The Student Rebel in the University: A World-Wide View
W X THY do students demonstrate? What causes so much unrest among college youth? These questions have been plaguing Americans continuously this past year. While student demonstration in the name of social reform has a long history in developing countries, the United States has just begun to feel the impact of student social awareness and consequent unrest. Students around the world are saying, in effect, that they are disillusioned with many of the values and activities of adults. They accuse their elders of hypocrisy on great moral issues of human rights, war and peace, poverty and wealth. Some student spokesmen argue that we are heading toward disaster, that we need to take another look at the conditions necessary for the survival of the human race. Students are deadly serious about social betterment. They pride themselves on thinking of people in human terms-not as objects to be manipulated whimsically by established power groups. Can we afford to disregard what students are saying? I think, if we ignore them, we take great risks of betraying their intense concern for humanity and of increasing the disdain and hostility with which they regard us. My purpose in writing this essay is to describe briefly the status of the university student rebel in developing countries, in order to give some perspective on the conditions which are responsible for student unrest and which lead to overseas demonstrations. I wish to emphasize the particular obligation of the university student to advance national development, university reform, and social change. While universities have many missions in modern society, the university in a developing country incurs special responsibilities for promoting the rapid political, economic, and social development of its supporting society. The term "developing country" refers to an independent political unit which has a high degree of indigenous cultural development but which is in an early stage of industrialization. Therefore it lacks the technical methodology, the national attitudes, and the social structures of a highly developed industrial society. The data for this study come from my observations of student life