Written by a former Olympic consultant, this book examines youth sports in America today, from institutions that dominate organized youth sports to high-profile controversies ranging from burnout and out-of-control parents to the health risks of youth football. As organized youth sports occupy an ever-greater role in the lives of American families, critics have begun to question whether some programs and participants have lost their way. This timely book examines the state of youth sports in America today, analyzing how organized sports influence communities, discussing the potential emotional and physical benefits as well as drawbacks of youth sports, and profiling the industry's key participants, ranging from parent coaches to club sports owners to personal trainers. The work begins with a look at the evolution of youth sports in the United States, then explores such topics as burnout, self-discipline, performance-enhancing drugs, parental violence, and scholarships. The content includes coverage of 20 individual youth sports, such as basketball, softball, lacrosse, baseball, volleyball, football, soccer, cross-country, and swimming, and provides breakdowns of historical and current participation rates, injury rates, and sport-specific scholarship trends. Each summary includes contact information on important organizations specific to that sport.

When President Franklin Roosevelt formed the National Youth Administration (NYA) in June 1935, he declared that it would address "the most pressing and immediate needs" of American young people. In this book Richard A. Reiman explores the various, and sometimes conflicting, ways in which the NYA planners and administrators defined those needs and attempted to answer them. As Reiman notes, the NYA was established to assist the millions of youth who, during the Depression years, were out of school, out of work, and ineligible for the New Deal's own Civilian Conservation Corps. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, New Dealers did not envision the NYA primarily as a "junior WPA," a trigger for civil rights reform, or a springboard for the careers of liberal administrators. Rather, its designers saw it as a reform agency that would advance and protect democracy by countering totalitarian appeals to young people and by equalizing educational opportunities for rich and poor. Woven into the successive drafts establishing the NYA, these twin purposes united the programs of planners as disparate as Aubrey W. Williams, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Studebaker, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Taussig, and FDR himself. Like their separate agendas, Reiman shows, the planners' shared concerns for democratic values were the products of thinking that had arisen during the Progressive Era - a time when an awareness of the social effects of child development first occurred. During the 1930s, fears of fascism and totalitarianism added fuel to these concerns and shaped much of the nature of the NYA's prewar appeal. Based on a wide range of sources, including NYA-related documents at the National Archives and at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, The New Deal and American Youth is the first full-length study of this important agency. By showing how the NYA served as an instrument for realizing so many New Deal ambitions, it offers rich insights into both the NYA and the New Deal.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

America's latest war, according to renowned social critic Henry Giroux, is a war on youth. While this may seem counterintuitive in our youth-obsessed culture, Giroux lays bare the grim reality of how our educational, social, and economic institutions continually fail young people. Their systemic failure is the result of what Giroux identifies as ""four fundamentalisms"": market deregulation, patriotic and religious fervor, the instrumentalization of education, and the militarization of society. We see the consequences most plainly in the decaying education system: schools are increasingly desi.

A concise compilation of statistics and information about issues that affect adolescents in the United States, such as pregnancy, violence, and crime.

On juvenile delinquency in America

Focuses on the social and moral issues surrounding America's youth.