America's Youth in Crisis: Challenges and Options for Programs and Policies

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Copyright © 1995 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: SAGE Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: order@sagepub.com SAGE Publications Ltd. 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU United Kingdom SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. M-32 Market Greater Kailash I New Delhi 110048 India Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lerner, Richard M. America's youth in crisis: challenges and options for programs and policies / Richard M. Lerner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-8039-7068-4 (cl.).—ISBN 0-8039-7069-2 (pbk.) 1. Youth—United States. 2. Youth—Government policy—United States. 3. Education and state—United States. 4. Poverty—United States. I. Title. HQ796.L382 1995 305.23′5′0973—dc20 94-34626 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Sage Production Editor: Yvonne Könneker You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that all is not well on the home front. Appalling statistics on child and youth welfare portend terrible suffering—daily portraits in the press of homicidal children and homeless, hungry babies translate the numbers into real people. But the general public does not just get up in the morning highly motivated to address social issues. Most are focused on their own welfare, worrying about their own kids, maintaining their own relationships, and keeping their taxes down. They have little insight into how those misery statistics affect the quality of their lives and the lives of generations to come. Fortunately, within the general population resides a growing body of human resources people, both professionals and volunteers, who want to confront the statistics and the causes behind them and reshape this nation. Richard Lerner is one of those reshapers. I am delighted that he has built on my work and the work of my colleagues to develop an agenda for integrating research and outreach. Although he generously refers to me as a scholar, I describe myself as an angry old activist. In my view, the purpose of research is to inform action, and the role of the university is to produce practitioners of many varieties who can implement that action. As this book suggests, enough research currently exists to initiate planned responses to the interrelated problems of families, schools, and communities. And if researchers can be lured into [Page viii]program evaluation and operational research, we could move faster and better. The real test for all of our theories lies out in the field, in the diverse American communities. We know now that human service workers must move away from their concentration on changing individual behaviors and tackle the challenges involved in institutional change. Richard Lerner describes what I call my obsession with full-service schools, the model that combines, in one setting, quality education and support services (everything needed in that community to help children, adolescents, and families “make it”). This concept is based on the premise that neither kind of intervention—educational nor social—will be successful without the other. In all parts of the country, the consensus is that more comprehensive and powerful programs are required. Communities need help in arriving at that shared vision of new institutional arrangements, technical assistance with putting all the pieces together, and long-term support that will ensure institutionalization of demonstrations and real change in the life chances for children and their families. We are all in this together. Land-grant universities are in a unique position to bridge the gap between research and practice. The extension service researches into every community in America and has the potential for bringing together local leaders, agencies, parents, youth, and media to shape and act on that vision. This book should guide those endeavors, sensitizing practitioners to respond to critical needs, charging researchers to focus on relevant issues, and challenging universities to integrate curricula and produce real leaders for the future. Refreshing—even amazing!—to find a distinguished academic scholar who is not content with producing research that meets the scrutiny of peers and is published in the best journals in the field. Rather, his satisfaction must come from seeing his research and that of his colleagues and peers applied in the formation of an agenda and effective action plan for the nation's children and adolescents. If he can lead by example and attract other scholars to risk joining him in applied research, outreach, and evaluation, then we have a legitimate chance of responding in time to a huge and growing crisis in this country—the vast underrealization of the potential of our children and the concurrent growing jeopardy of our nation and society as we have known it. Richard Lerner understands that our children, adolescents, families, and communities and society are growing in complexity and diversity, due to the confluence of many forces. And he has risked candidly criticizing his profession for having focused its research attention largely on White, middle-class children and adolescents, resulting in a theoretical and a practical knowledge gap between existing data and the needs of the nation's diverse youth and families. If he can capture the attention and engage the talents of his peers, the gap can be closed in time to make use of the data in addressing our crisis. With comprehensive data, Richard Lerner has demonstrated that “the breadth and depth of the problems besetting our nation's youth, families, [Page...

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