Graduation 1973: A New Breed

Four years ago, in the affluent suburbs west of Boston, the freshmen at Lincoln-Sudbury High School had passionate causes. They marched against the Viet Nam War and rallied on Lincoln green to denounce President Nixon.

Now, as seniors, they are chiefly concerned with getting their homework out of the way and whiling away the days until graduation. On sunny afternoons, they lounge on the school's smoking patio, and when they talk about their hopes for the future, they use words like "comfortable" and "secure." For entertainment, they drive their shiny new cars to Michael's in nearby Concord for pizza and beer. Their worries, says History Teacher Don Gould, are as old as adolescence: "Whether people like them, what they look like, and who's going out with whom."

The class of '73 at Lincoln-Sudbury is typical. From city ghettos to prosperous suburbs and small towns, a new mood has settled on this year's graduating class of 3.1 million high school seniors. Unlike their older brothers of the 1960s, few of them think that their generation will right America's wrongs.

Instead, they have turned inward, worrying primarily about what kind of people they will become. They are more conventional than their predecessors, according to a series of interviews conducted by TIME correspondents across the country. They are also, at the same time, more materialistic and more religious. Some glimpses of this year's graduating class:

> "My goal is to be happy," says Mike Tulumello, 18, who edited the student newspaper at McClintock High School in Tempe, Ariz. He worked part time as a waiter in a local restaurant and graduated with B plus grades. "To be happy you need to be a success. I want to reach the top, to have a job that pays well, to own a car and to live in a nice apartment." Next fall he plans to enroll in Arizona State to prepare for a career in broadcasting.

> "If a person can better himself, he can better society," declares Al Harris, 18, a black member of the graduating class at Evanston (Ill.) Township High School. For him, that means studying electronics at a vocational school. He explains: "A few years ago, the majority of people really didn't know what they wanted when they got out of school. So they'd go to college and major in anything--say, physical education--just to get a degree. That's not for me."

> "I'll tell you what we talk about when we get together," says Andrea Heizberg, 16, a senior at Midwood High School in a middle-class section of Brooklyn. "We talk about college, because that is where we are going. We talk about money, because you can't do anything unless you have it, and we talk about the opposite sex--always. Sometimes we talk about books."

This class has few new fads, but it has rediscovered some old ones. Although they still like rock, some have begun to dance to slow music, cheek to cheek with their partners. Both girls and boys are cutting their hair a little shorter. Pep rallies are back in favor in Phoenix, proms in Evanston, Hula-Hoops and yo-yos in Olympia. Nearly all of the graduates look forward to attending commencement exercises, and most will wear the traditional cap and gown. "The word relevance is a social worker's word now, not a kid's word," says Jody Harburger, a youth worker in St. Louis.

What few causes they still have, they do not pursue very zealously. "You yell about anything around here and you'll find yourself yelling alone," says Senior Steve Dixon at Julia Richman High School on Manhattan's East Side. At his school, the biggest organized movement this year was a successful campaign to get the fire-damaged auditorium repaired in time for graduation ceremonies. Elsewhere, the seniors are still interested in ecology, though not so fervently as a few years ago. They still organize hikes to raise money for charities, getting sponsors to pay a dollar for each mile they walk. For variation, teenagers in Atlanta hold waistline parties, where each boy and girl has to pay by the inch to organizations like the school booster club. Says Science Teacher Harold Dorf at Midwood High in Brooklyn: "They are looking for personal satisfaction rather than public causes."

George Mihaly, president of Gilbert Youth Research Co., surveys thousands of students in cities across the country, and his opinion studies of 684 seniors have found "a more stable, conservative attitude" in this year's graduating class. Some highlights:

RELATIONS WITH PARENTS. The much-ballyhooed "generation gap" seems to have narrowed. The seniors surveyed this spring said they may disagree with their parents on marijuana and premarital sex, but nearly 85% reported that they generally agree with their parents' ideas and share their values. Four years ago, the figure was 61%.

LIFESTYLES. Asked about how they planned to be living in fifteen years, the largest group (44.2%) expected to be "an average family man (housewife) living a fairly pressure-free life with time for family and outside interests." They foresaw themselves having two or three children and living in a suburb or small town. Only 11% hoped to be "free of social responsibility and obligations, living where and with whom they pleased and not worrying about money or work."

CAREERS. Comparatively few seniors (9.8%) want to devote their lives to trying to solve social problems, a matter that attracted more than 30% in 1969. Most (80%) equate money with success, consider it important and have specific ideas about how they want to earn it--a striking change from past years when Gilbert found that 42% of seniors had only vague career plans.

This year the most popular prospective careers were advertising executive (12.5%), magazine editor (10%) and college teacher, broadcast executive and carpenter (all 9%).

Not far from Lincoln-Sudbury, Mary Feeney, 17, wipes off the counter at Mike's Place and serves a customer another cheeseburger. "I guess you could say we don't make a big splash," she says of her graduating class at Newton High School. "One of my main interests is karate; it's a great way to develop discipline, grace and coordination. Maybe in a year I'll go to college, but right now I'm happy to be the person I am. As long as I can have a comfortable life and be satisfied with myself, I'll think I've done all right."

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