The kids are alright
Leafing through the D&C editorial page the other day, the words “T. S. Eliot” caught my eye. What was this? I wondered. What was such an erudite reference doing on a page where the cultural touchstones are gangster rappers, contestants from American Idol, and, at best, episodes of The Sopranos?
Not surprisingly, I suppose, it had been written by a high school student, someone still too naive to know that challenging works like The Hollow Men (which she quoted) have no place in a society that celebrates stupidity even as it laments the coarsening of our culture. Blame it on her youth, I suppose. (The piece did not appear in the online version of the D&C, so I cannot provide a link.)
A lot of adults — notably, many who write for the D&C editorial page — are very concerned about the “dumbed down” culture children supposedly grow up in today. With the video games, and the Ipods, and the texting, and the tattoos. As if there weren’t similar, albeit less technologically advanced, distractions when we were growing up. And, — let’s admit it — as if adults haven’t been the ones dumbing things down all these years.
The remarkable thing, of course, is that despite the (largely imaginary) evils of technology and the (very real) damage done to our culture by the more intellectually lazy members of our media, kids are doing fine today. Teen crime is near an all time low. Teen pregnancy is at an all time low. Test scores are holding steady. And all this is happening among a society of adults who elected George W. Bush president twice (okay, once, at least) and whose idea of serious issues includes the hair cuts, cleavage, and heating bills of presidential candidates.
It’s a miracle, when you think about it.
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