ScholarWorks > WMU > Perspectives > Vol. 5 (1973) > No. 2
Abstract
The counter culture controversy-that is, the claims and denials over the arrival of a new kind of person, a new breed, a new sensibility- widely discussed in the late sixties, has reached a new level of intensity. The critics are now taking the initiative, putting forward arguments intended to show either that the youth movement has been faddish, ladened with contradictions, and a luxury of the "elitists," or that it never did exist except in the imaginations and wishes of its identifiers and "discoverers."
I believe the critics have largely failed to take into account just what the discoverers of the new sensibility have been trying to tell us. Their evidence and arguments, which I shall review, soundly demonstrate the emergence of a new consciousness which is both durable and expanding.
This being the case, then it is clearly time for those of us involved in higher education to respond appropriately to this growing and I think vital-sub-culture. Just as in past times we accommodated education to, say, "aristocratic," "puritan," and "bourgeois" consciousness, we now ought to accommodate to the new consciousness. Therefore, I shall also suggest some approaches for the education of the new consciousness, which, lacking a better term, I shall sometimes designate simply as "new con."
Recommended Citation
Mehrling, Benjamin
(1973)
"The Presence and Promise of the New Consciousness,"
Perspectives (1969-1979): Vol. 5:
No.
2, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/perspectives/vol5/iss2/3
