DURING OCTOBER 1966 The New Yorker magazine ran a very funny cartoon by Saxon, showing the entrance hall of a rather elaborate town house. A door in the rear opens onto a neatly tended garden. The wife is standing on the stairs, one hand clutching the balustrade, looking apprehensive. Her white-faced husband, nattily attired in a madras dinner jacket, is talking earnestly into the telephone. The caption reads: "Listen to me, Francine! Stay in Wellesley! We can discuss who you are and who I am over the vacation!"3

This cartoon captures, as no words can, the sudden shock experienced by these conventional and rather complacent parents as they make their first contact with the language of adolescent identity crisis. For many hapless parents, no amount of telephone coaching, imploring, or bribing will prevent their children from joining the ranks of the dropouts, for over 50 per cent of the million students