A friend sent me a video of students at a journalism school doing some kind of satire, for other students.

The video stunned me. Those kids were acting like…kids.

Well, it wasn’t that way decades ago, when I was a student at that school. We were expected to behave like professionals, and we did. There was a maturity, an adult style. The contrast between then and now is dramatic, and disturbing.

But not unusual.

In the middle of the last century, some incisive educators warned that America was developing a tendency to prolong adolescence. We were starting to stretch out childhood, and to treat young adults as children. In all probability, one cause of this was the pain suffered by the generation that had to grow up quickly to fight the depression, and then World War II, and didn’t want its own children to bear such sacrifice. Their children became a very pampered generation, the generation of the sixties, the generation that celebrated kid culture, kid thinking, kid behavior, and kid leadership.

“Hey, don’t trust anyone over 30.” Remember that slogan from the sixties? I wonder what those who shouted it are thinking, now that they’re in their sixties. What is stunning is that the generation they were cursing is now called The Greatest Generation, the generation that saved the country and the world. Those were the people we weren’t supposed to trust. Instead, we were told to trust college students with megaphones and egos.

American culture, and with it a part of American politics, was infantilized in the sixties. But the full effects weren’t felt for decades - until the sixties generation got into positions of power, and brought the style of its generation to bear.

Our movies, before the impact of the sixties generation, told great stories - and it was fine for Americans to be heroes and to do heroic things.

Our music was written by people named Berlin and Gershwin, and Rodgers and Kern. We were able, somehow, to survive without songs that referred to women as “bitches” and “ho’s.”

Our teachers, and not just on the college level, had about them a dignity and style. Not all, of course, but most. I recall the pride that New York City teachers had in their work. I remember those teachers telling me of the exams and interviews they had to pass to get their license. When I was an elementary-school student in New York City, we rose beside our desk when we addressed a teacher.

It is true that popular culture always belonged to youth, as the great producer, David O. Selznick (”Gone With the Wind”), remarked in the thirties. But that youth was under adult supervision. We can, today, sneer at the old Hollywood production code, with its prudish requirements and outright censorship - but at least it provided an adult framework for our movies. Why is it that most of America’s best films were made while the code was in place?

The term, “youth oriented” was invented in the sixties, and it guided an entire generation that shaped our popular culture.

Today we have a society that seems incredibly juvenile. The man in the White House appears, at times, to be more a college student than a mature adult, more a student government president than a real one. Compare him to Reagan. Or, if you prefer a more age-similar comparison, to Kennedy.

The juvenile society poses serious dangers for our future. The childlike mind does not process information the way the adult mind does. It does not assume adult responsibilities. It is easily manipulated. Children, and those who act like children, accept restrictions that no free adult ever would.

Our schools, and our colleges and universities, have played a key role in developing and nurturing the kid culture. We have a young generation that does not believe it has any responsibility for national defense. Like children, its members simply choose not to play that game. Our entertainment industry, even some parts of our “serious” culture, project images and values that flash “young” and “carefree” rather than “responsible.” And our journalism…not much need be said about that. When NBC News can employ kid/adults like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, what can one say? Compare please to Huntley and Brinkley and Edward R. Murrow.

We are paying a price for the kid culture. We are paying it in lower standards, lower incentives to excel, and in an acceptance of a loss of fundamental freedoms. A society that will turn its health-care system, and one sixth of its economy, over to the federal government is not a society of thinking adults. It is more like a class of children that follows the teacher to the school assembly to listen to a speech on self-esteem by a principal who likes to be called by his first name.

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