THE PETERITE Vol. LXIV
M A Y. 1973
No. 388
EDITORIAL There has been a strange theory about for some years that young people mature earlier than they used to. Nobody has properly explained what this means, but it has been used as an argument for lowering the voting age, for suggesting lowering the legal drinking age, and in such nebulous discussions as to whether children should be on the governing bodies of their schools. The Youth Service Development Council, reporting to the Government in 1969 on the need for a reconstitution of the Youth Service, duly include the theory of earlier maturity in their first paragraph; but very early in their long report they say that one important need is for advice to be given to young men in "knowing how to chat up the birds", which until now does not seem to have been a recorded problem since the days of the Garden of Eden, and might leave some of us even more puzzled about the meaning of earlier maturity. Few would dispute that young people have more money to spend than those of ten or fifteen years ago, and it could be that some have mistaken this for maturity. Certainly it has given endless opportunities to all kinds of suppliers, from barbers to boot-makers, to relieve young people of their money. The breathless pursuit of fashion and style is as bewildering as the fearful run of the Red Queen and Alice, who ran ivery fast for ten minutes only to remain in the same place; as the Queen txplained, "If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" It is certainly difficult to keep up with the trends, and the mature young person now begins to stand out as the one who will set his own standards and quietly ignore the trends. Dress has always been a means of protest, effectively used by such 'ant individuals as John the Baptist and Mahatma Gandhi; but if the protest follows a trend, it makes no more impact than that of a civilised nvention such as the bureaucrat's bowler hat. The self-conscious protest is the least effective of all, and its aim, if there is one, can only be the hope of being slightly shocking. If it is right that there is earlier maturity it does not show itself in the slavish devotion to trends in fashion. But now that some years of this supposed earlier maturity have passed, we should be seeing the results in the universities and colleges. We know that we of the ignorant public must not judge students by the bad publicity they usually get, and no doubt only minorities are so publicised; but we can hardly fail to notice that in the universities intolerance often appears now at its most strident, and that prejudice decides 1
