Crime Against a Generation?

Although their parents may find it hard to believe, the better high school students make up the hardest-working segment of the population. According to Northwestern University Chemistry Professor L. Carroll King, the amount of work required of high school students is so great that it constitutes "a crime against a generation."

Every school, of course, has its share of youths who loaf their way to a diploma. But in a speech to a conference of the American Chemical Society in Manhattan last week, King contended that the serious student puts in a 17-hour day of classwork, school activities and homework. "No one else in the population works that many hours day after day," he insisted. After four years of this, "Mr. Good Student is no longer Mr. Good Student--he is a tired old man." He has also "been robbed of several years when he should have had time for free play." When the student reaches college, "he is faced with four more years of 17-hour days. It's too much; he just quits. The tired, beaten, defeated Mr. Good Student asks for academic death."

King absolves teachers of blame for overwork. The teachers, he argues, "are trapped by the demands of parents and by the demands of colleges and their ever-increasing standards for admission. The teacher is forced into the role of the overseer driving with a whip." King's remedy: more attention to student welfare. "The student," he says, "has a right to receive individual attention and a right to proceed at his own rate."

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