NEW RADICALISM
189
and colleges, they often exude a cyruclSm that belongs to rotten
aristocrats." But imagine the situation if the schools could no longer
be
so indicted-if, for example, there were ample and diversified
opportunities for youngsters to drop out and
return
easily so that they
could have unsheltered life experiences at various times from adoles–
cence on. The products of such education who chose a minimum
annual income would hardly be likely to have "unproductive" time
on their hands.
The new education would necessarily require a redefinition of
work. Some would continue to find fulfillment in the upper echelon
of management, and in science and other professions which cannot
be
fully cybernated. But for others, no longer required to produce
in
terms of the Industrial Age, there would be a limitless spectrum
of vocations, both
privat~
and in social services. Tom Hayden, who
has helped establish a community union in a Negro neighborhood
in Newark for Students for a Democratic Society, points out (in the
F.O.R.'s
Fellowship)
the possibility of:
. .. thousands of new vocations in the areas of education, health
care, recreation, engineering, planning and welfare [a new
concept of welfare]. Some of these roles would require special–
ists: for example, the development of educational parks to
replace neighborhood schools would involve the attention of
educators, public servants, and urban planners. But even more
exciting than creating useful tasks for specialists is the pos–
sibility of laying the base of a new stratum of humanist activity.
The idea of employing individuals as "teacher's aides" with
responsibility for caring for the learning child outside the class–
room, is one example. Imagine a society which subsidized com–
munity-level
art
and journalism, health clinics, recreational
facilities, libraries and museums. . . .
With the present system of values, in politics as everywhere
else, any such' subsidization would bring control that would violate
Hayden's "humanist" goals of spontaneity .and self-growth through
social and individual action. The experiences of Mobilization for Youth
and HARYOU-ACT, among other shattered illustrations, testify to
the absurdity of expecting this government to make the radicals' social
revolution for them. But that again is why political action, beginning
