Two years ago my friend Tod Seelie was in a thrift store in Ohio and found some negatives of students circa 1970. There is little evidence that points to who these teenagers are, exactly, but he gave me those black-and-white film negatives and said something like, "You have to take this and make something cool." Here's what I did…Lloyd was sent to a farm for adjustment, Mabel's overprotected, Marcia was a sex delinquent, Catherine wants attention, Dennis has many undesirable practices, Mary is unsocial, Olive's troubles are emotional as well as physical…. The story line is taken from Lester and Alice Crow's Our Teen-age Boys and Girls, a social survey of and guidebook to adolescence for parents (and teachers and other "youth leaders") that was published in 1945. These are case studies of wayward youth and how to care for these troubled adolescents.
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