very power of this desire can turn him :in on himself. Confronted with the future, it is possible that he will see only his insignificance and unpreparedness or that he will be merely defensive. The horror of these two alternatives forces him to live with a solitude most would find unbearable.

Loneliness however is a two­way street. It can be a path into the future, and it may be that the emerging adult is serious about his vision. If he fulfills it, he may discover for us all a new sense of vocation and the possibility of a new and open destiny.

ANYONE WHO HAS LISTENED to the throbbing sensuality of today's popular music or watched the lonely but frantic bodies duplicate those rhythms in dance knows the adolescent of our time is neither immobile nor lethargic. He has energy-a great deal of it. Actualized, this energy is a camouflage which deceives most of his observers. He is not simply destructive, shallow and incapable of responsible thinking. Relative to the adult world in which he finds himself, neither is he overly constructive, serious and moral. He reads paperbacks: William Golding, James Baldwin and J. D. Salinger. He fights in gang wars, joins nonviolent protest movements, or goes to Bolivia with the Peace Corps. He is capable of creating a riot or a peaceful march on Washington. In any case he expresses a vitality which embarrasses older minded people and a concern for the significance, meaning and well­being of others which is practically unrecognizable to one who does not share his feeling. This adolescent does not know who he is, but he is clear that he is not defined by a category, that he and life itself are in constant motion. It is this that both frightens him and releases his energy.

It is therefore a grave injustice to the emerging adult to simplify his passion and neatly define his actions. Each is a highly complex synthesis of explosion and inertia. He explodes in a haste of motion, but even as he does, the force of the action is due in part to a practiced tendency to inertia, an unwillingness to veer from the defined path which channeled him to the present. He will, for example, tenaciously support a political or economic tradition with which he maintains a bare speaking acquaintance; but the very force of his clinging has its origin in this explosion of energy.

lt is this force that is propelling adolescents everywhere into political and economic commitments, action and protest movements and a host of local, national and international youth clubs.

The complexity of this explosion/inertia dialec­tic is difficult to comprehend. It is not an either­or proposition; neither is it a tool of analysis by which the young themselves can be categorized and grouped. Rather, at the base of every adolescent act there is this duality: the explosive presence of unactualized energy which throws him into a whole new world of ethical models, mores and concerns and the unyielding presence of a force which intends to continue in the familiar direction toward which it began.

This actional dialectic is necessarily in the minds of commentators who speak of rampant alienation and fearfulness among adolescents today or their talk is nonsense. Of course the youth culture is characterized by social and self­alienation. Indeed, the slow motion world of compromise and indecision often inhabited by the fathers of our time is hardly recognizable to our young. Instead, they waylay unsuspecting Harvard students on dark Cambridge nights and beat them senseless for no apparent reason. They trek to African and European work camps in droves for the same apparent lack of reason. They also die in the Peace Corps. They gain fame as singing sensations, individually or in folk singing groups. They leave college in mid­stream to work for ten dollars a week registering Negro voters in Mississippi. They haggle about fringe benefits and annuities with large corporations.

They are obviously alienated from things as they are and they are so clearly frightened of being themselves and of the future that they appear fragile or paralyzed.

But just as clearly, their sense of estrangement gives them a sensitivity and a power for realistic commitment not seen in the young for many years. Their state of alienation is also their capacity for creativity; their fearfulness is also the ring of authenticity that so many of us hear in their deeds and dedications.

In sum, the new youth is a subtly complex being. His emotional structure is a montage of sensitivity, cautiousness, yearning, loneliness, intensity, uncertainty, confusion and a vivid sense of being alive. The dialects that consciously or unconsciously govern his being and doing are also complicated and difficult to fathom. He is lucid, both arrogantly and cynically at the same time. His rebellion expresses itself in wild outbreaks and passive resignation. His orientation toward the world of tomorrow may take the form of either extreme radicalness or reactionary zealotry. He is a creature of action though this may show itself as wild explosiveness or frustrated inertia.

It is this wonderful frightening man of the future present in the youth culture of today whom we must acknowledge, receive, nurture and learn from if we who are older would ourselves really live and if the human adventure is to move creatively onward. This imperative equally faces the nation, the city, the private and public welfare organizations, the church, the schools, and the home.

SPEAKERS BUREAU

Faculty members of the Ecumenical Institute are often asked to speak to and conduct programs for groups across the nation. Besides the education of the imagination project for youth described in this issue of IMAGE, study has been undertaken and implemented through courses on family life, theological education of the laity, the Negro crusade for human dignity and other social, cultural and theological issues. Requests for speakers should be addressed to the Institute's Speakers Bureau.

EDUCATING THE

IMAGINATION OF

MODERN YOUTH _

THE PRESENT MORAL CRISIS AND YOUTH CULTURE

IN COMING TO UNDERSTAND its new offspring-this dramatic world of the emerging generation, society is involved in two imperatives. It must clearly appreciate how this strange creature came to be, and it must find adequate ways of ministering to its unique needs. The origins of the youth culture are to be found in the radical quality of the cultural upheaval of the twentieth century. The radicalness here stressed pertains first of all to scope. For the first time in history, an upheaval in consciousness is literally world­wide. Every continent, every people, every individual, every stage of life is affected. More importantly, the present revolution is radical in depth: it penetrates beneath the economic and political dimensions of social life to the very wellsprings of human living itself. Concretely, the perturbation in civilization now at hand is created by nothing less than the convergence of three revolutions: the scientific, which is altering the common rational sense of civilization; the urban, which is changing the very life style of mankind; and the secular, which is everywhere turning about man's intuitions of humanness. The youth culture is the child of this universal turmoil in the spirit of man.

THE COMMON WISDOM OF A PEOPLE is anchored in their "reality" assumptions. Today we are experiencing as never before an upending of our model of the universe and of what it means to know it. The universe of Dr. Einstein has replaced that of Sir Isaac Newton. Such post­modern concepts as the role of the observer in the experience of reality; as the "expandingness" of the universe and the dissipation of energy; as the relational quality of ­substance; as the significance of models in determining what happens in nature and history, have altered what men have meant by common sense or the reasonable. The cosmological revolution has totally changed the whole environment of man. To

designate this good or bad, right or wrong, is to miss the crucial issue and to abstract oneself from what is. It is a verity awarded to our time.

The second major force in the alteration of culture today is the technological or the urban revolution. Since the form of human settlement molds the practical life style of a people, the emerging of the entire world into a single polls has profound implications. The new city of our time is, in the first instance, a state of mind. This cosmopolis is demanding different life postures which carry with them a unique sensibility of space, time, human relatedness and community. The power of the rural mind­set, with its rustic pictures of time and space, its stable patterns of social intercourse and its parochial concepts of historical grounding, has been exhausted. Rising in its place is the urban mentality. The simplicity of natural rhythms has been replaced by the complexity of historical variation. Life is no longer intimate and provincial but anonymous and comprehensive. Perpetual and rapid social change is redefining all that was meant by stability. In the urban world, the very roots of life are being transferred from the memories of the past to the possibilities of the future. Once again this upheaval in human settlement and the different life styles it engenders are component parts of the actuality given to our time.

There is yet the third dimension of the cultural revolution. This is a universal and crucial alteration in what might be termed the "mood" of man. Man has become, in new depth and with increased intensity, a self­reflective or self­conscious being. Perhaps "intentionality" is the most definitive characteristic of the new mood. Whatever its source, there is a foundational resolve in post­modern man to take nothing on the authority of the past. Man today no longer searches for eternal forms or patterns to reduplicate. Instead, he forges temporal models out of the signals of the times by means of which he intentionally shapes the future. To do this he has been forced consciously and unconsciously to radically reinterpret old life stories or to create new ones. A revolution in the symbols, myths and rites through which man is ultimately present to his life and times is in progress. Call this, if you will, a revolution in the natural religious attitude of man. lt has indescribable consequences for every historical faith, 'secular" or "religious," and for mankind at large. Again, whether we like it or not, this is a fact conferred upon our age.

WHAT THESE THREE REVOLUTIONS mean for civilization's understanding of itself is staggering. Man does not live by models of his external environment alone, but also by deep personal pictures or images of himself. Although the external cannot be disjoined from the personal, they are not the same. He forges his creative responses out of images of who he is within the models of his environment. A change in his models of the universe demands a change in his understanding of man. Thus the current revolutions have occasioned an even deeper crisis centering in a failure of past human images. Thc very sense of what it means to be a human being is today undergoing startling and painful transmutation in the every day arena of deciding, judging and responding of every man. Thus, those sensitive bodies which reshape the structures that minister to the well­being of humanity are finding that a necessary part of their every effort to retool. The fruition of it all will set post­modern man apart from the men of all previous ages.

Herein is the clue to the "age of anxiety. The imagination of man is caught in the tension between the no­longer and the not­yet. The sensitive individual today knows he is in this "between­the-times" spirit situation. We sense that our practical personal universes of meaning are inadequate; yet we somehow cannot let go of them. On the other hand we intuit that a new context for a contributing life is imminent, yet we cannot quite envision it or perhaps come to terms with it. The resulting unrest and disengagement is continually present whether we are conscious of it or not. This interim state is also the underground source of the widespread and acute social malaise of today. The great social problems and concerns are signals from the depths. They are myriad in number and almost infinite in variety: organized crime, mental health, international tensions, general delinquency, feminine anxiety, racial revolutions, problems of illiteracy, distribution of goods and old age, to list but a few.

What we are experiencing today is a crisis in morality. The moral imagination of humanity is in transition. Former structures of social relations and previous patterns of individual behavior are being remodeled. Established vocations, sexual and communal mores, accepted theories of learning, education and maturity, long­cherished myths and rituals, time­honored economic, political and social machineries are all undergoing reconstruction. Those who speak of a loss of moral fibre in our time maintain that it is because we have departed from accepted, ideal value systems or from fixed codes of conduct that ought now to be re­embraced. This diagnosis does not pierce to the depths of the dilemma where the substratum of the moral life is being refashioned. The very concept of rules and ideals is being questioned as an adequate way of understanding the moral activity of man. When fundamental metaphors by which man images himself in the world are altered, all that is meant by integrity, social responsibility, moral authenticity, vocation and creativity is also transformed. Because the adult does not live in a clear, practical universe, the crucial and painful task of civilization today is that of forging new metaphors for the moral life.

THIS CONTEXT ENABBES US to look afresh at the dilemma of post­modern youth. He is caught in the same web as the adult but there is a qualitative distinction, precisely because he is the emerging generation. All the common physical signs of adolescence are evident but there is a difference today. Until now adolescence was considered an interim period during which the young were relatively protected. It was a time for them gradually and somewhat gracefully to enter into and appropriate the adult world. Society, through well­established channels, presented him with a comprehensive model of the universe and gave him the necessary tools to deal with it. Most important, it offered him a quite clear image of what it meant to be human in that world. Today there is little time for such development. Adulthood comes frighteningly early, all at once and with dramatic suddenness. Furthermore, youth enters the adult world only to discover that the adult offers him a picture of a world that is no longer there. To put it more precisely, he is given an image of himself in the world that does not correspond to his own intuitions. These intuitions have been early and sharply sensitized by broad life­experiences through the powerful magic of contemporary mass media and through his own direct, comprehensive and intense exposure to life.

The response of youth to this trauma has been to create a world of its own, the inner dialectic of which was described in the previous article. In a strangely common milieu, youth is searching after and acting out its destiny. The universal quality in it cuts sharply across the ethnic, economic, racial and cultural boundaries so honored by adults. Differences there surely are. But the particularities are secondary to the commonality. As in no previous historical moment, youth seems to have a tightly knit society of its own, including language, categories, symbols, codes, rites and systems of accountability. This must not be understood as a retreat from reality into fancy. Nor must it be interpreted simply as maladjustment. Sickness and irresponsibility no doubt are present; but underneath, young people are creatively dealing with the situation rendered them. Given no world, they have been forced, and have dared to venture. Indeed, they may be performing, through their sometimes weird efforts, a service for civilization. What the adult has not done for them, they may be doing for the adult.

The establishment of the youth culture has not eliminated the problems of youth. Indeed, they are multiplied and intensified. The important thing is that their needs are different. The emerging adult does not require longer periods of incubation. Rather he is in want of distinct rites of passage which cleanly graduate him at an earlier age to some kind of adult status. He does not need further protection from the realities and perplexities of our age, but realistic avenues through which he can manifest his conviction and courage. He does not need more second hand, tidy answers to life's questions or codes of morality out of yesterday, but sharp tools to formulate his own wisdom and make his own decisions of building tomorrow. Young people, with all their accumulated lucidity and energy, their concerns and their propensity to action, need to be released. They must have lively and adequate images of what it means to be a human being in the new world about them. We who are older must help them find and create these images. A new direction in education is dramatically indicated.

THE HUMAN ENTERPRISE of education is the keystone in the civilizing adventure. Social explosions vitally effect the educational foundations of a people. Since World War II and especially since Sputnik I, education in America has received a privileged priority in public attention so that now it has become one of our largest social activities. These very circumstances, however, constitute a temptation to think of our educational task simply in quantitative terms. Certainly our present efforts must be vastly expanded in a variety of directions. But this must not blind us to a qualitative defect in our educational processes. If our previous analysis is correct, the world of youth demands that we now recognize another dimension of education relatively unnoticed hitherto. This is the existing gap between formal learning and the ability of the student to relate our cultural knowledge to a significant and creative existence in the post­modern world. Our youth suffer deeply from this lack in the education of the imagination. Herein is the crucial challenge to present day society which is disclosed by the youth culture emerging from the moral crisis occasioned by the current cultural revolutions.

The human imagination is involved in all forms of thinking and learning. The term imaginal education is used here in the special way that has already been implied. It aims at enabling the student to discover and create images of himself in his real world which will motivate him to free, intelligent, responsible involvement in civilization. Images are the bridges between abstract ideas and the specific deed. They both illuminate the practical situation and impel to concrete action. Images offer the deep, personal permission to be and to do. They are the guides, forces and critics of our sense of personal integrity and vocational accomplishment. In sum, imaginal education intends to awaken, expand and furbish the image­making capacity in man and thereby to release him into effective participation in society.

This must not be seen mistakenly as an exclusive problem of the individual. It is a major social issue of far­reaching consequences. A nation, a city, must decide whether it can afford to have a citizenry illequipped to engage creatively in the social task of building new structures for human existence and social well­being. This is not to mention the social cripples who are a direct liability to society, not in the first instance because they have been subject to sub­normal environment, childhood warping or innate weakness of will, but because they have inadequate self­pictures and fail to organize their personal and social experiences significantly.

If this insistence is correct, it is obvious that a decision must be made as to whether or not the formal educational system should be responsible for imaginal education. If the answer is yes, radical changes in curricula, pedagogy and organizational form must follow. And it is not only the formal and public aspects of society's educational endeavor that are called to account by the demand for images. Various kinds of social agencies, character building institutions, independent welfare societies, religious bodies and private schools all have a responsibility for the educational task and all must face this need for relevant and effective means of educating the imagination of post­modern man. Since no simple, self­evident answers are at hand, a variety of novel experimental ventures must be created and fostered.

What is needed is a reconstruction of life attitudes, a re­education of the imagination. Whatever this process be called-motivational, contextual, attitudinal or imaginal education-a new dimension must be added to our concept of learning.

It is true that no era has equaled our own in concern for equipping the rising generation quantitatively and in quality for its responsibility in civilization. Almost frantic efforts are being made to cope with the number to be educated and the kinds of education to give them-vocational training, remedial instruction, social readjustment and pre­kindergarten schooling. But educators almost unanimously report a common frustration. There is a quality in the learning process which is missing. More and better buildings, more and better counseling, more and better facilities and more and better teachers do not answer the desperate need for young people to become full persons, total human beings responsible for society's welfare. Full and constructive participation in civilization requires that the individual understand his significance and his place in life. It requires that his mental image of himself be one of worth in his humanness with all its strengths and weaknesses. A society cannot long

endure without its people appreciating their genuine humanness as a gift to bestow upon it.

Education which does not take this vital factor into account, which does not provide its students with such an essential self­understanding, is in danger of producing agents motivated by self­interest only. Such will not become a fruit of progress but a thorn in its side. This could well be the most crucial issue of our time.

EDUCATING THE

IMAGINATION OF

MODERN YOUTH

THE FUNDAMENTAL NEED of post­modern youth is for self images relevant to the actual world in which he lives and adequate to organize meaningfully his personal and communal experience so that he can appropriate a sense of significance in involving himself in the human drama of civilization. Such has been the contention of the previous essays. In short, it is the need for imaginal education.

The Ecumenical Institute in Chicago, in response to this need and with the encouragement of a pioneering youth development organization, launched an experimental project in imaginal education for the youth of greater Chicago in the spring of 1963.

The faculty of the Institute had been probing the mind­set of the rising generation of the post­modern world for more than ten years. During this effort at diagnosis, a series of specialized curricula and corresponding teaching methodologies and materials were designed for the task of motivational training. Experimental schools were designed to test and develop these courses and teaching devices. On completion of the pilot stage, financial assistance from an interested foundation enabled the extension and expansion of the experiment. To date it has involved three phases covering a period of eighteen months. Space limits description of the experiment to the barest of skeletons. What follows, therefore, is a quick and broad presentation of the composition of the schools, the structure of the curricula,

the methodological assumptions and the dynamics of a class session fo110wed by a broad evaluation comment.

The Composition of the Schools

THE PROJECT INVOLVED over 500 participants in some twenty­eight schools and was designed to include a cross­section of youth representing the distinctive segments of urbanized society. The locale was greater metropolitan Chicago. A description of the schools demands at least a rudimentary picture of this city's socio­economic­political posture viewed through a typology that may be applicable also to other super­cities across the nation.

Such a typology sees the cosmopolis of Chicago as composed of four distinct cities. The first is what is usually called the inner city, comprising economically underprivileged, politically impotent and culturally deprived citizens. These inhabitants, with their plans and dreams of fleeing the 'city" to bourgeois suburbia, are consciously or unconsciously aiming for middle class status. The second city in this typology is located in the neighborhoods or suburbs immediately/ adjacent to Chicago proper -on either side of the city boundary. The second city people are rather unreflective, solidly middle class conservatives, actually or by attitude in flight from the city but having not yet quite "arrived." Those who have "arrived" are to be found even further out in the third city. These intellectual and/or social sophisticates are predominately lucid and cynical in either a creative or uncreative sense.

Aware that old patterns are gone, they respond by desperately trying to maintain the past or by uncertainly reaching toward an unsure future. The fourth city may appear anywhere geographically; its citizens are those who realize in one depth or another that the rural mind­set has been replaced by the urban. By actually living in the inner city or by their attitudinal stance, they have returned to the city. (Some may never have left physically.) These people no longer understand the city as their enemy but as a mode of present and potential fulfillment. The participants in the Institute's project represent all four of these cities although they were predominantly from the first two.

Within the inner city, the schools were established in sections with distinct characteristics, each playing a unique role in the emergence of the new Chicago: the near North, near South and near West. Suburban young people were recruited from north and northwestern communities and from the west and southwestern suburbs. Registrants were of high school age, either attending school or having dropped out recently. Ages ranged from fourteen to twenty years with sixteen as the median. Some schools were composed of all male registrants, others of about an equal number of each sex.

The inner city participants were mostly from low income, unstable families living in multiple housing units. Most of the Negro groups were of sectarian Protestant backgrounds representing the rural southern Negro mind­set. Some were street organizations of police repute in which all members were high school drop outs and socially classified as delinquents. Others were individually recruited from public housing developments or from limited geographical areas. Some were attending high school but with little hope or desire for further education. Two inner city groups were Spanish speaking "gangs," one Mexican and one Puerto Rican, both Roman Catholic, from deprived homes and composed largely of drop outs. A dramatic exception to this pattern was a Negro group from middle or upper middle income families. They were from established, Protestant, bourgeois homes not unlike the white suburban youth, all attending school with clear plans of college in the future.

Among the suburban youth, the groups comprised only white participants who were prone to mirror one another and who were almost totally Protestant in religious background. The majority of one group attended parochial school; the others were public school students. All were attending high school with future college education almost taken for granted. Their families were predominantly of middle and upper middle income brackets. They reflected the mentality associated with suburbia of intellectual sophistication in the use of abstract categories.

THE EXPERIMENTAL CURRICULUM used in the project was developed over a period of years in working with youth. It is not a structured body of knowledge to be transmitted. It works against all suffocating dogmatism and every confining parochialism. It is concerned with globality, with openness and with engagement. Open­ended discussion is not only the form but the very substance of motivational learning. The concern is not, in the first instance, what the student thinks but rather that he thinks, that he does his own thinking and that he does it imaginatively or creatively. The curriculum intends to expand the concept of environment, to release from the past and open toward the future and, finally, to elicit a sense of appreciation of living and of vocation to society.

There is, of course, rational order in the arrangement of the curriculum. It does not consist of a series of unrelated bull sessions in which issues are discussed at random leaving the basic problem of self­image untouched. Quite the contrary. It points the student directly toward the broad areas of life with which any authentic effort to forge a self­image must grapple, soon or late, and about which one must make decisions. Indeed, the curriculum intends to designate the basic categories of humanness under which all of the problems and issues of the person and society can be subsumed in principle. This is not a gateway into the abstract, however. The curriculum is designed to force the student into awareness of his immediate external environment and his actual inward state of being. This must be the genius of any curriculum aimed at the education of the imagination.

The charts give the broad outlines of the basic curriculum. It is organized into two intimately related core courses. One begins with the self in its movement toward the world. The other reverses the process, moving from the world to its impingement upon the self. These two approaches cannot be separated. The faculty of the Ecumenical Institute is convinced that both journeys have to be made in order to arrive at an understanding of selfhood. Advanced courses in the curriculum build directly on one or the other of these foundational studies.

Both of the core courses are structured into three major divisions representing the areas appropriate to each. In the first course where the intention is to direct the reflection of the students to the matter of being a self­conscious individual, the three issues are: the problem of relating to the limits of life; the problem of grasping the possibilities of human existence; and the problem of freely and intelligently creating our responses to the given life situations. In each case, it is a matter of formulating images of the self as it is involved in the world.

The second basic course confronts the student with the real world of post­modernity in which he lives. This is approached by dealing with the three revolutions in culture which constitute the course's major divisions. The first is the scientific revolution and the new common sense of post­modernity; the second is the revolution in human settlement and the replacement of the rural mind­set with the urban mentality; the third is the revolution in the secular symbolization of life and its accompanying alteration in self­consciousness. In this case, the discussions focus upon what these alterations in the external environment of man mean for the image of humanness in our time.

The material substance of the curricula is composed of art forms. This is particularly the case in the initial course which deals with the self in relation to his environment. In the second core course, which approaches the imagination with the way in which the understanding of the environment impinges upon the self, essays on the revolutions in science, human settlement and symbols are used along with illustrative pieces of art. In one sense these essays also are art forms or, at least, products of the imagination. They are intended to be conversation pieces, and hence are chosen not only on the basis of their accurate objective content but also in the light of their artful quality.

Some Methodological Assumptions

PERHAPS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than the content in motivational education are the teaching procedures and methodological assumptions. The meaning of personal, existential images of humanness for creative living in society has been discussed in an earlier essay. in brief, man requires not only a model of his external environment but a picture of himself in relation to that model. To possess the concept of an expanding universe, for instance, is not sufficient. In such a universe, man must image himself as an open­ended, future­oriented being in order to respond adequately and creatively in that universe. The rudimentary concept of the project is therefore antithetical to any ideal personality patterns that can be depicted readily. Rather, the aim is to "set off explosions" in the inner universe of the participants that reverberate throughout the micro­and macrocosm of their being to release their imaging power, to awaken images of significant selfhood, to elicit the courage for creative existence, to provide the tools for free critical reflection, to develop concern for responsible participation in society and the civilizing process. That images perform a key and pivotal role at the core of one's being is the first of five interwoven presuppositions underlying the pedagogical methodology of the project. The four other assumptions to be clarified involve the utility of art forms, the function of serious conversation, the place of direct tutorial techniques and the significance of ritual.

In regard to the second presupposition, the utility of art forms, the teaching methods of the project are grounded in the assumption that art is not only the creature of the imagination but also its midwife. In the final analysis no one can or does live without it. Art is deeply human. Plato to the contrary, social existence itself is dependent upon art. It is in no wise simply a distraction for the leisure class at the end of an era. Actually, its most crucial contribution is made at the beginning of a new age such as the present moment. The art of a people is the means whereby old and inadequate common images are challenged. It is the catalyst through which fresh, useful pictures of existence are forged. Works of art both mirror and create human experience. They interpret the external times and disclose the unnoticed internal states of being. They enable one to be present to, to comprehend and to act out his deepest experience. Man is addressed by art not because it communicates what he does not know but because it occasions an awakening of what he does know in a latent, incomplete and disguised fashion. In brief, art induces the sober dialogue of the self with the self that inaugurates or releases selfhood.

Because of this power to occasion and inform our self­reflection, art has indispensable value for the education of the imagination. Art itself, however, is in need of an ally in fulfilling this function. This brings us to our third presupposition the function of serious conversation.

In give­and­take discourse, the manner in which the art object addresses the individual is clarified, empowered and expanded. The very articulation of our impressions does something to them. A person is especially compelled by his expressed images. Putting them into words before the hearing of the neighbor gives added force to the inner reflection. The neighbor's reaction to them, negative or positive, adds yet another quality. For serious conversation about art is not about the art object as such hut about the way it addresses us as persons. And in the trialogue between the art piece and the self, between the object and the other, and between the self and the other, about how art speaks to each, further self­awareness and knowledge emerges and to the self comes still more clarity and enlargement.

The role of the tutor or discussion leader is therefore a major methodological consideration. The manner in which the leader begins a session, presents the art form, conducts the discussion and closes the session is crucial. His role is in no way a passive one. In the art form discussion, the leader's concern is to tap the imaginal powers of the particular group and the individuals within it. He insists that the participants listen not only to each other, but also to themselves. He keeps the discussion active by constantly rephrasing the central issue, by raising new or related questions and by probing a particular response in order to clarify for the individual and the group its implications or inconsistencies. He listens sensitively to what is said, but he is also prepared to make extended comments about the relevance of the art form to his own experience if this seems effective for his purpose. He is not impressed with random or clever comments. His task is not simply to affirm the participants or serve as an audience for them. He leads the discussions and he participates in them. This direct method as over against the indirect forces the student not into any predetermined mold but to dare to do his own active, creative thinking.

FINALLY, THE EMPLOYMENT of ritual is a studied method interwoven with the other techniques employed. Man in the 20th century is discovering anew and at unprecedented depths that he is a symbol­making animal. This is to say that the use of symbol is quite a natural and essential part of humanness. Only through the mediation of symbols is he able to self­consciously grasp himself in relation to the other­than­the­self. Rites are dramatic symbols. In ritual, man dramatizes the way he understands himself to be. The symbolic activity, therefore, is an indispensable ally in the enterprise of motivational education. The rites, to be mentioned later, are familiar to the students and deal with life issues which are, however covertly, in no wise alien to their experience. Indeed, the liturgies employed quite obviously enable them to recollect and stand to attention before the images which transport their life meanings.

THE SCENE IS ONE of the twenty­eight schools organized by the Ecumenical Institute to carry out its experimental project in the imaginal education of youth. One of the weekly evening sessions, numbering six or eight for a single course, is about to begin. Each week the group will be together for an hour and a half to two hours in this community center, YNICA, church, street clubhouse or other facility located in the area from which the students are recruited. Whether in this locale or another, the procedures in each school are largely identical.

From the outset, a participating observer is aware that the sessions are highly structured and compact. The teaching situation requires a sizable room equipped with chalkboard and a large seminar table, large enough to accommodate twenty students which is the average registration in the schools. Special attention is given to promptness and orderliness. The serious academic tone of the setting seems to overcome the students' long conditioning to regard any intense study with little seriousness. The atmosphere created by the attitude of the instructor is that of low pressure sobermindedness. He assumes the role of teacher with rigorous intentionality. Just as conscientiously, he treats the young people as adults in expecting them to do their own thinking, in respecting their knowledge of life and in acknowledging their right to make their own decisions. This directness, seriousness, and orderliness gains the respect of the students. Anticipated discipline problems are thereby solved, contributing to an atmosphere congenial to creative learning. No exceptions are made in these matters for any of the groups, inner city or suburban.

The format of each nightly session is systematically the same. The class begins ritualistically, setting the mood for the work of the evening, dramatizing the fact that something significant is at hand and confronting both group and individual with that dimension of self understanding appropriate to the present moment in the course. The rites differ from week to week: one involves bodily movement in unison like the rhythmic snapping of the fingers borrowed from the musical 'West Side Story." Another is a choral reading of a popular comic strip such as "Peanuts." Following the rite, there is a brief introductory statement by the instructor, re­establishing an inclusive picture of the entire course, reviewing the previous session and indicating the area and direction of the present study.

After this prologue, the group is exposed to a carefully selected contemporary art piece: a painting, a cartoon, selections of poetry, a variety of folk songs, a motion picture. The particular choice is determined in the light of the issues scheduled for reflection by the curriculum. The class first shares with one another their immediate observations and

impressions of the art form. Every comment is received as important and each student is pressed gently but firmly to participate. It is important that each hear his own voice as well as his neighbor's involved in serious dialogue. Even more, the directed conversation intends to sharpen the capacity of each student really to see what he sees, to trust his own impressions as significant and to develop confidence in verbalizing in the presence of others. Still further, this procedure is designed to provide a body of data created by, and objective to, the whole group. This is necessary for the next step. Thirty minutes to an hour have elapsed.

Sometimes a break with light refreshments is inserted at this point while informal but purposeful conversation is encouraged. The pause relieves pressure and directs attention to everyday life situations in preparation for the focal part of the evening now to begin. In brief, this is a discussion centering upon the manner in which the art form has addressed the student personally, what it said to him about the way life is, about his own life. The aim is to prompt in him the kind of involved detachment that enables him to look afresh at issues and problems in both his individual life and in the world. The teacher presses the group toward critical reflection upon their own insights: to become aware of their own operating pictures and to evaluate these over against one another while determining what fresh pictures have been introduced or have become possible for them.

The session closes with a lecturette by the teacher. The responsibility here is not to impart information. Instead, it first recapitulates the insights of the evening and draws them together in an intelligible pattern. Secondly, it places the youth in the historical setting of the post­modern world. Finally, it sets the question of the forthcoming week and relates it to their present insights. The evening closes with a ritual to indicate that time has passed confronting each student with the necessity of making a decision about the significance of that time for his own life.

EVALUATING THIS KIND of project is not a simple affair. Quite beyond the heavy task of assembling data and drawing general conclusions, its very nature makes appraisal difficult for it deals with a dimension of selfhood that is not easily accessible to objective observation. Indeed its most rudimentary concept is almost antithetical to the very idea of objective criteria. An explosion in the inner universe of an individual breaking him loose for significant and creative historical existence is not the kind of happening that easily discloses itself before predetermined yardsticks. Moreover the evaluation of the correlative purposes of the pilot project -the testing of specially devised curricula, methods, and implements-suffers from like difficulties, precisely because it is dependent upon the appraisal of the primary intent.

After all this has been said, some rational criteria for appraisal are required. The faculty prepared a four­fold series of questions to guide their observations relative to the effectiveness of the project. The first series had to do with the broad interest or mood of the students in response to each session and the course as a whole. The second series was directed toward their responses to the particular life issues introduced into the discussions by the curriculum through the art forms. The third related to growth in ability to verbalize experience, to critically reflect and to relate creatively to a group engaged in serious dialogue. Lastly, categories were formulated for observing whether and to what degree the participants introduced new or different images into their conversation that might indicate alterations in the appropriation of themselves in their environment.

A subsequent article will deal with these criteria in an effort to compare in detail the inner city and suburban mind­set. Only the most general impression of interest and effect can be indicated here. First of all, the enthusiasm manifested was beyond the expectations of the staff. It was even more surprising to seasoned observers who had long worked with inner city youth. All of the groups and most of the individuals reacted to the courses with genuine excitement. The surprising attendance record alone is evidence of this. In spite of the fact that no external pressures were available to force attendance, almost none of the groups suffered from irregular participation. The over­all average was a little more than 90% at each session in spite of many deterring factors, such as school responsibilities, family problems, police matters, street fights, the weather and so on. Furthermore, eagerness to participate grew as the courses developed and, in most cases, there remained throughout a distinct air of enthusiasm.

Secondly, whatever the differences between the inner city and outer city youth, the series called forth in each a latent tendency to reflect seriously about life. It elicited from them their hidden but genuine life questions. Often they stunned the faculty with the depth of their desire and apparent need to do just this. Their concern to engage in serious dialogue, and to think through issues was no less surprising. Evidence of increasing self assurance in ability to discuss fruitfully among themselves was present plentifully in both groups. Finally, the conversation of all participants began to indicate, as the courses developed, that new images and models had been created in their memories. Indeed inner city and suburban alike were excited and intrigued by their own newly discovered, imaginative powers.

All of this serves to confirm first of all the asgumption that the youth culture of today cuts across all ethnic, geographic, and social lines. Both groups, inner city and suburban, evidenced almost equal qualities of seriousness, underlying openness, anxiety about the future and revolt against unquestioned tradition. Both were also clearly aware of being different from the youth of other periods or at least of somehow being in a uniquely different historical climate. Secondly, the courses underline the suspicion that we sell short or write off too quickly the youth of today and its deep and serious concerns about life and society. Perhaps what is disclosed is the adult's own basic fear and lack of prowess in these areas of existence. A third significant conclusion has to do with false interpretations of the inner city youth. One of the outstanding sociologists of the nation who observed the Institute's project commented:

"Off hand it would not appear that street gangs from the slums would have much interest in such problems, but that is a middle class stereotype that the Ecumenical Institute staff has brushed aside. These young people have been reached in ways that others have either not thought of trying, or would be inclined to dismiss as being too demanding of young people's motivations and talents. This is simply not so. We of this Project know of at least four street gangs and two other youth groups whose interests were captured by the Ecumenical Institute course material, who attended eight to twelve class sessions, and who carried away from these sessions the notion that they had undergone a meaningful educational experience."

T H E H U M A N

I M A G I N AT I O N

THE HUMAN MIND is still reverberating from the shock of its sudden transition from animal to human status. The terrors of the jungle still stalk our dreams and shape our international relations. Yet, the vibrations persist. too, of that dark night in the rain forest when instinct perceived, as in a mirror, its own shadowy reflection-and the imagination was born.

THE HISTORY OF MAN from that moment forward is the evolution of an incredibly complex network of mental images; it is the gradual spinning of a fragile, gossamer tracery out of which can emerge a Ninth Symphony or a mathematical formula capable of releasing the energy of millions of suns.

AT FIRST, as the mind began to discover its own alchemy, it sensed a power within itself that could apprehend forms-stable forms that could withstand the crumbling impermanence of all matter. These forms, men reasoned, must belong to a transcendent world; yet the imagination could call them down into history, where they could serve as patterns in molding the creations of culture.

BY THE MIDDLE AGES, the transcendent world was felt to be mirrored completely in the earthly reality; nature was an open book in which all might read the careful tracings of a divine finger. During these centuries. the imagination was understood to be that capacity in man which could recognize figurae -- mystical allegorical correspondences between the divine and human worlds, connections that related the upward rise of smoke to the heavens to the soaring yearning of the human soul for the vision of God.

WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT, a new epistemology asserted that secondary qualities (color, sound, smell) are not in nature; they are the mental reactions of the percipient to internal bodily movements. Hume's conclusion was that pure sense­perception clues not provide the data for its own interpretation. Thus, the meaningful order of nature which man had always grasped was now seen to be something that is not out there in the raw external world but an inner construction of consciousness, a Kantian form of "intuition.''

COLERIDGE, following Kant, took seriously the implications of a reality that is primarily a mental construction and divided the imagination into two functions: a passive primary imagination which allows man to be grasped by numinous signals and flickerings from the outside world, and a creative secondary imagination which shapes these signals into a meaningful interpretation. It is in the universe created by the secondary imagination that man actually lives; it is in this universe that, as Einstein put it, the images of time, of space, of death, and of the future really govern man's historical journey.

POST­MODERN MAN IS clear today that his only universe, his only reality is this gigantic web of mentally­fabricated images. There is no reality beyond this. There never has been; there never will be. The only way to change reality is to change this network of images. Indeed, all future evolution on this planet must begin with the deliberate, self­conscious alteration of the mental universe. And this alteration is already underway: from the new image­webs linking man's continuity with the ancient, glittering races of the earth to the dazzling threads reaching out into the future space of endless, colliding galaxies.

William R. Cozart, for the

Corporate Office of the

Ecumenical Institute

T H E EX P E R I M E N TA L C U R R I C U L U M

A study in the image of selfhood in the post-modern world, dealing with the problems of authentic self­understanding, decision­making, vocational significance, human relations and genuine participation in civilization. In brief, it endeavors to enable the participants to think through for themselves who they are and how they can involve themselves in the present historical age.

WHAT ARE THE REAL LIMITS IN MY ENVIRONMENT? Man in the twentieth century encounters in a new way the external forces and internal pressures which circumscribe his life and is in the midst of forging new images for dealing with the ever present inevitabilities of human existence.

SESSION I THE GIVEN OF LIMITATIONS

AND WHAT IS MY SITUATION? A consideration of the scope of the environment in which we must live and the nature of the concrete limits upon us.

Art Form: Painting "Guernica" Pablo Picasso

SESSION II THE GIVEN OF SELF­CONSCIOUSNESS

AND WHO AM I? A discussion of the meaning of self­consciousness as an aspect of the given of life and its role in relation to our limits.

Art Form: Motion Picture Play "High Noon"

WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL POSSIBILITIES OF MY LIFE? Man in the post­modern world senses after possibility in a new manner, relating it to the "image making" capacity of man and the necessity of a "life story" as a prelude to authentic personal identity and significant involvement in life.

SESSION III THE FUTURE AS POSSIBIL;TY

AND WHAT CAN I HOPE FOR? An examination of the future as the openness for change and what this means relative to the alteration of our life situation.

Art Form: Poetry~ummings, Crane and

Lawrence

SESSION IV THE FUTURE AS IMAGINATION

AND How IS CHANGE PosslsLE? An inquiry into the significance of intentionality relative to the future and of the manner of man's determination of history. Art Form: Motion Picture Play "On The

Waterf ront"

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO EXPRESS MY SIGNIFICANCE? Man in the new age of today is creating a new understanding of vocation as the manifestation and direction of selfhood toward creatively contributing to the total human adventure of civflization toward the well­being of all men.

SESSION V THE PATTERNS OF RESPONSIBILITY

AND WHAT MUST I DO? A study of the nature of responsible engagement in society, the meaning of work and necessity of determining a style of life.

Art Form: Folk Songs~urrent selections

SESSION VI THE PATTERNS OF RETREAT

AND How AM I EscAPING? An analysis of the ways in which men today attempt to retreat from the burden of selfhood and participation in civilization.

Art Form: Motion Picture Play "Death of a

.9nl~.cmnn"

"The great superiority of our age is in self­knowledge in becoming conscious of our place and responsibility in the universe. The man of today has ;he awareness that his choices have repercussions for countless centuries and on countless human beings."

-Teilhard de Chardin

,L U M I N I M A G I N A L E D U C AT 10 N

An analysis of the historical upheavals that are altering the direction of civilization, including: ­ the intellectual stance in the modern scientific revolution; the reformulation of styles of life in the urban­technological revolution; and the change in basic human mood in the world­wide secular revolution of our time. This course intends to provide a new grasp of the post modern world.

WHAT WILL BE THE LIMITS OF OUR WORLD?

The scientific revolution in the twentieth century has created a new model of the universe which has permeated every discipline of cultural understanding, transposing the common sense of mankind and the very meaning of rationality itself.

SESSION I THE NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE EXPANSIVE POSTURE TOWARD LIFE A practical discussion of the shift from the world view of Newton to that of the Einsteinian era and the import for the image of man.

Art Form: Film Short on the Modern Cosmology "The Universe"

SESSION II SCIENTIFIC MIND­SET OF POST

MODERNITY AND THE ATTITUDE OF PERPETUAL OPENNESS A practical consideration of the nature of the new methods in science today and how it affects the way in which man lives.

Articles: "The Expanding Universe" Sullivan "The Common Sense of Science"

Bronowski

THE REVOLUTION IN SOCIAL PAl lERN

How WILL PEOPLE LIVE IN OUR WORLD?

The urban revolution occurring throughout the world is refashioning our images not only of the individual, but of the family or the immediate neighborhood and finally of the broader social con

~ ,.,1~;~ ~^ ­^Q~r~nAe t~ hic wr~rl~

SESSION III THE NEW PATTERN OF SETTLEMENT AND THE INCLUSIVE STANCE IN LIFE A practical analysis of the emerging cosmopolis of our time and of what this means in terms of the way men relate.

Art Form: Film Short on the New Megapolis "The CitY of Necessity"

SESSION IV THE COSMOPOLITAN MIND­SET OF

PosT­MoDERNITY AND THE ATTITUDE OF UNrvERsAL CoNCERN A practical study of the replacement of the rural mind­set by the urban mentality and how this alters individual existence.

Articles: "Cultural Function of the World City"

Mumf ord

"The Metropolis" Simmel

THE REVOLUTION IN INTERIOR MOOD

WHY WILL PEOPLE LIVE IN OUR WORLD?

The revolution in the interior life of the man of the post­modern world has enabled him to experience new dimensions of humanness and has forced him to fresh awareness of the symbols and rites by which his intentions become history.

SESSION V THE NEW MODE OF HUMANNESS

AND THE INTENTTONAL STYLE OF LIFE A practical examination of the manner in which men today experience the depth dimension and the consequences for life patterns.

Art Form:Film Short on the Contemporary

Lif e Style

"Asterisk"

SESSION VI THE MISSIONAL MIND­SET OF POSTMODERNITY AND THE ATrlTUDE OF

UNL'M~TED WoNDERMENT An inquiry into the role of symbols in the modern world and the meaning of man as a symbol making animal.

Articles: "Some Functions of Symbol" Sebba

"The Signipcance of Symbols" Rollo May

"What we need todoy is not primarily a rebirth of good will or a return to some ancient order of life, we need a generation of vigorous thinkers, prepared ;o learn whatever a special skill or knowledgu they may find needful-people who can tackle terrible questions and fight through all the misconceptions and confusing traditions that mix up our thoughts and our lives. We must construct the scaffold for our new life, fast, ingeniously and on big lines."

-Susanne K. Ianger

EDUCATING THE

IMAGINATION OF

MODERN YOUTH_

YOUTH IN THE URBAN­SUBURBAN COMPLEX

THE ECUMENICAL INSTITUTE'S experiment in the education of the imagination with some 500 Metropolitan Chicago youth, yielded a body of data relative to the posture of the inner city youth in relation to the imaginal problems of their suburban counterparts. The common geo­social categories, inner city and suburban, are far too simple but are used here to point to those youth who have withdrawn from school, have little positive home background, and who evidence continued sense of social alienation as contrasted with those youth who are being intellectually stimulated in high school, who come from protected home environments, and who are experiencing a relatively stable social context. Thus one group of Negro youth, geographically from the inner city but quite bourgeois in its response, is classified with the outer city youth.

It has been the position throughout these papers that there is today a culture of youth that cuts across socio­economic and geographical boundaries. This one world of youth includes both the roughest inner city street gang and the most protected suburban youth club. Both inner city and suburban youth were found to possess the qualities of seriousness, underlying openness, anxiety about the future and revolt against unquestioned tradition which characterizes the world of youth today. No fundamental distinction was discovered in their concern for a significant life and for genuine participation in society. And each of these urban segments was consciously or unconsciously reaching after the self­pictures that would enable such a life. In the midst of this overarching solidarity, however, variations of crucial import were observed, and these differences have much to do with the content and method of imaginal education. Hopefully their description can be of service to all the formal and extra­formal educational and training efforts of our

16

time. The observed distinctions are classified under the four concerns by which the faculty systematically evaluated the experimental project: the participants' inirial predispositions, their prowess in communication and th~ group process, their responses to the life issues encountered in the curriculum, and evidence of the reconstruction of their imaginal capacities.

THE GENERAE DISPOSITION toward life or the set of the imagination brought by a student to a course is obviously of signal import to the teacher engaged in attitudinal education. This is the raw material, so to speak, with which he has to deal. The distinctly different set of predispositions of the inner and outer city youth, however common their inclusive similarities, became clear to the instructors as the schools progressed. The difference was observed, first of all, in their general operating frames of reference. It was obvious in their undervUlg scositivity or emotional tone. It was also displaved in their established patterns of escape and at thc points where overt hostility developed between them.

The world of the inner city youth is in one sense extremely narrow. But he will have a detailed, realistic grasp of what he has experience`:). He knows that he is intimately related to his environment, but tends to apprehend that relationship negatively. An unconscious idea of fate rules his inner world. He has been deeply conditioned not only by his home but by society at large to experience himself as a victim of a maze of forces beyond his control. Though his response patterns are a labyrinth of complexity, the paramount mode is that of irrational independence. Underneath this, however, is a deep unadmitted belief that he is insignificant. He is aware that there is much more to life and the world than he encompasses, but he knows it only

as some remote "they" of which he is not a part. The suburban youth has a much broader picture of the external world. Yet the world he lives in is less detailed and realistic. It is more secondhand and idealized. He has not personally experienced his inclusive patterns in any depth. This lends an artificial quality to his social poise and a superficiality to the confidence he possesses. He finally relies upon the views of authority figures, whether they be parents, authors, a generalized peer­groupother or an alter ego comprised of middle class values. However this may be, the emerging adult in suburbia is lucid. He is well­informed, and can use his categories with admirable dexterity. This is his basic and enviable gift.

In direct relation to the mind­set, differences in what might be termed sensitivity to life become most apparent. The suburbanite is given to overconceptualization, a tendency to think that abstractions of one's experience are identical with experience. This is manifest in an air of sophistication that permits him to be aloof if he chooses, suave in his abilities to express himself, and to give extended attention in the manipulation of abstractions. The suburban youth discovers in the midst of serious conversation, however, that his ready categories tend to shut him off from his immediate experience and inhibit his depth involvement with the world. A product of careful nurture, this sophistication in effect sustains him in superficial profundity and impedes the possibility to probe the depth dimensions of humanness.

The affectability of the inner city youth is conditioned quite differently. He is vitally sensitized to the immediate, unreflected, spontaneous experience of life. His less controlled reactions, noisiness and difficulty with long periods of concentration are not just manifestations of truculent adolescence. It is rather a matter of being extremely close to the raw givenness of one's experience. In serious conversation, his attempt to express this awareness is

frustrated by the limitations of his ability to articulate with clarity and precision. This forceful immediacy, though as great a gift as the suburbanite's abstraction, equally inhibits genuine involvement in the depth dimensions of humanness and the social process.

Crucial to understanding the deepset proclivities each group brought to the courses is their particular patterns of escape from the given world and their situation in it. Though implied above, these need underscoring. The underprivileged youth of the inner city were conditioned to use two basic flight routes. First is that which might be termed unruliness, or "disruptiveness." It is a blind, wild, striking

out. The real object is life itself. What actually receives the blow is any symbol or sign of the powers that seem to him to undergird his situation. The second means of escape is to present himself with a defiant resignation as the victim. This is no

longer simply an immediate matter. Intentionality is present. The victim image is purposely employed. The youth expect others to expect them to act this way which compounds the possibility of retreat from life. On the other hand, the suburbanite uses the route of intellectualization to avoid himself and his world. He hides in his ability to abstract. Accompanying this and in addition to it, he employs the advantage of the unquestioned acceptability of the bourgeois pattern of life. In both instances he is protected from having to face the real issues of life. It is thus as difficult for him, if not more so, to discover his real self in relation to the actual world as it is for the inner city youth.

The intermingling of the two groups in advancell courses disclosed further distinguishing conditlonings, especially at the point of their overt conflict. It is most important to be clear here. Not surprising is the fact that both groups were curious about and fascinated with each other. A certain social discomfort was displayed though not as much as the faculty anticipated. There was a desire for creative interchange and they were delighted with experiencing it in their midst. Indeed, mutual appreciation became evident at certain stages in a conversation about an art form, for instance, when they were dealing with the problem of uncertainty in vocational significance. Antagonism was latently present, nevertheless, from the beginning. Where it disclosed itself was over the issue of dealing with the written word, when descriptive paragraphs were introduced into the sessions. Before their facile­reading suburban colleagues, the inner city youth experienced extreme embarrassment and their sense of self­depreciation overcame them. This occasioned subtle manifestations of superiority on the part of those more developed in the skills of basic education. This tension, it must be understood, was not at the point of exchange about selfhood and the modern world, nor at the meeting of different socio­economic sub­cultures, but at the divergence in basic tools of communication.

THESE PRE­INCLINATIONS of the students, it is important to understand, were not presupposed. They revealed themselves as the studies progressed and each session underwent rigorous evaluation. Their presence is discernible in all that is to be now said. This is especially true for what is here termed prowess in communication. The project was not aimed at enabling the students to feel received by their peers, nor was it concerned with stimulating some general atmosphere of permissiveness in the group, valuable as these goals may be. Its intent did include the development of certain self capacities requiring a group situation.

The first of these was the cultivation of the powers of observation and articulation. So much of the experience of our inner and outer worlds is not

really grasped because it is unattended to or we lack the skill or opportunity to verbalize it. Second, the teachers were exercised to stimulate the courage and capacity for critical reflection whereby inclusive patterns interrelating.our personal and communal experience bring wholeness to our vision. The third emphasis in this area was upon creating and maturing the ability to give and receive in serious dialogue with other minds. These are interrelated aptitudes and all are crucial in educating the imagination. Very special attention was given to them, particularly in the initial sessions of a course.

The students in the suburban courses came to the study with well developed capacities to verbalize. In fact, their ease of speech was deceptive; in a sense, a hindrance. As the courses progressed, it became clear that whereas they could talk fluentyv on subjects which did not involve them personally, they were sorely limited in articulating the impingement of the world upon the self. The problem was getting behind their intellectual frameworks to their inner self awareness and to supply them with workable symbols by which they could begin to appropriate it. They coulci converse fluently on the form or the detached significance of a poem by Cummings or Lawrence, but had difficulty expressing identification with a character in a movie or understanding their feeling for an event described in a folk song.

A second and related problem with the middle class youth was that of a real emotional block at the point of discussing the issues of selfhood. This feeling barrier was broken through by the patient persistence of the tutor in holding them up against their experience of themselves as this was reflected by the works of art and insights of their peers. This done, there was a clear increase in ability to speak freely with one another about the way life came to them and the way they discovered themselves present to it. This in turn enabled them to critically reflect with a kind of ease upon the adequacy of their images of themselves and their environment. However vague and unsure they were, they could dialogue forthrightly with their colleagues and developed a readiness and capacity to do their own thinking and deciding.

The inner city groups generally lacked skill in clear and precise expression and they were conditioned against any kind of serious conversation. They at first found extended periods of concentration difficult and were far more impressionistic and less controlled in their responses. With these students, the faculty began with stressing an increase in the ability to use words. They were apt learners here. Words tied directly to their own experience had powerful fascination for them. Surprisingly, the paintings and the poetry were very helpful in this. The huge print of Picasso's "Guernica" prompted them to name, with feeling, their own intuitions

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about their world. As one put it, "That painting is where I live." Striking terms from movies were readily picked up and used to indicate and describe their own experience and situation. The poetry of Stephen Crane evoked long descriptive comment, even narrations.

The tendency of the urbanites to be guarded in sober comments and serious conversation of all types turned out to be more a sociological phenomenon than a psychological one. At the beginning asides and innuendos were the pattern rather than direct contributions to the class. The sessions were noisy and movement was almost continuous. It was not that they didn't want to talk. Quite the opposite was the case. There was rather an unexpressed climate of opinion that people like them just didn't verbalize seriously and of course they were suspicious of anyone who really believed that they could and would. Progress here was not easy. In most cases, it was the poetry that broke open the barriers. Despite real resistance, the participants were encouraged to read the poetry aloud. Even though stumbling, they would read with passion. From then on, they expressed excitement in coversing with one another about life and their own pictures of themselves. A confidence not previously exhibited was evident and they increasingly asserted their opinions with conviction. The standard excuse, '~It's over my head," was heard less and less as they continued to talk about themselves. What was not overcome but rather intensified as the course progressed, was the awareness that they were crippled in the basic educational tools of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

THE INCLUSIVE AIM of imaginal education is twofold: significant personal existence and creative involvement in society. The means for accomplishing this is in expanding and refurnishing the image making capacity which enables the student to retool his images of his world and of himself in that world. The curriculum of the project was designed in rational form and catalytic content to this end. This present analysis is limited to the first course which deals with the three major areas of selfhood: the self's image of its environment; the self's image of its potentiality; and the self's image of social response or life style. The content, so to speak, was serious conversation about various contemporary art forms such as paintings, poetry, movies, cartoons, and folk music. The response of the inner city and suburban youth to the diflferent parts of the curriculum is most informing and at each stage reflected the underlying predispositions of the groups.

In the first part of the course dealing with images of the self in relation to environment, the emphasis was placed upon limitations of past conditioning and present circumstances and upon pictures of the

actual world about us. Art forms used were Picasso~s "Guernica" and Stanley Kramer's film, "High Noon." The questions for discussion were "How am 1 finally limited?" or "What exactly is my environment?" and "Who am I, really?" or i'How can I authentically be in my situation?"

The suburban participants began the series of studies with relative ease. Art forms in themselves were not "new things" for them. They were interested in "Guernica" and "High Noon" because they knew something of contemporary art, Picasso and Kramer and were somewhat familiar with the commentaries of art critics. This way of stale, second hand thinking stood in the way of the awakening of their imagination and of learning to use their own critical intelligence relative to their lives. Thus their middle class self confidence with strong views of the abstract self and their unappropriated conception of reality were the locus of struggle. They affirnied the relevance of the art forms and their essential honesty in presenting reality. But these were theoretical acknowledgments and they preferred not to talk about them at length or in depth. Indced they were highly resistant to open cdiscussion of any image of the self in relation to environment that might threaten their idealized picture of the world. At the same time they revealed before both the painting and the film that, deep inside, they possess clear intuitions of a less protected but more real world and that they longed to get them out and to understand them.

In contrast to the suburbanites, the inner city participants started out with intense suspicion about its relevance. Art forms were not necessarily new hut they were seen as alien. They brought, however, their detailed and realistic understanding of their environment and the self s relation to it. Their hroken and crowded homes, painful memories of parental relationships, school failures, premature sex experiences and encounters with police screamed back at them from "Guernica' and the movie. The issues were clear, and they slowly jumped at the opportunity to discuss, relate and amplify them. They did not resist the questions of the self in relation to the real world but they had heen so brainwashed by current social and psychological theories that they could only see the self as a victim of both its present environment and past decisions. Vaguely, they caught a glimpse of their essential disbelief in their own significance and the necessity of altering such an image if their hopes were to be more than illusory. And from this insight they promptly shied off.

The second aspect of the curriculun1 raised the issue of human possibility, dealing with the future as openness and with man's power to determine the 'not yet.'

The discussions centered around the practical questions on the meaning of having hopes and dreams and the nature of change in human life.

Selections of poetry from Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, and D. H. Lawrence and the movie "On the Waterfront" were the art forms used. The inner city youth experienced a breakthrough in seeing that in creating a poem, they were creating life attitudes. The threat came in realizing that they could make a decision that would alter the future and that, therefore, they were creative beings. They explored how a man could alter his life story after viewing and discussing the film "On the Waterfront," which both fascinated and terrified them. It struck directly at what has been termed their image of self­depreciation. There was no doubt that this was the crucial part of the course for the inner city students and they understood, for the moment at least, that they could pick up their lives and move into the future. It was the possibility of leaving them without excuse that frightened them.

The suburban youth in this part of the course began to formulate the insight that a person was what his story about himself was, that this determined the way.one shapes the. tomorrows and finally, each person has to and does decide his own story. This occurred as they were able to penetrate heneath the form into the meaning of the poetry read. These lines from Stcphen Crane particularly addressed them at this point: ­

I `~alked in a deserr.

Anel / criefl

"Ah, God. take l''e fron' this place!'

A voice said, "It is no desert."

I cried, "Well, but ....

The sanct, the heat, the vacant horizon."

A v oice said, "It is no desert."

A crucial breakthrough came with the realization that one operates out of stories of which he isn't even aware. This they perceived in the lives of the characters in the movi~ Th`~­, `..­,­ p­,,';­,,?~,?`, impressed with the hero's decision to alter the way he thought of himself and how this altered his total life situation. . his was still a more or less abstract understanding. but at the same time a spark of 'felt'' understanding was disclosing itself.

The final secfion of the curriculum had to do with life style; that is, with the meaning of decisions, with the models which guide our practical responses and with the role of symbols in a life of intentionality. The art forms were a variety of popular folk songs and the film version of Arthur Miller's' Death of a Salesman." The discussion centered on patterns of escape from life and the nature of responsible living. For different reasons, both groups were intrigued and baffled by the idea that a person might seriously construct a life model for himself. The folk songs expressing loneliness, sadness and pain deeply addressed both groups. Many of the inner city wanted only to sing them. When words came, they indicated feelings of having "missed the boat," as one of them phrased it. This is a long way from the entrenched victim image.

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The social­problem folk Iyrics made them very uneasy. They were able to talk with lucidity about the movie 'Death of a Salesman" and the ways in which Willy Loman hid from life. But it was extremely difficult for them to come to terms with the possibility that they could and must determine ­their pattern of living. Their retreat was now behind a wall of excuses about lack of adequate skills. It was as if they had become aware that a new, more comprehensive life environment was open to them. The weight of their own body alone stood in the way.

Broadly speaking, this was the most effective part of the course for the suburbanites. They were here confronted with the idea that causes just don't come, but that one decides about the causes to which he gives himself. The folk music did this for them. This group too was upset when encouraged to really listen to the songs that cried for a new justice. "The Death of a Salesman" pressed them toward living in a world that wasn't there or that was in the past. They faced together the issue that each individual is responsible for his own living and that each one decides about the pattern of his life. It was at this point that the suburban youth spoke of their lives as having been changed. They expressed awareness that they finally had to make their own decisions about the way they were to understand life, about the way they were to act them out, and finally expend them, and that finally there were no excuses. It was the advanced courses on the cultural revolution, not discussed here, that began to provide content for this kind of stance.

Restructuring of Imaginal Capacities

ONCE AGAIN, it must be understood that the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute did not have the time and/or funds for any follow­up evaluation. They are encouraged by the many positive comments and letters from street workers and youth leaders throughout the city. But since at core any practical alteration means a revolution in attitudinal stance, however subtle, and subtle it is, the sensitive teacher within the classroom situation can and does formulate significant estimates about changes in behavior patterns. In what has gone before, opinions have already been shared on the expansion of limits, openness toward the future and resolutions relative to intentional living. By way of recapitulation and summary, it might be helpful to state forthrightly the faculty's opinion on the reconstruction of Lhe imagination of the suburban and inner­city participants. The faculty was alert to signs of the use of new and different terms and metaphors verbalized by the groups, to signs of carry­over that would indicate the formulation of different life pictures, and to signs of change in mood and overall attitudes within the class sessions.

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The faculty carefully prepared thorough evaluational summaries on each session, a part of which was directly concerned with these three evaluative principles. Space permits only one illustration abstracted from the reports. The art form discussed was the film play, "On the Waterfront." First, the description of a suburban group's reaction:

"In contrast to their response to the previous movie, this one seemed to overwhelm them. They were captivated by the theme of the movie that a man could crucially alter his picture of himself. Picking up on an earlier session's poetry discussion, they saw that the hero's memory was tied to certain words and images; that, when the meanings of these were altered, the hero found a new way to understand his own significance. The shift from this insight to a consideration of their own memory words was a natural one. The group had not taken this step in any former session. For the first time, they directed their conversation toward their own experience and seemed to be consciously aware of themselves as participants in the drama of life."

In contrast, an inner­city Bang response to the same movie is reported as follows:

"They began viewing the movie with a kind of hesitancy. Several members moved about during the early part of the film. There was general noisiness and frequent loud laughter. As the movie progressed, however, they became unusually quiet. By the end, their attention was intense and they huddled around the discussion table. In the conversation, they revealed both fear and fascination in response to a hero so radically changing his life­story. They asked themselves what it means to be a 'bum' (an important word in the movie). They talked of how a person could be 'somebody' instead of 'nothing.' Any quick or easy answers oflfered by participants were quickly rejected by the larger group. They arrived at no common resolution of the issues they had raised except that 'it takes guts to be somebody,' and 'some of us would rather be bums.' "

These are examples from but two of the many groups. There was great variation from group to group and even more, of course, between individuals. But these statements suggest the way change in self­pictures took place in the midst of group conversation with art forms. Both groups here, for example, grasp in varying fashions and degrees of clarity the effect of images upon life styles. They also know the experience of self­reflection upon the images a person may be unconsciously using. Some came to see that to alter self­talk is to change the life situation.

Relative to the use of terms and finding new metaphors, the inner­city youth were the most dramatic and fascinating. Because of their limited vocabulary, they literally snatched at new words which they could fill with meaning and which filled them with meaning. But it was more. Their sensitivity to life enabled them to do this with an agility that was nothing short of inspirational. In brief, they responded in this area as starved human beings. Without inhibition, they would pace the room in dread and excitement over a breakthrough in words. In one group, the term "obstacle" was passionately snatched from a movie related to their own life experience and continued as a powerful symbol in the group. The term "Guernica" was applied by another inner­city group to their own environment with unbelievable releasing effect.

Moreover, there was a distinct carry­over from session to session. They evidenced the ability to deal with a fresh art form with the images they had forged and appropriated from earlier encounters. There was, so to speak, a discernible build­up indicating a refurbishing of their image storehouse or a reconstruction of the operating memory. Distinct alteration in life responses are more difficult to determine from the classroom stance. The faculty looked for such evidence as decisiveness or willingness to express one's own serious opinion; for general mood or attitude toward life and for outgoing participation in the group and for an increasing intrusion of future plans into the conversation. All of these indices clearly manifested themselves with the inner­city group. But a tragic overcast was also increasingly present. This was the old problem, often indicated in these papers: the lack in basic tools of education and of not knowing how to go on in the areas of understanding the world and ourselves.

The suburban young person, as already indicated, had no significant problem with vocabulary in the first instance. His problem was involving himself in what he had. To put it another way, he was literally bombarded with images. The perplexity was to sort himself out in the midst of them. When this happened and he was able to see himself within a metaphor that he already possessed, it was as if the session, the art form and the dialogue with his peers gave him permission to be. His excitement, often in the form of spontaneous out­and­out comments, was manifest at this point. This happened when he saw that he must and could be the marshal seen in the movie, "High Noon" in his school, for instance-that is, to take a stand which involves risking oneself. The enlarging of the imagination was seen in the awareness that their images of themselves in the world were applicable to­the whole web of relationships that constituted their life. Particularly, they were able to relate such stances to the various courses they were taking in high school and inversely use illustrations from them in con

versation. Indication of life redirection with the suburbanites first of all took the form of appropriating themselves as no longer children. They would increasingly share such information as seriously talking with their parents and speak at length about their new role in the home. Secondly, as the sessions continued, there rose to the surface concern for a cause. It was the issue of vocation - not just earning a living, but significant outlets for concern and creativity. These youth were very vocal about their life postures being altered by the experience in imaginal education.

A ~tAtNSPR~G in the dynamics of urbanization is the inner and outer city tension. This­­is not a one­way current. Something more is involved here than the struggle of the impoverished, enslaved and deprived to become bourgeois. There are genuine positives and negatives at each pole. A dean of an Eastern university recently commented that he had reluctantly come to believe that the most tragic enslavement in society today was that of the selfstyled ghetto of suburbia. He added that its redemption was somehow directly dependent upon the inner city.

The results of the Ecumenical Institute's experiment in imaginal education with the youth of Greater Chicago bears this out. Inner­city youth have unique benefits as well as distinctive deprivations. And the suburbs have subtle disadvantages along with their obvious advantages. Society must understand this. Futher, it must try to comprehend that there are productive tensions in this complex. These very dichotomies are somehow crucial to preparing the emerging generation for significant participation in the new world of the twentieth century. The solution for the inner­city youth is not to make of him a middle­class bourgeois. Nor is the suburbanite to be reduced to the street corner inner­city­ite. Perhaps a new humanness is emerging which can somehow gather up and embody the complex of values existing in both.

The most significant impact upon the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute was the awareness that new forms of "higher" education must be created. Not all of our citizenry should "go to college." We must get over this unrealistic and unnecessary dream.\ All, however, must be genuinely educated. The faculty of the Institute is in the process of working out the structures whereby a "higher education" can be obtained in as short a time as thirteen weeks. They are convinced that so­called retraining programs falter at exactly this point. They are, furthermore, persuaded that such education can and must be made available for most of the people in our nation, including the most culturally deprived. Further discussion must wait for another time.

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EDUCATING THE

IMAGINATION OF

MODERN YOUTH

YOUTH'S CHALLENGE TO CIVILIZATION

THE QUALITIES AND ACTIONS of the twentieth century youth culture are placing categorical demands upon civilization as a whole. This became increasingly clear as the Ecumenical Institute carried out its experimental project with urhan you~h m metropolitan Chicago. The previous articles in tl­.s series have insisted that there is an iclentifiahle. distinctive character to the culture of youth, tha~ i~ was horn out of the general moral crisis of our thlle, that its fundamental lack is adequate images of significant humanness and that, though thc h~ner city and suburban youth share common bas!c needs, each requires a very special kind of attention. Assuming these statements to be valid, the imperatives upon society begin to come hlto focus. They are subsumed under four major categories. First and foremost, the world of youth must be recognized, acknowledged, nourished, appropriated and wisely directed. Secondly, youth must be seen in the light of urbanization and ministered unto in the broader context of knowledge of the city and its problems. Thirdly, it is essential to thc young that society apprehend, refine and boldly communicate a new image of man relevant to our thnes. Fourthly, imaginal education can no longer be understood as a desirable for tomorrow; it is an urgent necessity of today. These imperatives constitute the challenge of youth to civilization and they are directed toward every segment of society: thc family, the state, the academic structures, the welfare services, the religious organizations and the economic order.

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Appropriating the Youth Culture

CIVILIZATION MUST NOW acknowledge without reserve this world of youth. International in scope, unique in history, passionately creative and irrevocably opposed to the status quo, the youth culture is a fact of our history. The spectacular accomplishments in Korea, North Africa, the Middle East, Panama, Turkey, L'Afrique noire, Japan and the United States, authored by youth, could well turn out to be the most significant events of our times. But the matter is even deeper than this. The young are doing something to the tone, the style, the model of humanness that the established elders have not been able to do. The failure to recognize, welcome and encourage this strange phenomenon of history might be the rejection of a bright sun that is rising on a great new day. Whether this be true or not, to continue to pretend that it is not here, that youth today are like youth of other days, is to deny our times and thereby to expose ourselves to the future's accusation of social psychosis.

Such a course of serious recognition will require a difficult act of humility on the part of the older generation. Slowly we are seeing that the young today are evidencing unsuspected wisdom, courage, and dedication in their up­ending of past patterns, attitudes and symbols which have become empty hulls before the riches of modern life. These very qualities of the youth culture uncover within older adults unsuspected provincialisms, parochial complacencies and fear­filled ingroup patterns. The elders are, therefore, sharply threatened by the young of our age They must nonetheless find the courage to take into themselves this confrontation.

That is, the older generation must now carefully and in humility listen to these strange fledgelings who are sending out valid signals about the shape of the future and fresh possibilities for humanness. They must become willing to learn deep lessons of life from their own "children."

Furthermore, family, state and church alike must symbolically initiate this creative segment of society into the total social fabric. If they do not, it will dry up, fester, or explode without fulfilling its deep promise. If it is to be done, it must be done at an early age precisely because a form of adulthood is undeniably arriving earlier. A child at fourteen today must make grownup decisions about sex, life patterns, loyalty and the future, which, in the past, were reserved for those of twenty­one or more. In order for youth to appropriate a form of adult status rather than continue to pretend a nonexisting innocence, adequate rites of passage have to be recovered and created anew. Some event, some day, some activity must be lifted up to dramatize, celebrate and memorialize this early advent of adulthood. This symbolization of the journey into mature responsibility cannot be delayed until college graduation, marriage, economic independence or some traumatic circumstance such as war Too often, by that time, the young have become callously indifferent or cynically bitter.

Finally, society must legislate channels and structures which will harness the passion of the youth and direct it toward social mission. The old notion that reduces life vocation to well­paying jobs that simply support bourgeois vah~es is too shallow a container for the spirit and brawn of modern youth. Contemporary society is faced with an unusual and awe­filling demand. What people have not dreamed of having a generation which they could dedicate to the service of all of life? Here is a generation which desires to be dedicated, which asks to be used for the sake of a more human adventure, which is crying out with rebellion for something for which to live and die greatly. The Peace Corps is one model of corporate youth action by which a nation can encourage the youth to pour out their energies on behalf of universal humanity. It is imperative that a variety of other serious missional outlets be created for our youth today.

CONTEMPORARY URBAN SOCIETY must awake to the danger which lurks in the moat we are constructing between those who have escaped the city into insulated suburban houses and those who experience themselves as trapped in vicious threestorywalkups or public housing jungles.The imaged enemy in both cases is the city. This is an irony. The city is not the enemy of humanity. Twentieth century man knows, at least below the conscious level, that his very future is the city. lN onetheless, he continues to lust after the rural images. He hangs on to the patterns of the past rather than suffer the pain of forging new life styles. This refusal to receive the megalopolis as home is w hat has made prisoners of both suburbanite and inner city dweller. It has created distinct ghettos on either side of the city boundary, ncithcr of which is more human than the other. The youth of the world is sentenced to live as partial paralytic in this dichotomy created by our fear of urhanity. This must not continue.

Suburban youth must not be deprived of the face­to­face contact with suffering humanity which educates one to the realities of life and, in our time, provides a necessary milieu for meaningful vocation. The family, church and civil society all tend to insulate these midLlle class youth from the harshness, pain, ugliness and rawness of life by means of abstract intellectual sophistication. This creates a pride which further shuts off real touch with the human issues of our day. Consequentiy, it produces false attitudes of do­goodism and uninvolved charity. The perceptive social innovators must find ways to shatter the illusion that life can be wrapped in cellophane, which this cultural heritage entrenches. It must guide these youth toward adequate contact with life out of which new moral machinery may be forged with which to construct a more just and human society.

On the other hand, the mystique of the imler­city youth created and perpetuated by those who observe from afar and fear the marginality of life in the city must be relinquished. A host of negative adjectives-unserious, irresponsible, destructive, rebellious, criminal-have been used to type these youth. As a result, they are either fearfully pampered or given over to the category of incorrigibility. Both approaches are ridiculous. Those who would help the youth of the inner city must be aware that

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he conforms to a set of values unique to his isolated sector of urban life constructed over against the bourgeois values, and that this is not necessarily bad. They must also appreciate that he is deeply sensitive to raw life and capable of rare insights. His ­first tragic lack is the basic tools of education. Secondly and most important, he lacks a creative image which would allow him to deal constructively with this reality instead of being crushed by it. If society is to really meet the so­called delinquency problem today, it will turn its time, efforts and monies in this direction.

To overcome the cleavage between bourgeois suburban culture and the cultural restlessness of the inner city, society must find ways to orient all the youth to life in the whole city. Neither the acquisition of sophisticated information nor thc confrontation of human existence in the raw makes for a complete person. What is needed rather is a fusion of the two in a depth experience. Such an imperative requires recognition that the inner city has something to offer to all of society and that middle­class values will not necessarily form the pattern of the new city of tomorrow. Practically, it requires that a variety of programs of exchange be developed by various agencies similar to the cultural exchange between nations. This must not be done to remake inner city youth in the suburban image nor suburban youth into the inner­city pattern, but it must provide the openness which will allow them both to create new images of humanness for the sake of all men.

TWENTIETH CENTURY MAN must bury in the same grave with the Newtonian world­view the image of man as victim of internal powers and external forces. Man is not one of Newton's innumerable unexamined particles in a causal nexus. He is not the prey of past causes or future fates. He is neither the pawn of an imminent dialectic nor the puppet of some transcendent mind. All facets of the social order must contrive together to root out this notion of man with its debilitating power over the individual and society. On the other hand, society must nurture and bring to full maturity the new image of man, potentiated by the Einsteinian worldview, as a creator of models which bend the direction of events. Man is free to be responsible for his past and future. He is free to participate in forging his own destiny and shaping the course of history. He is free to formulate fresh life­styles and models of society. Such an about­face is especially urgent where the emerging generation is concerned.

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Sociologists must no longer operate on the social ills of juvenile delinquency, loss of individuality in the mass, political apathy, racial tension and unemployment with tools forged on the anvil of 19th century determinism. Such approaches place man in a psychic cage from which he can escape only through some alteration in historical circumstances. Barring that, he is either conditioned to endure his situation or doomed to continuous up­propping by social agencies. The horror of youth growing up in deprivation must be passionately felt, and inadequate environments must be relentlessly battled, but man is not a mechanical adjustment or maladjustment to his environment. Courageous social agencies and creative sociologists must bear the insecurity of uncertainty long enough to fashion r~ew, incisive tools out of the primary precious metal of our age-namely, the awareness that every man is a potential disturber of his environment and not simply the victim of it.

Psychologists must also cease analyzing and treating the emotionally disturbed and the socially unadjusted out of a reduced image of man. An individual is not merely the product of early conditioning. Psychic deficiency is not simply a block in the maturing process due to insufficient coddling. The person is not finally defined by the degree of stored up acceptance he receives from others. This image of man as victim of the past condemns too many to being social vegetables or clinical barflies who move from crisis situation to psychiatrists or warden and back again. Those dedicated to the mental health of the individual must provide him with a sense of his worth, significance and power by insisting that the future is not mechanistically controlled by the past, but is created out of the decisions of men who sift out, choose and act upon the relevant wisdom of the past in relation to future possibilities. They must demand that the individual make such decisions and pick up his life and live it.

Secular and religious benefactors and educators must surrender pictures of man as the victim of ignorance, character defect or some lower nature. These idealists think to remedy matters by more factual information or by more motivation toward higher ideals or conformity to the established norms of society. Those who do not so res,p~nd are relegated to the category of "primitive" or "lower class" or "unsaved" and are ministered unto as social derelicts. They must rather bear the word to all men that, like the spinning atom, each individual is a unique and unrepeatable gift to history, that the very being of each is utterly significant and consequential, and that each can trust his intuitions about the meaning of life in full awareness that only thus is there a context for receiving and comprehending current interpretations of phenomena.

Reconstructing the Educational Vision

FORMAL EDUCATION, public and private on all levels, must be fundamentally reconsidered. Educators have to be encouraged to challenge the goals, metbodologies, content, materials, and structures of the educational enterprise. Indeed, the very theory and function of education in civilization requires a new look. No sensitive person would argue against the present step­up in scientific and technical training. This, however, is not the crucial issue. The crux of the educational problem today, and this cannot be said too often, lies in the area of imaginal prowess and integrity. Without authentic individuals, personally liberated, critically intelligent, creatively involved in society, the free and open society is doomed. Our rising citizens through new approaches to the humanities must be given the opportunity and incentive to bridge the gap between knowledge and wisdom through adequate self images However it be for other societies, this is indispensable for ours and we must not allow political insecurities to blind us here. Our society must decide that it is going to be who it is and build this image into our educational machinery. Though higher education is crucial to this issue, imaginal education is perhaps even a more urgent matter for high school and the elementary grades. Most essential, the hour has come, particularly for the inner city, when this task must begin with the two and three­year olds in novel pre­school training centers.

Public education, however, is not limited to the formal structures. For instance, a massive industry of auxiliary education is arising in our time. The geometric progression in the school dropout rate, the continual swelling of the unemployment force and a new awareness of social injustices have led to the establishment of special remedial and retaining schools. It is only too clear, however, to those who dare to look, that these do not meet the underlying problem. Beyond temporary relief of social pressure, job retraining as thus far conceived is inadequate. Experience is demonstrating that the conditions of life are more than economic. Without an image of significant personhood, without a picture of meaningful engagement in society, the necessary motivation for personal fulfillment and social responsibility remains untouched. Civic powers must decide whether a city, a nation or a world can afford to have a vast number of people with creative potential who are not equipped to participate in the corporate task of making its urban centers life­giving arenas. Any war on poverty must finally deal with the poverty of the imagination in the urban outcasts.

Religious institutions can no longer continue as parasitical growths on society. Operating in an anachronistic world view and with little vision of what is involved in the life­long journey of becoming, they tend to engage in irrelevant parochial

dogmatisms or in sentimental moralistic defenses of the past. Religious education has largely become empty both in form and content, and sensitive individuals, especially the young, are foregoing religious instruction. In sum, religion must recover its role in forming basic life images or it will perish. With fortitude that outdoes the other segments of society, the religious forces must cut the young loose, raise with them the real questions of life, encourage them to experience their depth experiences and enable them to develop their own sense of selfhood. Its very role in civilization can be a word of universal acceptance which releases persons to create venturing cadres in research and experiment on behalf of all society in whatever vocational thrust they engage.

Finally, the family must recover its educational role and hence its moral authority. This begins by surrendering the frantic attempts to conserve the rural middle class image of the family as a closeknit group of mutuality and interdependence. The complexity of the modern urban world has rejected this notion, and eflforts to pretend otherwise only create false guilt and needless conflict. The new family is a convenanting body with a common task in civilization involving several relatively independent universes represented by father, mother, single adults and siblings. Parents must not fear the early detachment of the young adult, but with joy deliver him over to the civilizing endeavor to which he belongs. The important thing in the home is not formal training, which must be increasingly turned over to other forces, but the exemplar image of the parents. Moral authority in the home can only be recovered by the living image of a mother and father engaged in the moral and political issues of the times. This, of course, indicates a need for a new form of depth adult education. A future issue of IMAGE will report developments of the Institute's research in the latter field.

ThERE 18 NO GhflRGE ~

for this issue of IMAGE. Publications are a vital part of the research and training proiects conducted by the Ecumenical Institute ail of which are supported by voluntary contributions. GiRs in any amount to defray the costs of publishing will be gratefully received. If after reading this issue, you feel that it is worth $1 or more to you, it is suggested that you use the attached envelope to send a contribution to the Institute. Such giRs are deductible for tax purposes.

;

Additional copies in volume are available at a nominal cost to cover the expenses of printing and postage. ~

· ~ ­

25

APPENDIX: COMMENTS ABOUT THE PROJECT

Many people of broadly varying interests have observed the Ecumenical Institute's project in imaginal education for youth: sociologists, teachers. clergymen, social workers, and others with less professional concerns. Their observations from a variety of perspectives are reflected in the following excerpts:

"An experimental (portion) of the program was to use the creative arts as a springboard for trainee discussions and a building block in developing an awareness of our trainees in themselves, the world, and their culture. We feel that the methods and techniques for motivating our trainees was excellent. It was apparent that our trainees readily understood the symbolic tealities covered. I think that it makes an important contribution in orienting our trainees to the mainstream of adult life and developing their critical selfexpression."

Ivianpower Training Act staff member

"The experience of some of our groups in the Institute's program led me to suspect that contemporary art forms may: 1) have some special merit in making it easier to 'reach the hard to reach' and, 2) may be of vakte as a device to study personality differences among youth from different social backgrounds. As a participating observer (I soon found that the type of involvement that developed in these sessions precluded the possibility of non­participant observation) I began to study the groups in your program last spring.

"I have done some analysis of the data already collected and have written a paper for presentation on my findings. In brief, I am convinced that what these art forms mean to the youth is largely a function of their particular social background. The inner city boy views them in a concretistic way and makes his interpretation in terms of his social reality. When he sees Picasso's Guernica, he says and feels that it is Chicago. The suburban boy is more abstract in his interpretation and tries to make sense of the art form in terms of purely self­directed referents, Guernica to him has little relation to social sufficiency, but represents some internal conflict. Thus, I think your methods are the product of a sound insight. Contemporary art forms may be particularly appropriate in dealing with inner city youth caught up in matters related to social problems and conditions. Among suburban youth they may be more relevant to psychological states and personal problems.

"Because of these and related findings, I am urging the inclusion of contemporary art programs in innercity curricula at the high school level. While it may be true that the vocational emphasis that characterizes inner­city schools; have practical significance, it does not mean that these youth cannot learn and benefit from course content that we normally think of as being more appropriate for the more privileged, more culturally oriented, suburban youth.

26

"Not only are you helping to work with youth that need attention, but, perhaps in the long run more important, you are demonstrating competence in the use of a fresh approach that I would like to see become more widespread."

Social Psychologist,

University Research Project

. . . "Interested in my reaction to the youth session which I observed a couple of weeks ago at the Institute. I was very much impressed by the fact that the group of fifteen or twenty young people were sitting around a table on a hot afternoon being deeply involved in what I thought were very profound ideas. Most of the activities that are being conducted by churches are very heavily recreational. I also felt that these young people were making some important discoveries about themselves which will have an important effect on their lives.

"It was one of the most impressive conferences that I have ever attended."

Youth Commission Administrator

". . . opened the door revealing life as it is and introduced me to myself in relationship to the world. But left the decision remaining in my own world or coming through the door, to me.

"There I stood, confused, curious, freightened, startled, angry, frustrated, anxious, hopeful, embarrassed, on the threshold.

"What shall I do? Where shall I turn?

"I slammed the door to my second­hand universe and entered life slowly, cautiously at first, not too sure of the new me. Now, a little more brave and bold, I am proceeding to explore and deal with the multitude of daily experiences I come in contact with."

Suburban High School Student

". . . deeply significant impact on my life. The youth courses have, in short, changed my way of thinking, my way of life, my religious disposition, my understanding of the world and how we live in it. I think that more people-adults, adolescents, and yes even children should have the privilege of looking at the world through new eyes.

"[This study] is and can be the instrument of awareness by showing us the world behind the world . . . I believe this is absolutely necessary in my period of transition from being a number in Norwood Park to being a citizen of the universe."

High School Student

"I am writing this letter to let you know how much I enjoyed my weekend at the Ecumenical Institute. The sominaries were great and I am sure we all absorbed something from them but this should be a little shorter and you should have more ash trays around the table. I especially like the way you conduct the meals; what I mean by this is the way you always have a conversation prepared and we all talk on the subject. The sleeping quarters were fine but we needed one more pillow. The work sheets were fine. They all had a different meaning but all meant a lot. And you should keep on having the movies and discussion afterwards. Mainly I like what the Ecumenical institute stands for and the manner in which it is conducted. And I hope you will go on doing what you are doing, and I hope to come back sometime for another visit and to learn a little more."

Your friend,

Inner­City Club Member

"Just a note to express my appreciation for the work that you and your associates did in bringing the 'Imaginal Education' course to the lail. It proved to be an effective method for stimulating discussion amoog the inmates of the class. I plan to experiment further with this kind of group process within the limits of correctional institution, for this is the kind of creative work so necessary in correctional practice.'

County ~ ail Chaplain

"As a youth educator, I would like to express my appreciation for the pedagogical excellence of our group experience. The teaching methods used and the material presented were excitingly fresh. On numerous occasions since my visit to the Institute I have had opportunities to apply the principles I learned in teaching situations of my own. Personally this has been a continuing fruit of our weekend together . . . The full impact of the retreat will only be felt over the long years of my ministry."

Minister to Youth, Methodist

"I want you to know how pleased I am with the results obtained with our young people who attended the Institute's youth retreats in the spring. Intellectually they woke up. I never dreamed that my high school students could grasp, with such keen insight, the concepts of our urban culture, of man's place in this new society, and of being an actor rather than a victim within this new world. Even more important to St. Andrew these young people were awakened to their own uniqueness in the world. They voiced the conviction that they were worth something, and that it made

a difference to the world that they are alive. What I am actually saying is this, they are eager to live and alert to life. This attitude is a strange one to the high school suburban mind set."

Pastor, Presbyterian

"We were particularly impressed and pleased with the work done with some of our negro young people in helping them to identify and express feeling about themselves, their race, and their class. Since our youth group is inter­racial, there has been perhaps more tendency to understate the differences and tensions in an effort to make everyone feel at home, and we were impressed with the healthiness and relief of this other approach for our teens. It was as much an eye opener for the staff here as for the teens themselves, and we feel that they have said some things to us recently that perhaps they did not feel free to say earlier."

Director of Christian

Education, Presbyterian

"We believe that these sessions have been very valuable in helping our youngsters to better understand themselves and their environment. We often hear comments and notice attitudes which prove to us that effect of your meedogs has favorably reached the youth who have participated, and the message is being carried to other youth in the community."

Supervisor, Inner­city Street Gang

"Your programs this past year have offered a great challenge to the youth who have participated in them as I am sure the youth of Chicago are confronting you with a continuing challenge. I know that my understanding and knowledge as a suburban church volunteer youth leader has been greatly enriched as I have been an observer in your faH and spring youth courses.

"The methodology devised by the faculty is based on realistic awareness of youth needs and the youth culture of today. The work you do with young people not only reflects an understanding and concern for youth forging their own life questions, but creates in the young people an increased awareness of the kind of world in which they live.

"Having spent a full weekend at the Institute with a group of high school age youth this spring I feel that this type of program perhaps is the most effective, particularly when several sections of the city are represented in a single course."

Suburban Church Volunteer Youth Leader

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The Image­Maker

| T SEEMS TO ME that, in the nexus of relationship between the individual and the culture in which he develops, there is one most important factor, the cultural image, which I have never seen defined or discussed to my satisfaction. In fact, the cultural image seems to me the most important single mode of connection between the two, and therefore of mutual creation, for by means of it the society creates an individual, and the individual creates his society-an image being a concrete and dramatic version of an achieved life, in which you recognize yourself as you could be, your powers developed in some sense fully and harmoniously, dealing with your problems and responsibilities on the whole triumphantly; for-this is the crucial point-you respond to, revel in, /ove this mode of being.

Looking back on my own period of greatest growth, I think I can now trace all kinds of surprisingly personal frustrations and failures to the fact that my society, England, provided me with no adequate images. None good r~nough, that is, to excite me, arouse me, set me moving inside, growing, reaching out. For if there is no adequate image, if one cannot excitedly want to be the kind of man on whom, for instance, T. S. Eliot or J. B. Priestley sheds the greatest glamour, one may not want to be anything at all; one's most valuable energies, that is, may remain quiescent; one may not want to be­at all- not, that is, with the intensity one is capable of, and unused intensities easily become perverse.

-Martin Green

The following is from the pen of a member of an inner city gang that participated in the imaginal education experiment. The two responses are reproduced verbatim to indicate both the writer~s sensitivity and his needs.

My Reviews of Summeries Of the past meetings with the Ecunenical and Cascade

I missed the first meeting that we had. But from what the club members tell me it was as good or as educational as all the rest of­the meetings. Wl?at I mean by this is "When I say educational. Before I began to hang around with the Cascades, 1, thought I was hip, to sex and the game. But I couldn't say that I was completely hip to life. I had some idea about it but not enought brag" about it. Then Smitty talked to me and helped me a lot and the meeting with you the Ecunet?ical. All of the meetinB we had, had something to do uith life, The folke dances, Movies, and the painting of Pablo Picasso

l cal?not say that I know all there is to know about life, But, I can say that I can hold A conversation about life with most of the People I associate Wit,??, thanks to Joe, Pat, Smitty and all of the rest of the Ecunenical group

Yours Truely

Willie Neely

Life To Me and

The Movie of the Waterfront

Life to me is made up of problems, joy, and upsets. As I think of or about the movie deep down inside me I know that in a way (I) My life is based on it. And most of the club members know it to. When l say this I mean that everyone has gone along with the croud or gang, at one time or the other, but, in time we see the light, or get hip to ourselves and try to live our lives free of crime and vice.

As in the movie for a time Terry was living for the hell of it, or living from day to day not caring what happened to anyoneelse just as long as he could have some money in his pocket. Then he got hip and began to try to live like a man. What I mean by this is he began faced relaty. A man without a goal in life was just a bumb.

When he went to court he realized this and tried to make good his wrong, and confessed his part in the muder. When he left court he got jamed on the docks. Then all the other dock workers began to feel like men, and showed it by stricking out at the dockmen's union.

The End

Willie Neely

Viper

T

I HE ECU~lENICAL INSTITUTE is an agency for programs

of creative interchange which serve the well­being of the individual and foster human community on both the local and world level. The Institute's purpose is to articulate the mood, style, and pattem of the post­modem worldview and to enable individuals in all areas of life to for

mulate their own self­understanding for the sake of significant involvement in civilization. NVithin this intent is the concem to advance the civilizing process, to promote human dignity, and to develop an attitude of globality among all people and every fomm of human society.

In stmcture, the Ecumenical Institute is a research, training and communications center focusing on experimental fomms of education relating to the 20th century model of civilization and directed toward enabling meaningful personal existence and responsible action in society. The Institute expends its efforts in five major areas of human concern:

· developing effective methods of imaginal education

· evoking relevant self­images of individual integrity

· recasting the present fomms of religious expression

· designing contemporary models of social existence

· promoting a general spirit of ecumenical concern

­ The Ecumenical Institute, an affiliate of the Church Federation of Creater Chicago, is a not­for­profit organization chartered by the State of Illinois. It was founded by concemed citizens in Chicago and throughout the nation as a result of a resolution offered in the Second Assembly of the NVorld Council of Churches in 1954. The Institute is dependent for support upon the assistance of forward­looking individuals and pioneering corporations religious bodies, and foundations.

Thirty~four forty­four Congress Parkway Chicago, Illinois 60624

Area Code 312 Telephone 722­3444

IN THE HEART of urban Chicaga's renawned West Side, the Ecumenical Institute occupies a strotegic two­ocre campus with a complex of five buildings. There is space far a pre. school training center, a residence far faculty members, a large hostelry af apartments and guestrooms, seminar and conference facilities, an audito rium, a chapel, and a full gymnas~um.

THE CAMPUS averlooks the Eisenhower Expressway ten minutes from the downtown Loop and one block west of the Congress Avenue rapid transit statians at Homon Street. O'Hare and Midway airports ore within a half­hour's drive.

IMAGE is published normally four times a year. However, issues are not published on a regular quarterly basis but as appropriate material becomes available or as experimental projects of the Ecumenical Institute are brought to a stage meriting detailed description or reports. This has occasionally led readers to believe they have missed an issue.

By observing a flexible rather than a rigid schedule, we believe a better, more useful publicotion can be produced.

The Editors

THIS ISSU

One eighth of the United States papulation, 24 million people, are aged 13 to 19. The growth rate of the teen­age population is four times as high as the U.S. average. Such statistics do not begin to reveal the depths of one of the most intriguing developments of the post­modern world, the emergence of a youth culture tharoughly distinct from the youth of any previous era. This issue shares the broad insights about the new youth culture derived from a project designed to create adequate educational techniques far today's youth.