ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : What’s <i> Not</i> the Matter With Kids Today

What if the current crop of suburban high school students, reared largely by “turbulent ‘60s” parents during the “go-for-it” ’80s, turned out cynical and world-weary at the ripe old age of 17? Happily, a Times Orange County Edition questionnaire that informally polled attitudes of high school seniors suggests that this is not happening. Rather, today’s youngsters seem to be reasonably well-adjusted--very much interested in balancing in their young lives the pursuit of material well-being with service to humanity.

That’s lucky for Orange County. The survey of 604 seniors at four high schools--Newport Harbor, Santa Ana, Woodbridge in Irvine and Troy in Fullerton--found that nearly a third devoted at least an hour a week to volunteer work, citing a desire to help the community. This impulse is manifested in many successful programs, such as Green Cross, an environmental-management club at Newport Harbor; Santa Ana Volunteer Youth (SAVVY), which distributes food and clothing to needy families and visits the elderly, and SafeRides at Mission Viejo High School, part of a nationwide network of high schools participating in an anti-drunk-driving support program.

Shirley Bebereia, adviser to SAVVY, and other area student counselors and advisers report that in the 1990s, they are finding students more and more interested in trying to do things for others. This new generation has witnessed greed and glory on Wall Street go bust, a rising gap between rich and poor at home and abroad, and the reckless assault on the environment by overdevelopment and carelessness.

Perhaps more than in previous decades, youths are positioned to strike a balance between materialism and idealism. They can see the consequences of inaction or indifference; for example, inner-city homelessness has spread to their suburbs and foul air blankets their horizons.

With all that, it is especially reassuring that these youngsters have not succumbed to self-centeredness. Nor have they been hardened by the experiences of elders for whom 1960s radicalism may have gone sour. And more good news: UCLA professor Alexander W. Astin, who conducted a national survey, says there is “a rapidly expanding number of American college students who are dissatisfied with the status quo and who want to become personally involved in bringing about change in American society.”