新編大學(xué)英語(yǔ)第四冊(cè)u(píng)nit7 Text A: Profiles of Today's Youth: They C

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UNIT 7 IN-CLASS READING; New College English (IV)

Profiles of Today's Youth: They Couldn't Care Less

1 John Karras, 28 years old, was in a card shop' the other day as the radio, which provides the soundtrack for his generation, offered a report on the dead and missing in the floods that had just flashed through southeastern Ohio.

2 The cashier, a man a bit younger than Mr. Karras, looked up at the radio and said: "I wish they'd stop talking about it. I'm sick of hearing about it."

3 Mr. Karras, a doctoral student in education at Ohio State, recalled this incident to illustrate what he sees as a "pervasive" attitude among the members of his generation toward the larger world: the typical young person doesn't want to hear about it "unless it's knocking on my door."

4 The findings of two national studies concur. The studies, one released today and the other late last year, paint a portrait of a generation of young adults, from 18 to 29 years of age, who are indifferent toward public affairs. It is a generation that, as the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press put it in a report released today, "knows less, cares less, votes less, and is less critical of its leaders and institutions than young people in the past."

5 "My teacher told me: 'Always question authority,'" said Paul Grugin, 22, one of the two dozen young people interviewed this week by The New York Times in this mid-size city in the middle of the country. "You can question authority, but you can burden authority. Let them do their job."

6 The indifference of this generation to politics, to government, even to news about the outside world is beginning to affect American politics and society, the reports suggest, helping to explain such seemingly disparate trends as the decline in voting, the rise of tabloid television and the effectiveness of negative advertising.

7 While apathy and alienation have become a national plague, the disengagement seems to run deeper among young Americans, those 18 to 29, setting them clearly apart from earlier generations.

8 No one has yet offered a full explanation for why this should be so. The lack of mobilizing issues is part of the answer, as are the decline of the family and the rise of television.

9 Young people themselves mention the weakness of their civic education, and they talk incessantly of stress their preoccupation with getting jobs or grades and their concern about personal threats like AIDS and drugs. "There are a lot more pressures on them than there were on us," said 48-year-old Ron Zeller, who talked about the differences along with his 22-year-old daughter, Susan, and his 18-year-old son, John.

10 The study by Times Mirror, a public opinion research center supported by Times Mirror Co., looked at 50 years of public opinion data and concluded, "Over most of the past five decades, younger members of the public have been at least as well informed as older people. In 1990 that is no longer the case."

11 This concern was echoed in a second report, prepared last year by People for the American Way, a liberal lobby and research organization, which concluded that there is "a citizenship crisis" in which "America's youth are alarmingly ill-prepared to keep democracy alive in the 1990's and beyond."

12 The decline in voting is one illustration of how what seems to be a general problem is, in fact, most heavily concentrated among the young. Surveys by the census bureau show that since 1972 almost all of the decline in voting has been among those under 45, and that the sharpest drop is among those between 18 and 25. Among the elderly, voting has risen, according to the census bureau surveys.

13 Older people, more settled than the young, have always participated more in elections. But the gap has widened substantially. In 1972, half of those between 18 and 24 said they voted, as did 71 percent of those 45 to 64, a gap of 21 percentage points. In 1988, 36 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds and 68 percent of the 45- to 64-year-olds said they voted, a gap of 32 percentage points.

14 Shonda Wolfe, 24, who has waited on tables since dropping out of college, said she had voted only once, when she was 18 and still living at home. "I guess my mother was there to push me," she said.

15 Now, she said, she does not pay much attention to politics or to the news. "I try to avoid it all the controversy," she said. "It just does not interest me at this point in my life. I'd rather be outside doing something, taking a walk."

16 Not one of the young people interviewed in Columbus, at the Street Scene Restaurant and the Short North Tavern, had a good word to say about politics or politicians. But unlike older people, who often express anger about news about sloth or corruption in government, these young people seem simply to be reporting it as a well-known fact. "Most politicians are liars," said Deborah Roberts, a 29-year-old secretary.

17 People for the American Way, in its report, noted that young people seemed, to have a half-formed understanding of citizenship, stressing rights but ignoring responsibilities.

18 When asked to define citizenship, Shonda Wolfe said it meant the right not to be harassed by the police. She cited as an intrusion on her rights the security guards' insistence at a concert that she and her boyfriend stop turning on their cigarette lighters.

19 Nancy Radcliffe-Spurgeon, 24, a student at Ohio State, said she thought that many of the attitudes of her generation were based on feeling safe. "It's easy to isolate yourself when you think things are going pretty well for you, so you don't rock the boat."

20 Occasionally, someone in the interview would mention voting. None of the young people when asked about citizenship included in their definition of good citizenship running for office, attending a community board meeting, studying an issue, signing a petition, writing a letter to the governor, or going to a rally.

21 Certain issues do get their attention, almost always involving government interference in personal freedoms. They generally favor access to abortion, and a few of the young people were upset by efforts to cut off federal funds for art works deemed obscene.

22 Andrew Kohut, director of surveys for Times Mirror, said there was a new generation gap, in which those under 30 were separated by their lack of knowledge and interest from those over 30.

23 People in their 30s and 40s are disenchanted with the world, but remain aware, said Mr. Kohut. But those under 30, he said, "are not so much disillusioned as disinterested."