Kids today …
… could become the Even Greater Generation.
That may not be the way most of us adults would finish that sentence, but it’s true. Teenagers have implored the elders for the past month to make their schools and communities safer, and they’ve had to tap into a well of courage to do so. Dozens in Wabash Valley communities and others across the country walked out of their classrooms Wednesday morning for 17 minutes — one for each life lost at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month in Parkland, Florida, the latest site of a school shooting.
Signs held by the young people bore the names of students and staff who died inside that Florida school on Feb. 14, killed by a gunman with an assault weapon. Other signs read “fear has no place in our schools” and “take action.” Young people initiated Wednesday’s National School Walkout. They also planned the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere on March 24.
They’ve displayed a reasonableness and respect equal to that of older generations. They aren’t venting outrage about changes to the health care system or tax increases. Instead, these daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and neighbor kids want to know why grownups running their government have failed to protect schools from a string of deadly shootings that began before they were born.
Young people deserve an answer. To their credit, they aren’t settling for, “We have to do better.” They want adults to discuss solutions and then implement them.
That’s not naive or immature. It’s the premise the American democracy is based upon.
We’ve all heard the gripes about the current generation of teens — they’re addicted to smartphones, can only communicate through texts in gibberish acronyms, are incapable of face-to-face conversations because of their reliance Snapchat or Instagram, and they don’t understand causes bigger than themselves. Young people don’t deserve those stereotypes any more so than their accusers deserve to be labeled disgruntled curmudgeons prone to bark, “Get off my lawn.”
Let’s not forget that dissing the younger generation isn’t new.
How about those teens in fourth century B.C.? Aristotle wrote, “They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Jump to 1956. Here’s an excerpt from article that year in Variety magazine about teens’ fascination with Elvis Presley. “We should examine more closely those forces in our civilization which make so many of our young people respond so quickly to the self-pity and the hatred that beat through this music.”
Harumph.
Seven years later, Newsweek assessed The Beatles, who were followed by millions of American young people. “Their lyrics — punctuated by nutty shouts of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’ — are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments. The odds are, they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict.”
Right.
Now those teen rock-and-rollers are the adults. Like previous generations, we baby boomers haven’t handled adulthood perfectly. There’s no need to belabor the flaws and foibles attributable to our generation, from streaking to expanding drug abuse, a 50-percent divorce rate, the Great Recession and tripling the cost of a college education.
One thing we should be proud of, though, is the spirit and gumption shown by the high schoolers rallying for the opportunity study math and English, learn to operate a machine in vocational tech class, or cut up with friends at lunch in the cafeteria without a subliminal fear of coming under attack. To just be kids. Teenagers, growing up.
We had that chance. They should, too.